Q: Any suggestions for thinning an axe head?

B

bdaabat

Joined
Jul 2, 2025
Messages
54
Good day all!

I'd recently visited my brother in law. He was sharing that he felt like his axe wasn't up to the task of breaking down larger chunks of wood into smaller chunks. He's not a woodsman. He's just trying to get wood to a size that will fit in his Solo stove.

When I checked the axe, it seemed a bit dull. TBF, I'm no woodsman either.

Of course, I decided that it would be interesting to see if other folks have done things to improve the performance of their wood cutting tools.

One that jumped out at me was this video from Outdoors55:

He discusses the idea of thinning out the blade and then sharpening to be able to more effectively cut. Same principle with kitchen knives-geometry matters.

I'm curious if others on this site have tried this technique of thinning the axe head for better cutting performance and if so, what the results were.

Thanks in advance!
Bruce
 
BF member 'HeavyHanded' was very knowledgeable about such things. He hasn't posted in a long while, so I don't know if we'll hear from him directly. But I linked one of his posts in an old thread along the same topic lines. There are good tips by others in that thread as well. Most who seem to know about these things often recommend using a powered grinder (if you're experienced with them) or a very large mill bastard file for quicker metal removal. HeavyHanded demo'd that file technique on a hardware store hatchet in his linked reply below, with one of his own videos. He also used what he called a 'washboard', a device of his own design that used a grooved device he made, wrapped with a sheet of wet/dry sandpaper or a sheet of plain paper with compound, for the finishing and refining/polishing passes.

HeavyHanded

Post in thread 'Axe stone'

Here's an older vid that might be of help, shows last bit of file work on a hardware store hatchet and final sharpening on wet/dry.

Once you get the geometry right maintaining is pretty easy as long as you don't dig roots or otherwise abuse it. I have camping hatchets that have been maintained for years on hard strops and one that's just been touched up on firepit ash smeared on a flat piece of wood.

Some axe/hatchet heads are pretty high Rockwell at the bit and a file will have considerable difficulty, in that case metal cutting belts can be had for a smaller hand...

You might find more good tips from him if you search out more of his old posts here on the forum.
 
I don't do it quite like he does, but the principle is similar and I agree with his premise. Axes as a general rule tend to come too thick behind the edge even if the apex angle is good. I work the cheeks backwards and forwards on the contact wheel of my belt grinder to produce a deep and gradual convex deeper than you can achieve with a typical slack belt.
 
Different site but this is a good thread on profling axes.

Axe profiling

I've been asked several times about how I profile my axe edges without power tools. This is an extremely important thread because so many people lack understanding of the basic structure of the edge and they have no idea how to arrive at the proper profile. This is the edge we are starting...
bushcraftusa.com bushcraftusa.com
 
Alberta Ed said:
Sounds like your BIL could use a splitting maul instead of an ax.
Click to expand...
Even those are typically too thick right behind the edge and perform better sharp. You'd be amazed at the difference thinning behind the edge makes with splitting mauls. Wedges, too. All of my splitting wedges have a thin convex at the edge and they drive easy and blow right through wood compared to their factory geometry.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Even those are typically too thick right behind the edge and perform better sharp. You'd be amazed at the difference thinning behind the edge makes with splitting mauls. Wedges, too. All of my splitting wedges have a thin convex at the edge and they drive easy and blow right through wood compared to their factory geometry.
Click to expand...
My best splitting ax was an old double-bit worn down to a convex edge.
 
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