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Pulaski re-hang (pic heavy)
- Thread starter Square_peg
- Start date
That was a beautiful walk through! I love the handle. I have a Kelly Pulaski whose original handle that's still serviceable but I'm making a note of this thread for when it's time to replace. I also now feel the need to go find a spokeshave. My "yard" has about a half mile of trail and I use the Pulaski as my "grubber" axe for roots. The adze end has served to shave down the top of a few buried logs level with the path as well as digging and scraping.
Nice writeup and beautiful job of making your own handles. Pulaski is my favourite outdoor and campsite tool for dirty work of grubbing roots and stones and splitting firewood. I wouldn't dream of sharpening it for limbing and cutting wood unless I had a dedicated second one. I had to adapt a dbl bit handle to fit a few years ago and did notice that the eyes of these tools are unusually thin, which surprised me. I long ago retired a Walters rendition of a Pulaski and now I'll have to go and have a look to see how that eye was sized. Betcha Morley upsized them.
Square_peg
Gold Member
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- Feb 1, 2012
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The octagonal shape isn't so important for that. But the slender handle and abrupt swell make it much easier to grip for extended periods. They other thing I like about big swells is that a semi-relaxed grip allows for more snap right before impact, increasing head speed and impact force. I've compared it to the concept of 'iron and silk' in martial arts. The hand stays as loose as silk until just before the moment of impact when it clenches hard as iron. Not exactly the same but similar in principle.
The octagonal shape is more about accuracy and having a strong mental connection with the axe. The slightest twist in an octagon handle is immediately felt and corrected for. Straight haft or curved, I prefer octagons and large abrupt swells.
Square_peg
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I'm with you on that. We always have plenty of Pulaskis out on trail crew and most of them have thicker bits for swamping work. But I need to have at least one sharp tool out there for bucking storm falls and chopping through the larger roots. Of course I'm religious about cleaning a root very well before I chop it. And I'll leave that last inch of the root for the hand saw or adze end of the Pulaski. I never punch through the root with a sharp axe.
This handle has developed a nice patina over the past year. Must be from our acidic soil.
Well I did venture out to my snowed-in rural storage locker and retrieved whereof I spoke. Narrow eye is of a current production Barco Pulaski that was re-hafted (by me) 2 years ago and next to it is the vintage (likely 50-60 years old) Morley Walter's version that I spoke of. I found that particular Walter's (only the head) nearby an abandoned Park Ranger cabin in central B.C. (Bowron Lakes) in 1980. It had already seen a lot of use!. Eye on the Barco is 2 7/8 x 11/16 and the eye on Morley's Pulaski is 3 1/8 x 3/4. By my thinking: 10 points go to Mr Pulaski for the wonderful original design and a few Brownie points to Morley Walters for deciding to improve upon it. Really too bad that Walter's Axe permanently closed up shop 41 years ago.
