Well, that didn't last long

quinton said:
I said air dried hickory won't do that. Meaning break clean like the OP's handle. Air died hickory will broom, not snap. And yes, I WILL sand by that.

BTW, how much AD hickory have you worked and used? You don't have the experience to comment on what I say about hickory!;)
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Send me a similarly porous piece of your air dried hickory and I will happily test your assertion! :D
 
Also, wood dry to 15% moisture content will act differently than wood dried to 8-10% MC. Comparing apples to apples wood at 8% will behave the same.
 
Air dried wood is certainly more shock resistant than kiln dried. In fact, the faster the kiln, the more brittle the lumber.
 
Square_peg said:
Oh, please.

You think an air dried haft can't be broken by prying on a stuck axe or maul? You wanna stand by that?
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What he's suggesting is that the break would not have been as 'clean' if the wood were air dried, I don't think he was suggesting that you couldn't break a handle by overly beating/hauling/reefing/muscling on it.
This would be a good experiment for someone out there. Find out what's involved with 'kiln drying' (in order to try to replicate the process at home) and subject three each of identical pieces of green riven wood to the same destructive levering test. Three that are air-cured (this is going to take at very least a year of patience) and three that have been 'cooked or oven baked'. Reason I say 'green' is that heat (due to temperature, expanding water and the effects of steam) in fresh cut wood very likely has structurally negative effects on the lignin-impregnated structural cell walls that make up a piece of wood.
 
Square_peg said:
Send me a similarly porous piece of your air dried hickory and I will happily test your assertion! :D
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I'll tell you just as I told, Bernie in the infamous thread on grain orientation. You, nor anyone else can take a riven, air dried, hickory handle to the woods and bring it back in two separate pieces with out the use of tools. You may put it between the forks of a tree, and break it, but, it won't come back in two pieces. How do I know? 52 years of playing with hickory tells me.
 
Square_peg said:
Also, wood dry to 15% moisture content will act differently than wood dried to 8-10% MC. Comparing apples to apples wood at 8% will behave the same.
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Makes no sense. Air dried is vastly superior to kiln dried for handles. Kiln drying destroys the inherent strengths of hickory.
 
quinton said:
I'll tell you just as I told, Bernie in the infamous thread on grain orientation. You, nor anyone else can take a riven, air dried, hickory handle to the woods and bring it back in two separate pieces with out the use of tools. You may put it between the forks of a tree, and break it, but, it won't come back in two pieces. How do I know? 52 years of playing with hickory tells me.
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Would you be so kind, if it's not too much trouble, to post the link to that thread? I have a hard time imagining how to search for that specific one, or otherwise said differentiate between the tens of threads on the subject and "the infamous one" :). Thank you.
 
300Six said:
What he's suggesting is that the break would not have been as 'clean' if the wood were air dried, I don't think he was suggesting that you couldn't break a handle by overly beating/hauling/reefing/muscling on it.
This would be a good experiment for someone out there. Find out what's involved with 'kiln drying' (in order to try to replicate the process at home) and subject three each of identical pieces of green riven wood to the same destructive levering test. Three that are air-cured (this is going to take at very least a year of patience) and three that have been 'cooked or oven baked'. Reason I say 'green' is that heat (due to temperature, expanding water and the effects of steam) in fresh cut wood very likely has structurally negative effects on the lignin-impregnated structural cell walls that make up a piece of wood.
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I've been experimenting for a long time,300. Hickory don't "break", it brooms.
 
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The Ames handles that HD and Lowes sell, if selected for grain and no run-out, are extremely good. They may be thicker than some like, but the quality is excellent if you are selective. Worlds better than the flat slab POS Truper handles. My take is that no two handles are the same, and that no handle is invulnerable. Air dried or not, if you bet me that I can't break it, you will lose lol. :)
 
quinton said:
I've been experimenting for a long time,300. Hickory don't "break", it brooms.
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To be clear and fair to the discussion, the handle didn't just snap off and become the two pieces that I photographed. I tried to pull the maul out of the round (the bit was stuck, no crack or split in the wood, just the blade stuck in dense wood), and I really pulled up on the handle and I heard some crackling, then I noticed that the handle seemed broken because the head wasn't moving, but the handle could go up and down a bit. It was then that I worked it up and down and tore it off, the whole time the maul head didn't budge.

