The Mini Hatchet

Hacked, Good thoroughly done review on the GB and Vaughan.
Finished up my mini Craftsman. Just need to sharpen and try it out.
I'll let you know my thoughts. I'll try the Marbles as well and see how it compares.
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I put the craftsman mini and the Marbles #6 to work today. The Marbles weighs 22 ounces and the craftsman weighs 11 ounces. Same length handles. The paracord wrap on the Marbles works great to thicken the handle and eliminate the hot spots created by the shroud that hides the blade guard. I was worried the paracord would work loose but after chopping limbs and hewing a stave for a couple of hours it's just like it was when I started. The head on the Marbles has developed a little wiggle. I soaked it in blo for a week and let it dry 2 weeks before using it but it still is starting to loosen up. I'll have to take it off, remove the metal wedge, seat the head lower so I can leave it quarter Inch proud with a wood wedge.

I know some people think the small eye makes it easy to break the handle. It will if you overstrike but normal use it won't break. I modified a small ball pien hammer handle for this head. Think about how much force a hammer absorbs without the handle breaking. I was swinging it hard today and have full confidence that I won't ever break it without an overstrike.

The Marbles is a fine hatchet. At twice the weight of the craftsman it's not a fair comparison. I did about 50% of the hewing on this stave today with each hatchet. The Marbles certainly bites deeper and hogs off more wood faster. The craftsman is still very effective at popping off chips. It takes more swings but it sure is fun swinging it! You can chop away all day and your hand and forearm will never tire.

The weight savings of the craftsman make it my new hunting and hiking axe. I carry a good folding knife every day every where I go so adding this little axe when hunting or just out for a hike will complete my needs for skinning and chopping.

A couple of pics of the stave before and after. It's eventually going to be sporting a jersey head. Still got a ways to go. Once it finished I'll do a thread with work in progress pics from start to finish.

This is a piece of air dried hickory from a holler in east Kentucky and I'm here to tell you there is a noticeable difference between it and the kiln dried hickory. This air dried stuff is hard as a rock!


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Rockman0,

Awesome update, that handle is looking great! Did you do all of the rough work with the two Mini hatchets? Seems like everyone is taking to carving handles from solid staves. Can't wait to see the finished product, I've got a Jersey and a Rockaway on the shelf waiting to be hafted. I might need to look into getting a stave for at least one of them.

For the time being I'm working on my original Vaughan again, the poorly fitted handle finally worked loose so I took the opportunity to thin the bit out a little more before getting to work on another handle.
 
Hacked said:
Rockman0,

Awesome update, that handle is looking great! Did you do all of the rough work with the two Mini hatchets? Seems like everyone is taking to carving handles from solid staves. Can't wait to see the finished product, I've got a Jersey and a Rockaway on the shelf waiting to be hafted. I might need to look into getting a stave for at least one of them.

For the time being I'm working on my original Vaughan again, the poorly fitted handle finally worked loose so I took the opportunity to thin the bit out a little more before getting to work on another handle.
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I started with my hewing hatchet and my Plumb hatchet. Got the bark off with the hewing hatchet and thinned it down with the plumb. Then I took a rasp to it to get it to the the shape in the 1st pic. And the rest I did today with the Marbles and craftsman mini. I'll get back on it tomorrow with the rasp. It's a very fun process, lots of work but work I enjoy, rewarding work.
 
I'm glad to see that there's some love for these little guys, and I'm with ya .

. The handle on mine is a little short because the head was at a fairly high angle so I had to rehang it and couldn't get avoid cutting it. Man I wish I could find a picture of it, but last year at a local surplus/antique ( a place called garrisons that my dad would go to as a kid ) I came across this tiny little ( smaller than a sub zero ) pick hatchet that was in a tomahawk shape, but would be hung like an axe. It was the coolest little guy, but his daughter now owns the place and wanted an arm and a leg for everything ( 20$ for a fairly recent beat up Chinese hatchet :barf::barf: ) anyway I eventually plan on getting a larger handle and reworking it a lot ( I really want a nice thin curvy fawns foot handle, much like what some of you have done )
 
Hickory n steel, sadly these little guys are often dismissed even amung axe users and collectors. I see them often mislabeled as salesman's samples because folks often assume that they are incapable of any real work. I'm a bit of a history nerd and looking back axes of this size have a rich history of use by early American hunters, trappers, and woodsmen.
 
