What did you *make* today with your axe?

Fmont

Fmont

Joined
Apr 20, 2017
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I thought a thread about things we make with our axes, hatchets, and other edged tools would be a fun thread. I'd posit that at the bare minimum it should be roughed with a hatchet or axe, not a general woodworking thread. In an ideal world this would be all edged tools, but if you use sandpaper at the end I won't hold it against yah ;) But let's see those chisels, planes, gouges, etc. pick up where the axes leave off, too!

Spoons, bowls, cups, furniture, buildings! Show us!

It'll be cool to see how people's processes flow and how they arrive at their product. For me, carving this stuff is sculpture and I tend to follow what the wood is telling me.

I'll start with a kuksa/kisa I just started roughing into shape. Plan on making this one a little more civilised and normal looking than my usual organic shape. Sorry it's a trite project :D

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(I sank some dowels as sort of carving stump dogs, in case you're wondering lol, quite useful)
 
You can see what I'm going for here. We'll see if it turns into something useful or a disaster. About ready to move on to knives and gouges.
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ETA: progress updates instead of more posts.

I often struggle with wasting out the bottom of deeper cups. My spoon knife will deploy shortly, it'll shear right across the grain neatly.

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ETA 2: Coming along. Smoothing shape and getting a handle on things.

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I am fascinated with that type of detail work with a hatchet. My frame of reference has always been destruction not construction. Great post. I am sure Ernest can contribute.
 
I have been making a similar thing for over 60 yrs. My mother used to make them out of tree burls that my Grandfather would bring her. The only difference is that we leave the natural burl shape and leave the bottom, after removing the bark and a little smoothing out with my carving knife, as nature designed it. The most unique burl cup is from a redwood burl, spines and nobs all over the bottom and burl figure inside. My mother also would paint nature art on burls and my grandfathers worn out crosscut saws, then sell them.
 
My GBA or jersey hatchets are always used for haft fitting operations followed by a coarse and then fine tooth rasp. A gouge has been used for a bowl or two along with seating my Plumb jersey's lugs, and a pocketknives have been used for spoon making and haft scraping. Here's a pic of me working on a new sign for our house and the finished product. I made it using an axe, hatchet, drawknife, chisel, gouge, mallet, saw, and a brace and bit. It wasn't quite today, sorry. The posts were charred where they enter the ground to try to prolong their rotting.
P.S. The artwork isn't mine as I can't paint like that.
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A17 said:
My GBA or jersey hatchets are always used for haft fitting operations followed by a coarse and then fine tooth rasp. A gouge has been used for a bowl or two along with seating my Plumb jersey's lugs, and a pocketknives have been used for spoon making and haft scraping. Here's a pic of me working on a new sign for our house and the finished product. I made it using an axe, hatchet, drawknife, chisel, gouge, mallet, saw, and a brace and bit. It wasn't quite today, sorry. The posts were charred where they enter the ground to try to prolong their rotting.
P.S. The artwork isn't mine as I can't paint like that.
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That really is a handsome sign! Beautiful work! Too bad you screwed up the letters and had to use white out...
 
I didn't want you to start forwarding your axe bills here, wise guy. :p Between my truck and my 048AVE rebuild my wallet drains plenty fast so with all your Black Ravens added on I'd go bankrupt. To justify this post, now that my doc said I can go back to work and hunch over axes and other tools for hours after work, I might be able to start working on a scrub oak haft and contribute to this thread relatively soon.
 
Today it was some carpentry work in the stall where I used my axe for trimming and fitting, failing all the time to get any shots but back at the cabinetry work of a few days ago I did manage it.
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The excess above the line on the face frame gets trimmed and the frame glued up at this point so unwieldy, just as effective making use of an axe here.
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Scoring in one direction,
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trimming in the opposite direction and then touching with the plane.
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And a good fit
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And I no longer have to look at the gas meter in the hall.
 
Well thanks very much Brian very kind that you say it. It's one of the planes I've made and used after the fashion of the cabinetmaker James Krenov. Early on I discovered the pleasure of making and using planes and have stuck with it ever since making them using the suitable iron/chip breaker combination provided by Ron Hock out of Fort Bragg, CA. I like the Stanleys and Records and Lie-Nelsons and the rest and Japanese too but always get the most pleasurable work out of these Krenov style self-made planes.
 
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