Nice work Astrogator.
Today while in a town nearby I was early for a meeting & had time to kill, the only place of interest in this industrial area is a fairly large "Ferreteria" (Iron monger/ general store) that I've bought quite a few hammer & slip hatchet handles from in the past but haven't visited for some time.
For some strange reason it just popped into my head that a good few years ago, pre COVID I remember they had a "Bellota" made wooden hand adze handle kicking about under a hammer handle rack that was very old stock, I'd seen it a few times over the years.
I thought how I should have bought it, & I can't for the life of me understand why in the last 18 months I haven't made the connection that I'd found a Flea market blade way back in Sept 22 (post #439) & just hadn't remembered this handle....
......there's no way it'll still be there......... is there...?
Yep, walked straight to where it was & picked it up after all those years, took it to counter to pay thinking how I'd have to fabricate a collar to hold blade & handle together. At the counter I made a joke about it being an antique, the guy smiled & I asked "do you have the other part" thinking it doesn't matter which part if any at all, blade or collar, the guy walked back to where the handle was & picked up a collar from a few feet away! Bingo. €12.35 for the pair
(strange the extra two decimal places this place puts on its price labels, I have no idea why).
When I got home I dug out the blade thinking it was also a Bellota, to my suprise it's got "James Cam Sheffield" stamped on it! When I look back at post #439 I'd posted an image showing this but totally forgot, I'm blaming this memory loss on the fact I picked up the (still) mystery "Carassco brothers" chopper at the same time that I concentrated on a lot... it's not age.
So, I'm now surprised to learn that this style of adze was made in the UK, very little information available about James Cam, in fact the most information seems to be on the U.S Davistown Museum website! By what I can gather the stamp is from 1780~1840!
I can only find a single bad image of one sold on eBay but the listing no longer shows on eBay but a part image shows on another site.
So now I just need to make a small wedge as it fits up quite well considering blade & handle/collar were made in two different countries maybe 200 years apart....