Re-handle my plastic axe

A

Alocksly

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Dec 30, 2013
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Silverthorns earlier thread on the Browning "Outdoorsman" axe led me to try and see if I could remove the bendy plastic handle on the Browning I picked up a few years ago and replace it with a hickory one. Not something I've ever done before but what the hell, it was gathering dust in the corner of the shed and I felt like tinkering tonight. Here's the photo journey for anyone else who has the same inclination.



Bendy plastic handle.


Handsaw and grinder to find the metal I suspected was hiding in the neck.


Here's what's hiding in the neck





Drilled it out and found that the plastic was not actually bonded to the metal and I could peel it back with a screwdriver. Improvised lug pounded out what was left.


Handle from the local hardware store, gotta cut it down.


Now to work with the rasp, sander, and my personal favorite for shaping wood; the pocket plane.




It fits.


A bit of epoxy after I roughed up the neck with the rasp a bit and the heads on. Damn, cut the wedge to short.



Sanded off the varnish and rubbed on the BLO.

Just for comparison, here's my swapped out handle axe next to one hung by someone who knows what the hell they're doing.



Now I'll have to head out and see if that tiny little eye will hold onto the handle.
 
Very nice retrofit and very nice pictorial 'walk through'. You've obviously done customs and re-hafting before. I suspect 'she'll' no longer be sitting in the corner now that there's a real handle in place. Let this be a caution for future purchasers of plastics.
 
Nice job on a nonstandard eye.
You know your way around your work bench. :thumbup:
 
Thanks folks.I'm still a little worried about how small the eye is. We had a bunch of limbs blow down over the last few days. When I get some free daylight hours I'll go see if it holds together under strain.
 
Hockey stick makers are getting weight and strength of composite materials right down to an art and I would think these materials are adaptable to axes and mauls but the real problem is for retrofits; it's pretty rare for axes to have a standard size 'eye' and the minute you have to cut, trim, whittle away or rasp to make things fit the advantage of space-age materials is compromised. Plus no one has ever gotten around to making a warm-to-the-touch handle or one that readily tolerates sweaty hands either.
I wonder, in the scheme of things, if your eye turns out to be too small whether it can be reamed out or doctored somehow to make it larger.
 
Given time with my Dremel I'm sure I could open the eye up a bit (probably lengthen it toward the blade). I might have been too ambitious putting as long a handle on as I did. I may find that this bit is better suited to a shorter handle where less force is brought to bear on the head. The blade itself is definitely on the thin side for any really aggressive chopping anyways.
 
Alocksly said:
I may find that this bit is better suited to a shorter handle where less force is brought to bear on the head. The blade itself is definitely on the thin side for any really aggressive chopping anyways.
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Which really just means that if yer gonna do any aggressive work you grab a different axe. :D For light work I prefer "a little more handle than head" -- I have a 1 3/4 pound head on a boy's axe handle that is nice for kindling. A little light for me, but my wife uses it too and has more control than wailing away on something with a hatchet. I like her feet just the way they are.
 
Alocksly said:
Given time with my Dremel I'm sure I could open the eye up a bit (probably lengthen it toward the blade). I might have been too ambitious putting as long a handle on as I did. I may find that this bit is better suited to a shorter handle where less force is brought to bear on the head. The blade itself is definitely on the thin side for any really aggressive chopping anyways.
Click to expand...
Bet the handle breaks long before the blade gives out! You can probably park a car on the thin-bladed head of my ordinary Estwing shingler's hatchet without moving or bending anything. And that "they make 'em every day" technology is no different from what went into yours, except now there is a wood handle involved.
 
I don't think the head is going to fail so much as the the eye is too small with too little contact area to keep a grip on the handle. I hope I'm wrong but I'm mainly worried that the head'll just work loose.


edit, two days later: I took it out for post windstorm yard cleanup today. My yard includes some 80ft firs and they dropped some firewood size limbs. The axe cuts great. One slice for a 3" green Doug fir limb. I tried chopping on some large blocks of fir root I chainsawed off a stump awhile ago as it was the toughest stuff available. The axe cut in about 2" cross grain. The thin blade binds in the cut but now that the handle doesn't bend it's much easier to pull out. The head stayed tight and I was impressed by the deep cuts but having to free the blade after every stroke is annoying.

300Six; I have an Estwing 3/4 axe that I've abused the hell out of for going on 20 years, It also has a thin profile blade but it does not bind like the Browning did.
 
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Alocksly: The thin blade binds in the cut but now that the handle doesn't bend it's much easier to pull out. The head stayed tight and I was impressed by the deep cuts but having to free the blade after every stroke is annoying.

I very much suspect that these types of implements (including that 'bendy' plastic handle!) are designed by artists to be judged more for appearance than designed/tested for actual use. There is a reason that head shapes and profiles didn't vary significantly back in the days when folks were only concerned about function.
 
300Six said:
I very much suspect that these types of implements (including that 'bendy' plastic handle!) are designed by artists to be judged more for appearance than designed/tested for actual use.
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Or maybe designed by the marketing department. To them an axe's most important function is appealing to a public which knows little about using an axe.
 
Square_peg said:
Or maybe designed by the marketing department. To them an axe's most important function is appealing to a public which knows little about using an axe.
Click to expand...

Kinda makes you long for the days when the LABEL was where they spent that kind of creativity.
 
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