Ship masting axe

[ib30below]

delete this post

 

[Billman1949]

You have to be patient - maybe 7 years is a bit long, but the answer will come eventually...

see: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/...353.1073741831.430572620327823&type=3&theater and https://www.facebook.com/media/set/...620327823&type=1#!/groups/AxeJunkies/?fref=ts

 

[Square_peg]

It's an interesting axe but it's not what I would call a masting axe pattern. I don't know what it is. The length of the blade suggests mortising but a mortising axe generally won't have such a rounded bit. You got me stumped. The tightly closed hang is unusual, too.

 

[Ernest DuBois]

Yup, apparently it is a masting axe.

E.DB.

 

[screened porch]

It isn't what I would have called a mast axe, but Kauffman says the one below is clearly a mast-makers axe, much shortened by grinding. (now 15" long). Flip the handle so it curves toward the blade, add a few inches in blade length, and you're close.
Though I'm not sure the Kauffman has the same droop between eye and bit, and the users would have had to have different ideas about how curved an edge they liked.

 

[Ernest DuBois]

It's just that Billman has the reputation of latching onto these things like a pit bull terrier not letting go until he has tracked down what there is to track down, check him out, which brought us to Josh, a blacksmith with some historical understanding, who lets me know he's searched it all out and confirms it as a masting axe, but just not an American one.

E.DB.

 

[screened porch]

Fair enough.