This is the story of the axe I found and restored over the summer, and how I came across it.
I hope you find my story entertaining,
A friend and I had made plans on a summer weekend to explore a series of abandoned farm houses along a road near his parents house, after he had driven past them a few times over the course of his visit with them.
We packed our backpacks full of camera equipment: a tripod, our film and digital cameras, some flash units, and a crow bar, and headed out down this long country road. It was a hot humid summer in Ontario, and we were feeling it. By the time we got to the first house we were sweating pretty hard, and were glad to get into the shady, mosquito infested, overgrown raspberry bush undergrowth surrounding the two properties.
We slowly and painfully waded through the shoulder height raspberry bushes up to the first house, we began to realize there was very little chance of us getting in
The roof had rotted through, dropping large portions onto the second floor, which in turn collapsed to ground level. All over whatever had been left there.
So it was back out through the bushes.
By this point, our clothing was inexorably sticking to our bodies because of all the sweat, and the mosquitoes were biting through all over as we carefully pulled ourselves free of the thorny nastiness that covered the 100 yards back to the road.
with some effort, we made our way back to the road, our unprotected legs looking like they belonged in a lars von trier film.
We made it at last to the second house,
Finding no apparent opening in the front, we walked around to the back, spent fireworks, broken bottles, and the pieces of a smashed chair, some of them evidently used in an attempt to start a fire on the driveway.
Around back we came to the garage:
The roof had partially fallen in, and was littered with random garbage, a torn up old pair of overalls, broken fluorescent lights, assorted chunks of rotting foam, and a trio of old white doors.
Behind the garage, was the barn.
(the roof of the car bottom right shows how high the brush was)
Another collapsed roof, leaving pockets of space for the many untouched bags of fertilizer and old farm equipment abandoned long ago
After this, we figured we might as well give one last go around to the main house before heading home. It was getting late into the day, and we were getting hungry, so we did one last circle around the main house, and wouldn't you know it, there was a broken window by the front door. Doing our best not to disturb the active wasp nests just feet from out heads, and cautious not to slit our groins on the broken glass remaining in the sill, we crawled into the house.
We were greeted with this sight.
obviously the adolescents responsible for the pyrotechnics in the driveway had forgotten their hatchet.
And after a short look around the rest of the house:
I bagged the axe and we headed out for some much needed lunch.
This is how the axe looked when I first brought it home.
The adolescents apparently had elected to use the sides of the hatchet, rather than the poll, to smash the sides of a couple hundred nails over the course of its life, so I used my disc sander attachment for my drill to sand out the majority of the impressions left in the soft steel of the body.
The old handle had rotted almost entirely through of the eye,
But, the bit was tempered nice and hard, and in good condition, and the edge only had a few medium sized dings in what looked like the (crap) factory edge, so I ground those out with the sander, medium-thin convexed the edge and polished the whole head to 400 grit and gave it a splash of cold blue before taking the new edge to the buffing wheel for a final stropping.
New handle, and used some leather scraps I had sewed up a sheath for it, and this is what I ended up with.
#2 head, 28" hickory handle with boiled linseed oil, and full grain leather sheath.
And the funniest part is....
My favourite axe was made in China.
Once in a while we forget that an axe is nothing more than a slab of metal on a wood stick. It may not be the prettiest, or most prestigious, but the edge shaves even after chopping down and processing 3, 6-8" birch trees used for firewood in the camping trips which followed. And that's certainly nothing to scoff at.
Lesson to the younger folk starting out in bushcraft: Steel technology, even in Chinese hands, can make an axe more than good enough for your needs. Don't get intimidated by people with expensive gear, and feel like you need to compete right off the bat. If it means you can get save some of your pocket money and get out there more often, go with what you can afford, and a little elbow grease goes a long way. You learn from, and appreciate items a lot more from making something than you do from buying it.
Never stop exploring.
Thanks for reading!
I hope you find my story entertaining,
A friend and I had made plans on a summer weekend to explore a series of abandoned farm houses along a road near his parents house, after he had driven past them a few times over the course of his visit with them.
We packed our backpacks full of camera equipment: a tripod, our film and digital cameras, some flash units, and a crow bar, and headed out down this long country road. It was a hot humid summer in Ontario, and we were feeling it. By the time we got to the first house we were sweating pretty hard, and were glad to get into the shady, mosquito infested, overgrown raspberry bush undergrowth surrounding the two properties.
We slowly and painfully waded through the shoulder height raspberry bushes up to the first house, we began to realize there was very little chance of us getting in
The roof had rotted through, dropping large portions onto the second floor, which in turn collapsed to ground level. All over whatever had been left there.
So it was back out through the bushes.
By this point, our clothing was inexorably sticking to our bodies because of all the sweat, and the mosquitoes were biting through all over as we carefully pulled ourselves free of the thorny nastiness that covered the 100 yards back to the road.
with some effort, we made our way back to the road, our unprotected legs looking like they belonged in a lars von trier film.
We made it at last to the second house,
Finding no apparent opening in the front, we walked around to the back, spent fireworks, broken bottles, and the pieces of a smashed chair, some of them evidently used in an attempt to start a fire on the driveway.
Around back we came to the garage:
The roof had partially fallen in, and was littered with random garbage, a torn up old pair of overalls, broken fluorescent lights, assorted chunks of rotting foam, and a trio of old white doors.
Behind the garage, was the barn.
(the roof of the car bottom right shows how high the brush was)
Another collapsed roof, leaving pockets of space for the many untouched bags of fertilizer and old farm equipment abandoned long ago
After this, we figured we might as well give one last go around to the main house before heading home. It was getting late into the day, and we were getting hungry, so we did one last circle around the main house, and wouldn't you know it, there was a broken window by the front door. Doing our best not to disturb the active wasp nests just feet from out heads, and cautious not to slit our groins on the broken glass remaining in the sill, we crawled into the house.
We were greeted with this sight.
obviously the adolescents responsible for the pyrotechnics in the driveway had forgotten their hatchet.
And after a short look around the rest of the house:
I bagged the axe and we headed out for some much needed lunch.
This is how the axe looked when I first brought it home.
The adolescents apparently had elected to use the sides of the hatchet, rather than the poll, to smash the sides of a couple hundred nails over the course of its life, so I used my disc sander attachment for my drill to sand out the majority of the impressions left in the soft steel of the body.
The old handle had rotted almost entirely through of the eye,
But, the bit was tempered nice and hard, and in good condition, and the edge only had a few medium sized dings in what looked like the (crap) factory edge, so I ground those out with the sander, medium-thin convexed the edge and polished the whole head to 400 grit and gave it a splash of cold blue before taking the new edge to the buffing wheel for a final stropping.
New handle, and used some leather scraps I had sewed up a sheath for it, and this is what I ended up with.
#2 head, 28" hickory handle with boiled linseed oil, and full grain leather sheath.
And the funniest part is....
My favourite axe was made in China.
Once in a while we forget that an axe is nothing more than a slab of metal on a wood stick. It may not be the prettiest, or most prestigious, but the edge shaves even after chopping down and processing 3, 6-8" birch trees used for firewood in the camping trips which followed. And that's certainly nothing to scoff at.
Lesson to the younger folk starting out in bushcraft: Steel technology, even in Chinese hands, can make an axe more than good enough for your needs. Don't get intimidated by people with expensive gear, and feel like you need to compete right off the bat. If it means you can get save some of your pocket money and get out there more often, go with what you can afford, and a little elbow grease goes a long way. You learn from, and appreciate items a lot more from making something than you do from buying it.
Never stop exploring.
Thanks for reading!