Hacked said:
Hickory n steel, sadly these little guys are often dismissed even amung axe users and collectors. I see them often mislabeled as salesman's samples because folks often assume that they are incapable of any real work. I'm a bit of a history nerd and looking back axes of this size have a rich history of use by early American hunters, trappers, and woodsmen.
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I could see where they could really come in handy for hacking through the brisket on a large game animal.or for limping, and I often put it in my tackle box in case I want to find myself a fork stick or something ( or in case there's a thorn bush growing out along the trail )
 
Well I said I planned on re hanging my little sub zero, and today I did

I went to the local ace and got a nice fat straight grained 14" hatchet handle and went to work on it ( after installing a new light in the kitchen )
the picture doesn't really do it justice, but trust me it's nice and thin with a good curve to it . I still need to finish shaping the fawns foot, finish sanding it, put my mark In it, and oil it. (It still seems to look a little long to me until I get used to it , but I think 12" is probably about the perfect length for these little guys ) I may not have done as good of a job as some of you have done, but I think it turned out OK.
 
Hickory n steel,

I think you'll definitely appreciate the tool more with a longer handle. With a well profiled bit and a handle around 12" I find the make a surprisingly decent camp hatchet. After some practice with mine I can split decent sized wood with ease, and after profiling the bit it chops surprisingly well. Perhaps one of these days I'll get around to doing a video as I don't think pictures do the tool justice.

Funny thing is I'll be doing the same with my current production Vaughan shortly. I need to fit a new handle to it, and I happen to have a couple of 14" hatchet handles handy. I'll be taking my time this go around, I don't want to make the same mistakes and end up with a poor fit again.

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I just finished the handle.

so what do you think, much better than it looked yesterday right ? Does anyone else hate having a shallow gradually tapering fawns foot ? You loose a good 2" of grip.space. that's why I like mine very steep and abrupt so my hand can but right on against it ( IMHO the only thing that the fiskars axes have going for them ) . my hand real settles nicely Into this one, and I like it a lot.
 
Hickory n steel sure does look much better. The Knob or swell that you see on most handles these days is pretty poorly executed. The ones from House Handle fit your description. I like to reshape mine to a semi shallow shape where it is concave on all sides and fills the hand while letting you have a secure grip all the way at the end like you described. I think I'm getting better at shaping them but that's probably all in my head. I like the shape you went with though, it sort of reminds me of some of the carving hatchet swells I've seen. What did you end up with for the overall length?
 
Hacked said:
Hickory n steel sure does look much better. The Knob or swell that you see on most handles these days is pretty poorly executed. The ones from House Handle fit your description. I like to reshape mine to a semi shallow shape where it is concave on all sides and fills the hand while letting you have a secure grip all the way at the end like you described. I think I'm getting better at shaping them but that's probably all in my head. I like the shape you went with though, it sort of reminds me of some of the carving hatchet swells I've seen. What did you end up with for the overall length?
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Thanks! I've had a house handle and it sucked ( the grain was absolutely perfect, with pure white wood and no run off ) but the profile was twisted, and the front face connecting to the fawns foot was straight while the back was curved ( so there wasn't enough meat on it for me to properly reprofile it ) it's a real shame that they f++++d such a beautiful price of hickory:barf::barf: almost forgot ! I was going for 12x, but ended up at a little over 11-3/4 .
 