As far as air dried or kiln dried, does anyone know what Ames does? What about House Handles (I have about 6 handles that just arrived from them).
 
In the spirit of this thread, I broke a scrap axe handle from House. The mounting end of the haft was already ruined, so this was not a sacrifice.

The haft has good grain orientation, reasonably tight grain structure and a moisture content between 9 and 10 percent.

I wouldn’t say it broke clean, but it did break in two with a single blow from that hammer end of a splitter.

As for the OP’s hanging, the kerf went too deep, all the way to the bottom of the head and maybe a bit past. You can see a crack forming at the end of the kerf, a sign that the kerf was too deep. The metal wedge was driven in perpendicular to the main wooden wedge, and it cracked the haft on both sides. So it’s not just a matter of quartering the mounting tongues at the end of the haft, but they were serious cracks — not kerfs — that also caused problems.

Hammering and leveraging a splitter like that would put a lot of stress on the haft just below the head where it was seriously weakened in four directions. Add in the problems of a widely spaced growth rings, and you have multiple problems all focusing on a single point of weakness.

UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_230_zps5olkpi2z.jpg


UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_235_zpsm0ituovm.jpg


UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_234_zpstcqdwqzk.jpg
 
jblyttle said:
The Ames handles that HD and Lowes sell, if selected for grain and no run-out, are extremely good. They may be thicker than some like, but the quality is excellent if you are selective. Worlds better than the flat slab POS Truper handles. My take is that no two handles are the same, and that no handle is invulnerable. Air dried or not, if you bet me that I can't break it, you will lose lol. :)
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Hey JB, what do you mean by run-out?

Edit: Ok, I just watched FortyTwoBlades' video from that grain alignment thread. So runout is when the grain, regardless of vertical or horizontal orientation runs out the side of the handle instead of all the way to the bottom of the handle?
 
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jblyttle said:
The Ames handles that HD and Lowes sell, if selected for grain and no run-out, are extremely good. They may be thicker than some like, but the quality is excellent if you are selective. Worlds better than the flat slab POS Truper handles. My take is that no two handles are the same, and that no handle is invulnerable. Air dried or not, if you bet me that I can't break it, you will lose lol. :)
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I would like to watch you physically separate a rove, air dried hickory handle. Not saying that you couldn't eventually do it, but it would be fun watching!:)
 
Twindog said:
In the spirit of this thread, I broke a scrap axe handle from House. The mounting end of the haft was already ruined, so this was not a sacrifice.

The haft has good grain orientation, reasonably tight grain structure and a moisture content between 9 and 10 percent.

I wouldn’t say it broke clean, but it did break in two with a single blow from that hammer end of a splitter.

As for the OP’s hanging, the kerf went too deep, all the way to the bottom of the head and maybe a bit past. You can see a crack forming at the end of the kerf, a sign that the kerf was too deep. The metal wedge was driven in perpendicular to the main wooden wedge, and it cracked the haft on both sides. So it’s not just a matter of quartering the mounting tongues at the end of the haft, but they were serious cracks — not kerfs — that also caused problems.

Hammering and leveraging a splitter like that would put a lot of stress on the haft just below the head where it was seriously weakened in four directions. Add in the problems of a widely spaced growth rings, and you have multiple problems all focusing on a single point of weakness
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Widely spaced growth rings is good thing in a hickory handle.
 
jblyttle said:
. . . Air dried or not, if you bet me that I can't break it, you will lose lol. :)
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quinton said:
I would like to watch you physically separate a rove, air dried hickory handle. Not saying that you couldn't eventually do it, but it would be fun watching!:)
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Literally speaking, it's already been demonstrated. :)

Twindog said:
. . .it did break in two with a single blow from that hammer end of a splitter. . .

UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_230_zps5olkpi2z.jpg

. . .
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Bob
 
quinton said:
I would like to watch you physically separate a rove, air dried hickory handle. Not saying that you couldn't eventually do it, but it would be fun watching!:)
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Granted, it would have to be the intended goal and would have to involve serious abuse. I will admit that while the sacrificial handle shows a good break, it doesn't seem like a 90 degree strike from the hammer of a maul is a fair test!
 
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