Screwed up (then finally succeeded) with my first double-cross wedged hang

[300Six]

Thank you for not immediately dismissing my skepticism.
Resurrecting old tools for actual use should not become just another version of the 'space race' where every keener and Internet-educated expert insists on re-inventing, or improving upon, the wheel.
Square_Peg is long-enough experienced and well-learned with striking tools to know exactly what he was trying to achieve with regard to the extra attention he paid to firmly hanging his featured broad axe, but the Internet shot of somebody else's 'pretty' efforts of spending hours 'going right to town' with multiple decorative wedges on a mere oval eye carver's axe, to me is entirely a frivolous attempt at 'one-upmanship'. A conscientious tradesman only ever does what is absolutely necessary (and simplest to accomplish), in order to keep labour and material costs down, and yet still provide the best product/service possible, and this one is not such an example.

 

[Twindog]

Thank you for not immediately dismissing my skepticism.
Resurrecting old tools for actual use should not become just another version of the 'space race' where every keener and Internet-educated expert insists on re-inventing, or improving upon, the wheel.
Square_Peg is long-enough experienced and well-learned with striking tools to know exactly what he was trying to achieve with regard to the extra attention he paid to firmly hanging his featured broad axe, but the Internet shot of somebody else's 'pretty' efforts of spending hours 'going right to town' with multiple decorative wedges on a mere oval eye carver's axe, to me is entirely a frivolous attempt at 'one-upmanship'. A conscientious tradesman only ever does what is absolutely necessary (and simplest to accomplish), in order to keep labour and material costs down, and yet still provide the best product/service possible, and this one is not such an example.

Well, I'll admit that CityoftheSouth's project thread caught my fancy for aesthetic reasons, although I could easily see the function behind his approach. And I certainly don't have Square Peg's experience.

But my own sense is that cross wedging is functional because it jams the haft against the eye in all four directions, rather than just an east-west direction with the single main wedge. Most people and most manufacturers seem to use a wooden main wedge and then cross wedge it with a metal wedge. That system works, but I have seen how metal wedges can split the haft because they are pounded in without a kerf.

The double cross wedge attracted me because jamming the haft agains the eye in the north-south direction presents a problem with full size axes, in that the distance that the cross wedge has to move the haft sections and the thickness of the wood in the haft that has to be pushed against the eye is too much for a single wedge. I think I exposed that issue with this hang, which cracked the haft. With a double cross wedge, you have twice as many wedges doing half the work and the haft sections that have to be moved inside the eye don't have to be moved as far, so the splitting problem is greatly reduced and the head is held extremely tightly against the haft.

 

[300Six]

I have no problem with humouring folks that seek out every extra little bit of insurance against loose heads! But is it truly necessary to do this? No! The Helko hang you showed us was so meager of a wood-steel fit that they had to pound in one thick wedge plus multiple circular wedges (and install a convenient overstrike guard to hide the back of the head) in hopes that the tool stayed together long enough to survive through their (90 day?) warranty.
On the other hand what you are doing is very carefully rasp/file fitting a haft into to a head so that it is already as snug as possible in advance of being locked in place by 'a' simple wedge.

 

[Twindog]

I took the head off the haft of my failed first attempt. The cross wedge did split the haft, as I suspected, largely because I was trying to move too much wood too far, especially with a short kerf.

Then I rehafted the head on the house-axe sized handle, using a double cross wedge. It didn’t go well, except for the basic fitting.

Even without a wedge, the head was on very tight, and the lower haft-eye boundary was completely filled. The top of the eye was quite loose, but that’s because the eye is wider at the top.

The side-to-side gap can easily be taken up by the main wedge, but there is quite a bit of space at the front of the eye. It is this space that the cross wedges are designed to fill in.

But it didn’t work.

I didn’t make the cross kerfs wide enough. I cut them with a Japanese pull saw, which leaves a very thin kerf. By the time I drove in the main wedge to about a eight of an inch proud, with just a bit more to be pounded tight and flush, I could not drive any of the cross wedges into their kerfs. And the pressure from the main wedge effectively blocked the cross wedges from penetration. Even when I tried to drive in a screwdriver to widen the tops of the kerfs enough to get a wedge started, I could not do it. Nothing would move because the main wedge held everything so tight.

The space at the front of the eye is mostly filled by the wedge, but that doesn’t strike me as a good solution. It’s just filler with no holding power.

Not that I need more holding power. As 300Six said, the single wedge will hold it fine. And it does, even before I soaked it in boiled linseed oil.

As it turned out, I don’t quite get the purpose of mounting a middling size axe head on a house handle. The short handle is eyed for a bigger head, but it doesn’t feel right. I don’t see the utility of that kind of pairing. For splitting firewood rounds, I use a Granfors Bruks splitting hatchet. For finer splitting, I use a small Japanese hatchet. Outside, I use a splitting maul or a full-sized axe, depending on the size and features of the rounds.

