For me the jury is still out.
From a simple machine perspective the bit that actually does the wedging is kinda interesting. Deeply hollow ground for initial aggression followed through with an extreme wedging action as it follows the concavity vs convex, save for in a chisel ground kinda format.
The rest of it, how it actually clears the wood, or all that blah about leverage and crowbars is all a bit lost on me.
In the video the first thing we see, log balanced on log, is clearly not one continuous bit of footage. Why? Why was that edited like that? What is depicted in the missing bits? The magician is guiding me to watch this hand as he zips round the log, but I want to know what his other hand was doing. At this point my suspicion is that video jerks there because some of those cuts didn't work out in a way they want to display to me. If that is true then you've already got a black mark against them. A tool can be an excellent improvement over an existing tool but still not perfect, and that is fine. But if you are trying to mislead me you've damaged all that.
In the subsequent footage the wood is contained in a ring, mmmm. What effect does that exert? How do we reconcile that with the claims about the advantages of the special leverage action vs what happens if you whack that same bit of wood similarly contained with a conventional maul.
I had a sniff around for other products made by them and found nothing. All I did find was a page comparable to that same old blarney many knife makers put in the About Me bit on the their web pages, or mebe a blurb from TOPS. You know the drill, you've all seen it: “I grew up loving nature - grandpa gave me my first pocket knife when I was three - then I went to college and became an architect - all the while I remember that pocket knife but I was dissatisfied – then one fine day, during a stint in the military, I saw the way random blokes knife cut an MRE packet and it hit me, and I started doing doodles on the back of my hand – and now, here it is – I offer this to you with as much pride, patriotism, attention to old world craftsmanship, and any other old pony I can inject to pull on your wallet strings to offer you this.”
Am I being harsh with that, damn right. Fool if I don't. What's all this tripe designed to do?
“A STORY OF AN AXE THAT'S NOT DEPENDANT ON TIME, PLACE OR OIL PRICES”
“He bravely started his difficult task...”
Contact, danger close.
“Throughout his arduous work the axe often swung close to the hard working man's calves...”
Bumped.
“After receiving a few mighty blows from the axe, he was forced to toss his boots...”
“Darn it!” the man said in despair.....”
“Eureka!”
Then the familiar old trudge to product realization this time with a “persistent Finnish nature” that we all know could just as easily be Irish or Cambodian.
In what way does the design of this tool address strike accuracy? And am I too suppose a regular axe or maul is "dependant on time, place and oil prices" in a way in which this one is exempt? I'm too stupid to understand how that might work. Walthrough anyone?
