Stephen, I am a Mechanical Engineer and you are spot on on axe handle design. Thanks for the informative video. This makes me want to model some axes and run finite element analysis to put some numbers to the theory. I also wonder how many people think they like thick handles just because that is all they have used. Like have you ever handed a thin handle axe to a thick handle user and let them use it for an hour and they still say they like thick better? I know the first thin handled axe I used was a big surprise for me even though I had seen your videos and understood the theory. I was blown away at how much better it performed.
I started out years ago with a thin handled axe I inherited from my uncle, who got it (I think) from his dad. Eventually I had to replace that handle because it was quite old, poorly cared for and checked. That axe never performed the same way again and until I found these videos, I had *never* considered it was the handle. Good stuff!
I just never really think in those terms. For me the approach is almost always experience first, informed by any kind of formal testing as needed. I do think though that for someone with the propensity and ability to approach things from that end could provide some really valuable insight. The problem with actually testing any theories is that materials vary a lot and are relatively expensive. We also would have a hard time coming up with experiments that really imitate real life stresses, which must get pretty complicated. Like rooster and I were discussing in an above comment, the user style has whole a lot to do with those stresses as well and how the energy applied to the system ends up playing out. I can still think of useful tests to do, but I'll leave that to you, because I'd rather just go chop wood :). It would be cool if someone gave axes or even just axe handles, the treatment Tim Baker gave bows. It's probably not going to be me. To do it right would require a whole lot of chopping.
@Matt Hagler You're totally correct about the thick / thin handle and it's comfort and performance. I have my cheap first axe (thick fiberglass handle), and an old head I picked up at a yard sale that I fitted with a hickory handle. I thinned down the thickness of the hickory, and could not be happier with how it feels and "steers". Plus there's the huge difference in feel between 'glass and wood, leaving no comparison between the two now. The old axe is now dedicated to chopping roots in the stony dirt.
In my experience on the cordwood challenge, my original thin handle on my vintage double bit broke. Needing to rehandle in a timely fashion to get back in the fray, I stuck a stock handle on it without thinning it down. It cut like a completely different ax. I felt each stroke much more in my arms and shoulders. I finally took time to tune the handle using the thin original as a template. Made a world of difference in my strokes and stamina in a days work on the challenge. Really appreciate you exploring these topics with us. No scientific proof from me on thin handles except my experience and what my body tells me.
I've never thought about handle thickness this way, but as long as watch the explanation the more obvious it becomes to thin my axe handles more. thank you for your effort to provide such a usefull knowledge
Excellent video. I've seen and held in my hands old handle designs that were done that way for a reason. Falling axes from the 19th century into the early 20th century had thin handles back when people were making a living with the ax. My favorite was a 42" handled felling ax. The first thing I do when re-handling a ax is thin the shoulders...for flexibility and to remove the sudden stop and bounce back a thick shoulder gives when seating the head. Well done.
yeah, if you look even on ebay at old axes, there is an obvious difference just with stock handles. And it seems more than likely that high level users and pros were further tuning handles. Why wouldn't they? I was pretty shocked when I started doing youtube years ago and literally could find no one that was tuning up axe handles. I like to think I've changed that bit. I hope so.
@@SkillCult There's a recent video on my channel where I actually took measurements. What is interesting in the old handles is the accuracy of the measurements done strictly by eye....heh...the handle I am doing was close too. Finger sensitivity is not as accurate as a caliper but it can be done. Sanding???was done with a bit of glass in many cases. I learned a lot as a 16 year old from an old sawyer. HE lost his leg in a cable accident around a steam donkey engine. From 19 years and beyond he worked in the filing shop. What a boundless font of knowledge. He spoke of re-handling an ax and the next evening having it fly through the door of the filing shack.....for another STRAIGHT handle.
I’m a mechanical engineer-and this was a great video. I also design and make tomahawks and really enjoyed your point about “extremes” to illustrate how an axe works as a system. I have a throwing tomahawk-the design is light and throws very fast, so when the axe blade or spike sticks into a wooden target, the deceleration is virtually instant, yet the hickory handle has its own momentum trying to continue spinning forward, and this results in severe shock and vibrations. Your video has me thinking I should shorten and taper down the handle thickness, maybe even reduce the length. Less mass in the handle means less handle momentum and should reduce the shocks and vibrations. I will experiment to see if this prolongs the life of the handle. Best regards.
I think all my tomahawk handle failures have been from getting hit with other tomahawks lol. Hard to say how that will play out I guess. It's such a complex system. I feel pretty unsure how much the mass of the handle maintaining it's momentum really matters, but it certainly seems that it would be a factor. I love that law of extremes. It applies well in so many places to understand and explain things. Cheers.
You are stating in a most articulate manner what I've observed in restoring old axes. I've not seen a single (old) handle that wasn't flexible and graceful in shape exactly as you describe. Thanks as always!
Good points for people to consider when shaping a handle and hanging an axe head for the first time. Most hardware store handles can be thinned and reshaped quite a bit.
Couldn't agree more, just through use and my starting with composite handles to factory wood, to thinned and profiled. The way my hands feel after putting in work is all the proof I needed. For what it's worth, we performed these same type of smoothing and profiling operations on some high stress components in race cars to help them live longer.
Couldn't agree more! I made the same progression: composite, to wood, to profiled wood. No comparison. Each step significantly better than the previous.