So another failure. And several more good lessons learned.

Going forward, I need a good method for making a wider kerf without splitting the top of the haft. I may have to go with putting the cross wedges in first on the next try, as was suggested to me before.

 

[quinton]

The space at the front of the eye is mostly filled by the wedge, but that doesn’t strike me as a good solution. It’s just filler with no holding power.

This is not so.. A properly fitted wedge is not just filler, it becomes an integral part of the haft. The main wedge should be fit to the axe eye AND kerf prior to hanging the axe. as soon as I have the haft perfectly fitted to the eye, I make, and fit the wedge to the eye, and then to the kerf. I even round the wedge corners to fit the eye perfectly. I also make my wedges extra long, and chamfer the top to avoid splitting the wedge when driving it. Also, with a long wedge, if you don't get the perfect hang, tapping the long wedge alternately along each side will allow you to remove it for adjustment.. Always use plenty of BLO on the wedge, and in the kerf before driving it.

Did you ever notice how some people just make some things look so easy? It's called experience. It takes years, if not decades of experience to master some things, it don't happen overnight. My advice is, don't give up, and some day you will master the cross wedge.

A Bosch jigsaw is what I use to cut and shape the kerf. With the haft clamped vertically in a bench vice, a GOOD jigsaw allows you to shape a kerf more effectively than a bandsaw, or handsaw, or that's what I have found anyway..

 

[300Six]

I took the head off the haft of my failed first attempt. The cross wedge did split the haft, as I suspected, largely because I was trying to move too much wood too far, especially with a short kerf.

This picture speaks a thousand words! Stay clear of cross wedges unless a kerf has been cut to fully accommodate them, and make darn sure the wood fit at the back of the head is as tight as possible, or even slightly compressed, already before wedging.

 

[tanglediver]

I wonder if drilling a hole, cross-ways through the haft at the bottom of the cross-wedge kerf would alleviate some of the possibility of eventual cracking. That is how we isolate cracks in metal work sometimes. The hole would need to be drilled first, obviously.

 

[Twindog]

I wonder if drilling a hole, cross-ways through the haft at the bottom of the cross-wedge kerf would alleviate some of the possibility of eventual cracking. That is how we isolate cracks in metal work sometimes. The hole would need to be drilled first, obviously.

That's a great idea, and I was going to do that, but the wide kerfs that I managed with a chop saw (see next post) and the extremely tight pre-wedging fit made it seem unnecessary. In additional to drilling a hole at the bottom of the crack, I was going to glue in an oak dowel. But, as I said, the fit was so tight that nothing is going to crack.

My Japanese hatchet came with a crack in the haft caused by a metal wedge. I stopped that crack as you mentioned, by drilling a hole at the end of the crack, as well as a couple others just above the bottom of the crack. Then I forced glue into the holes and cracks. I've chopped a ton of wood with that beech haft, and it has held firm.

I cracked my first haft because I had to move a lot of wood in the haft a long way. This time, I didn't have a defective factory kerf and the fit was nearly perfect.

 

[Twindog]

Not perfect, but success (before sanding and oiling)

And a pretty tight fit

I hung it on a 36-inch House Handle haft. The grain is horizontal, and there is some runout. I have some ideas about how to mitigate for a less-than-perfect haft — probably drilling cross grain and gluing in some oak dowels. I’ll probably need a drill press to do it accurately.

And I still have to sand everything and soak it in boiled linseed oil.

I’m thinking about staining the wedges before oiling so they contrast with the haft. I’ll need a fine watercolor paintbrush to pull it off.

I ended up going with a full main wedge, mostly because my initial fit was so good and because physics seem to dictate that the main north-south wedge needs to be intact for a tight fit. For the cross kerfs, I used a chop saw. I double-wrap taped the haft tight with masking tape to avoid chipping. The cross wedges are each separate wedges fitted for their individual slots. The wide kerfs on the cross wedges really made this easy. I left the main kerf narrow, as it was from the factory.

I did some test chopping, with swings as hard as I could manage. Nothing moved.

I appreciate the help I got in this thread.

 

[Twindog]

I’m pretty sure that the main wedge is not going to move. I finished hammering it in with a four-pound sledge hammer. The cross wedges further jammed everything together.

But because I’m trying out ideas, I drilled a couple 3/16th inch holes through the haft just above the eye and through the main wedge, then glued in a couple oak dowels. When the waterproof glue dries, I’ll cut the dowels flush and sand everything. Then I’ll soak in BLO to further tighten everything up.