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Hickory n steel said:
I just finished the handle.

so what do you think, much better than it looked yesterday right ? Does anyone else hate having a shallow gradually tapering fawns foot ? You loose a good 2" of grip.space. that's why I like mine very steep and abrupt so my hand can but right on against it ( IMHO the only thing that the fiskars axes have going for them ) . my hand real settles nicely Into this one, and I like it a lot.
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That looks GREAT! I love big abrupt swells. They allow you to loosen your grip just a little and get a little more snap on the head at the end of your swing. It does make a difference.
 
Hacked said:
The Knob or swell that you see on most handles these days is pretty poorly executed. The ones from House Handle fit your description. I like to reshape mine to a semi shallow shape where it is concave on all sides and fills the hand while letting you have a secure grip all the way at the end like you described.
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I like it when a fawn's foot extends all the way through your palm.

The key points are:

1) Where does the little finger catch on the curl?
2) How long is the upper side of the fawn's foot?

A squared off fawn's foot that ends in the heel of your hand will raise a blister. A long fawn's foot won't. The long fawn's foot also gives you one more point of contact and a slight increase in control.

Modern handles have the fawn's foot clipped off so that a pneumatic press can push the hafts into the heads without splitting them. There are a couple ways you can deal with seating an axe on an unclipped fawn's foot. One is to draw the axe head up onto the haft by striking the swell with a white rubber mallet. This works great. A rubber mallet won't damage a pointed swell. And a white one won't leave black smudges on the the swell.

The other option is just to leave the whole swell long with a flat end. This way the the flat end is well beyond the heel of your hand and doesn't raise a blister. We used to see a few hafts like this but not anymore. I call it a 'stump end'.

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Can someone point me to a pic of the craftsman next to the Vaughan hatchet.
Thanks.
 
Square_peg said:
That looks GREAT! I love big abrupt swells. They allow you to loosen your grip just a little and get a little more snap on the head at the end of your swing. It does make a difference.
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Thanks man!! That's what I was going for. When my hand can slip down the handle and settle in nicely against the fawns foot , that's when I know I've got it where I like it.
 
I was doing some more thinning down on the bit and I have a few questions, where would you say the cheeks stop and the bit begins, and how thin do you have the bit on your sub zero ? On mine I made a cut into a price of cardboard 3/4" deep ( as far back as the file will touch without filing the rest of the head up ), would you consider that the bit ? At that point I measured the bit at 5 3/2's. I just want to know if mine is filed to its full potential ( please don't say it depends :barf: ) if yours performs really well and is thinner than mine, then I'll try to get mine as thin ( but I honestly don't think I could get it any thinner without filling the whole head )
 
Hickory n steel said:
I was doing some more thinning down on the bit and I have a few questions, where would you say the cheeks stop and the bit begins, and how thin do you have the bit on your sub zero ? On mine I made a cut into a price of cardboard 3/4" deep ( as far back as the file will touch without filing the rest of the head up ), would you consider that the bit ? At that point I measured the bit at 5 3/2's. I just want to know if mine is filed to its full potential ( please don't say it depends :barf: ) if yours performs really well and is thinner than mine, then I'll try to get mine as thin ( but I honestly don't think I could get it any thinner without filling the whole head )
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It depends ;) but really it does depend on the axe profile, how much wear the bit has seen and so on. Let me just say I'm no axpert. I just do what works for me and I get there by trying different things. For my current production Vaughan I would say the bit is probably at .5 - 5/8 inchs at the center currently. It is what is refered to as a banana grind so that tappers down towards both the heal and toe. I simply thinned, sharpened, tested and repeated until I was happy. That was until I did the GB comparison and I realized that the bit thickness at the centerline on my Vaughan was about the same as the GB. That just wouldn't do so I decided to thin it a bit more since then. As part of that process I did actually lay the entire head on rag (in place of a mouse pad) backed sandpaper. This contacted the back of the bit and very top of the ramp at the same time. I figured this couldn't hurt at this point. I'm honestly not sure what the actual angle is because I've never measured it but I can try to get you some sort of idea if your interested. Once I get it back on a handle I'll see if my efforts made a noticeable difference. In the past I will say the work definitely paid off.
 
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