Source(s) for Hardwood Wedges?

Choctaw Dan

Choctaw Dan

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I recently discovered that a ball peen hammer that belonged to my father has lost its wedge (blame it on the extreme dryness hereabouts). The same is likely to become true with a couple of older axes, but I am clueless as to any source or sources for good hardwood wedges. Suggestions?
 
Vaughan sells two for their hammers - https://www.vaughanmfg.com/Products/WK12-12-Wedge-Kit-for-16-20-and-24-oz-Hammers__50150.aspx , https://www.vaughanmfg.com/Products/WK34-Vaughan-34-Wedge-Kit-for-23-and-32-oz-Hammers__50250.aspx . They mainly like to sell full handles.

Grainger - https://www.grainger.com/product/44...VBmtHAR229AqsEAQYAiABEgLV6fD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds .

Zoro - https://www.zoro.com/search?q=wedges link .

Amazon has some varieties too.

You want to search Link wood wedges or Seymour wood wedges, that's how most of the big hardware places catalog them now. It's actually hard to find just the wedges in hardware stores now.
 
You should be able to find OP Link popular wedges at your local hardware store, but if you really want a hardwood just get a 24" piece of walnut oak or maple from your nearest Lowes or Home depot and cut your own wedges out of it.
You can get a 24" long piece of walnut that'll make multiple wedges of any eye size for about $10.
 
Dan, I may be in the minority here, but I like to make my wedge from the same wood I carve the handle from, ideally from the same billet. You will see YTers and handle mfgrs who use a poplar wedge in a hickory handle, for example, which makes it pretty much impossible to achieve uniform fiber compression between the two.

Is that a big deal? It is to me. Since I’m hanging one axe/hatchet/hammer at a time, I go the extra mile and do the best job I can of it, which includes wedging hickory with hickory, maple with maple, etc.

Parker
 
catspa said:
Dan, I may be in the minority here, but I like to make my wedge from the same wood I carve the handle from, ideally from the same billet.
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The hammer in question was passed down to me from my father, who probably acquired it in the late 1940's.
 
Well that’s cool, to have some family sentiment attached. Probably not much left of the original billet, then.

Parker
 
If you're able to get your hands on any appropriate wood yourself it's fairly easy to cut them from rectangular stock if you make a little jig with the right shaped notch cut in a piece of wood. Also if you experience any loosening of handles rather than complete wedge loss, consider using wooden tapered dowel wedges instead of metal cross wedges or barrel wedges.
 
That’s how I cut mine, on the bandsaw so they have a little tooth. When I tap them home, I can feel the increasing resistance til they seat.

Parker
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
If you're able to get your hands on any appropriate wood yourself it's fairly easy to cut them from rectangular stock if you make a little jig with the right shaped notch cut in a piece of wood. Also if you experience any loosening of handles rather than complete wedge loss, consider using wooden tapered dowel wedges instead of metal cross wedges or barrel wedges.
Click to expand...

I grab a straight grained chunk of well seasoned birch off my firewood pile. I split off a piece of the desired thickness by putting an axe head in a vice and use a dead blow hammer to drive the block of wood onto the axe head, and trim it to width with whatever saw I've got handy. I typically leave the piece about 6-8" long so I can hold one end while I taper the other with the welder's multi-tool... 5" Makita grinder with a sanding pad. I generally make the taper pretty long, then just trim it to use whatever portion of the taper is the appropriate width.

My home-made wedges work better than the storebought wedges that I can get locally which invariably have too steep of a taper, and are somewhat fiddly to modify because they are quite short. Does not require anything special to make a good one from scratch. Its important to use nice dry wood, so once installed it will soak up a good amount of linseed oil and swell. Wet or green wood will only shrink.
 
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Bushleague270 said:
I grab a straight grained chunk of well seasoned birch off my firewood pile. I split off a piece of the desired thickness by putting an axe head in a vice and use a dead blow hammer to drive the block of wood onto the axe head, and trim it to width with whatever saw I've got handy. I typically leave the piece about 6-8" long so I can hold one end while I taper the other with the welder's multi-tool... 5" Makita grinder with a sanding pad. I generally make the taper pretty long, then just trim it to use whatever portion of the taper is the appropriate width.

My home-made wedges work better than the storebought wedges that I can get locally which invariably have too steep of a taper, and are somewhat fiddly to modify because they are quite short. Does not require anything special to make a good one from scratch. Its important to use nice dry wood, so once installed it will soak up a good amount of linseed oil and swell. Wet or green wood will only shrink.
Click to expand...
Wood doesn't soak up very much linseed oil, as evidenced by repeated testing. If you want to swell a wedge, use dipropylene glycol mixed with a little water. Specific ratio doesn't matter a ton, with some folks using 20% DPG to 80% water up through some folks using 75% DPG to 25% water.
 
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