 

[Skweeker]

Man, that head us on for the duration! Of course you'll never reuse that haft even if you wanted to. Nice recover.

 

[300Six]

House Handle actually sent you a 'perfect horizontal-grain' curved haft? Or did you specify this?

 

[cityofthesouth]

Yeah, when we were discussing the order the wedges would go, it seemed to me that as soon as you drove the main wedge, nothing else would ever fit - I think you've now officially done the leg work on that theory. You're doing a great job with the handle fitting regardless, so the rest is a bonus, and whatever you hang is probably going to be good to go.

 

[Twindog]

Yeah, when we were discussing the order the wedges would go, it seemed to me that as soon as you drove the main wedge, nothing else would ever fit - I think you've now officially done the leg work on that theory. You're doing a great job with the handle fitting regardless, so the rest is a bonus, and whatever you hang is probably going to be good to go.

I think you're right on the main wedge. My initial theory was that the cross wedges would add some clamping pressure in the north-south direction, but once the main wedge is driven in, not much else is going to move.

If you drive the cross wedges in first, they'll go deeper and move some wood, but then they limit how far you can drive in the main wedge.

I've come to doubt that the cross wedge, as I did it, adds much utility for head security over just a single main wedge. With the elongated shape of the typical eye, all the clamping work is done in an east-west direction. On my double cross, the cross wedges mostly just fill in the crosscut kerfs.

Where a cross wedge would have a lot of utility is in axes with round eyes or square eyes.

Still, I like cross wedges because they add a nice look of craftsmanship.

 

[cityofthesouth]

Yeah, for hammers I will continue to cross wedge them. Unless I begin to see split handles over time, I feel like they are well worth the extra effort, even though it they probably aren't.

 

[300Six]

Yeah, for hammers I will continue to cross wedge them. Unless I begin to see split handles over time, I feel like they are well worth the extra effort, even though it they probably aren't.

I have never cross wedged an axe but many times have cross wedged big hammers, sledges and splitting mauls. Oval eyes seem to cry out for this, especially if with a file, or dremel tool grinder, the eye opening has been chamfered a little bit.

 

[300Six]

Meticulous job you did on this; you've crafted yourself a 'lifetime' hang providing you stay well away from unintentional 'over-strikes'.
You did mention that your new HH handle is 36 inch. The Montreal pattern Walters I have (factory original) is 26 3/4 inch overall. This is in keeping + - with standard lengths for 2 1/4 lb pulpwood/chainsaw/boy's type hangs.
So now you are about to go off into the woods to discover for yourself the intricacies of haft length VS head weight!

 

[Twindog]

Meticulous job you did on this; you've crafted yourself a 'lifetime' hang providing you stay well away from unintentional 'over-strikes'.
You did mention that your new HH handle is 36 inch. The Montreal pattern Walters I have (factory original) is 26 3/4 inch overall. This is in keeping + - with standard lengths for 2 1/4 lb pulpwood/chainsaw/boy's type hangs.
So now you are about to go off into the woods to discover for yourself the intricacies of haft length VS head weight!

I hear you. I would normally have hung this on a boy's haft, but it has a full-sized eye. The house-handle size (19 inches) was too short and stocky for me.

The Walter's head on a 36-inch haft looks a little off to my eye, but not bad. And, personally, I just prefer a slender, 36-inch haft.

Overstrikes are an occasional issue for me, but only when chopping firewood. I use mostly Doug fir, which can have knots an such that will let the head split the wood, but remain unspilt for the following haft. But with this size head, I won't use it to split firewood.

I've been putting up a bunch of small, road-fall alder that came down in the last big storm. For fun, I'm using an axe to cut many of them into 10-foot sections that I'll later cut into rounds with my Stihl. The downed trees are only 4- 6-inches in diameter. With a sharp bit, I go through them in seconds.

But even though I've used an axe regularly for the past 30 years, I never gave them much thought or played with different designs. Now I have a collection of vintage heads and a bunch of handles. It's all a learning experience.

 

[300Six]

But even though I've used an axe regularly for the past 30 years, I never gave them much thought or played with different designs. Now I have a collection of vintage heads and a bunch of handles. It's all a learning experience.

Western Alder is like Ash for ease of splitting; I love going through that stuff!
It is a fun hobby re-learning the uses of various types and makes of vintage axes; they all behave differently and ultimately you'll wind up gravitating to one or two as favourites.

 

[Square_peg]

I wonder if drilling a hole, cross-ways through the haft at the bottom of the cross-wedge kerf would alleviate some of the possibility of eventual cracking. That is how we isolate cracks in metal work sometimes. The hole would need to be drilled first, obviously.

One of the guys here has been doing that. Maybe CedarEater? I don't think it would hurt.