Review: Barco "Cruiser" Ax

[KingKoma]

Most of the Swedish axes, even today, are "American" in pattern, despite them making a few major omissions in terms of design subtleties. The older ones, before the yupster axe trends that yielded the current designer swede axes, were actually pretty geometrically sound. If American companies still made good axes, I'd be all for supporting them over Swedish companies making axes of the same patterns. But there aren't any, and the Swedish axes don't impress me much either.

Hults Bruk is one of the oldest and arguably the most influential axe maker in Sweden. Before 1887 all axes produced here were hand made under kind of primitive circumstances but with excellent raw materials. This is when Gunnar Ekelund, the owner of the factory goes to the US to study your production methods, and obviously also axe patterns, and brought with him the industialization of axe production in Sweden. Everything our production is built on, except raw material, comes from American ideas.

Much later (1980-90?) does this Gränsfors/Wetterlings "neo-rustique" whatever it is, start to eat up the market. But the way I see it, those are separate from the tool production as they are gifts and wall hangers.

Regarding the quality, of what I have seen of it and only counting what a sane person would consider a tool, the quality seems both high and even. The only down side to Swedish axe production today is the extreme lack in variation. There is one head pattern in production. One.

 

[300Six]

This is, and has been, one very interesting thread right from the beginning. A very well conducted and properly recorded independent field test of an otherwise simple Barco product has been 'eye-opening' at very least. I have (a Barco-branded) one of their Pulaskis and have wondered over and over why they would only superficial electric-etch their name on it. It became a 'no-name' implement first time out.
KingKoma's admission that G-Bs and Wetterlings are "neo-rustique" is also apt when you consider the price of one. Obviously ordinary axes with some sort of metallurgy superiority and experience behind them is long gone and into the universal 'black hole' of lowest bid/'get away with murder quality' provider. And only a very few niche market novelties, such as H-B have survived this onslaught.
Another comment. Axes of old (American/Canadian and likely so German/British/Swedish) had a high-carbon piece of tool steel inserted to make the blades during the forging process. I have noticed (from the H-B axe head forging video) that their process does not do this; their operation uses only one type of steel. A lot easier and much faster to be sure but does this mean a better product (do they over-all use tool-quality steel) or is this merely a manufacture shortcut that cashes-in on 'run of the mill' malleable metal along with sleight of hand temperature-hardening tricks?

 

[garry3]

I have never seen a bit that will roll and also break, I would take one that would break over roll every time. Its just my experience that a bit that will roll are to soft to hold a good edge.
I could be wrong on this account. But its what I have personally witnessed to date. Most of this experience is based on vintage steel.