I think the concepts you discuss are sound. I love how you term "the axe as a system," that is a great. For me, the examples of the extremes make it easier to see the value of the "sweet spot," because it shows the nature of the stress riser as you discuss, but it is also plain to see that too thin of a handle would easily snap along the shaft. Of course the reality is that it is a consideration of differences within the realm of what is actually being produced, and I would tend to agree that the trend has gone the wrong way in the direction of handles being too thick. My favorite axe is a 2 3/4 lb Woodings Verona from the early 90's, made in the USA. By the way, it has almost a perfect wedge-shaped head with just the very slightest contour, and it seems to bind up in wood LESS than the concave axe heads I have. The handle used to be much smaller and I didn't like it mostly because it lacked a palm swell. It broke with a bad over-strike. That was my bad more than it was the handle's fault, but it happened. I found a replacement handle which to me is perfect in terms of grain orientation as well as its contours and thickness. It is thicker than the one that used to be on there, but significantly thinner than the handle of my Husqvarna multi-purpose axe. I like the Husqvarna axe a lot, but I am going to thin out the handle.
yes, I probably should have talked about the handle breaking in the body more, but I think it's self evident that it will eventually become too thin. I don't think it's safe to assume too much about how thin that is though. There is also the user and type of stress applied that would favor certain types of breaks in certain places more.
I agree I have broke lots of oversized axe and hammer handles and I haven't broken any slimmer handles I always assumed that it was due to poor wood quality.
Hey Stephen edholm! I want to give you a sincere thank you for what you do in your chanel, for everything but manily your axe videos,im a young man and have had rheumatism since a young age and your knowledge and energy have helped me alot to further my new intrest in axes and its uses,i love bucking and splitting firewood as its a great pain-reliever from finger to shoulders and neck,for me this is truly amazing and i would not have gotten there if it was not your your videos,its impossible to really express all this in a comment section but i hope you see this and take it to heart that what you do have helped me create a sunrise in my life. For this i cannot thank you enough, as finding strength with this disease is a true maze. My sincere thanks goes to you stephen. Best regards from sweden,
Dude that's awesome to read. Thanks for sharing. I've got my own issues with autoimmune disease right now and unfortunately, using axes doesn't make it better. I can hardly do any real physical work for a while now. It's a nightmare. unfortunately I think it's slowly becoming the norm to have some level of problems like this as our genetics interface with industrial society. Best of luck to you figuring out more stuff that keeps you functional and helps with pain. I have pain and discomfort, but it's not severe, it's more the fatigue and malaise for me and some neurological stuff. Hugs and high fives buddy. Stay safe out there. :)
Last night the axe handle I was using splintered near the middle. Fortunately just some blood blisters on my fingers and a small cut in my palm.. I was shocked. I did not think this was possible. That break is what led me to your video as I wanted to better educate myself before looking for a new axe. Thanks for the information.
It does happen. Most frequently it's from strong runout of the grain. I can't prove it in any way, but i think the majority of breaks are at the eye. stresses vary though, as do vulnerabilities in the wood.
Hi Steven, I want to start by admitting that I am an absolute beginner when it comes to axe work of any kind. That said, with my life experiences so far at the age of 49, I can totally understand all that you explained in this video. Call it a certain logic or having experienced different things that lend to a basic understanding of flex versus stress, either way, this all makes me feel like I've actually felt the difference between the two examples even though I have not in all actuality. I am prepping my very first axe for bushcrafting now and will be applying this logic as I modify my 24", 1 kg Stihl axe. Thanks for making it so simple!!!
Absolutely right. A person used to using a bad tool wrong will not understand the logic of a proper tool well. It's a tool that requires tremendous skill and practice to use safely and efficiently
Could you do some more felling videos with an axe, especially trees with a difficult lean/lay combination? In any case, thanks for down to earth content.
We'll see. Felling videos by competent fellers are very helpful, though obviously there are major differences and less control when felling with an axe. Leaners can be very dangerous. If in doubt, stay away if there are other options available. Also, I don't consider myself a very competent feller :)
Good advice. Growing up on two hundred acres of land, I’ve fell quite a few trees with a chainsaw, but have only recently been practicing with an axe, and mostly on trees less than 12” in diameter. I’ve read Cook’s book and found it extremely helpful in theory, but I learn best by seeing or doing. Think about it. Even if you’re not the best, you’ll almost certainly a hell of lot more experienced than most of us.
Amazingly well-structured and detailed video, completely agree with everything in it and you definitely put things together clearly and concisely. Surprising you don't have way more views, dude!
what you say is right on the money. but I would also like to point out that when you make a thin hand there is less meat so I tend to pay more attention to the grain and make sure the grain threads run from end to end in fact I even take my pattern to the woods and hold it to the trees until I find the perfect piece then bring it home to the saw mill. this is how to get a axe handle that stores can't sell an equal one of
Hi Steven. I won’t look at an axe handle the same way again lol. Thank you for explaining how an axe handle works. I’ve watched many of your videos about axes. As a common guy. I thought an axe was just a length of wood with a lump of iron on the end. Cheers from Australia.
There is much more to axe handles too. The stresses are complex, so I don't think we can compensate for them all. it's just a matter of sort of averaging it out. Cheers.
Great info and demonstration.. I inherited an old double bit axe head, chose a handle with correct direction of grain. It worked well till I used it as a hammer, trying to drive wooded wedges into a log. The handle broke at it's thinnest point, just inside the head. I know I caused the break, that lateral stress being applied to the thinnest part of the handle. Always wondered how much the grain direction added to the issue.
Very well said. I really enjoyed that presentation. The principles you shared are similar to what I teach in my making of fixed blade knives. Thank you.
In essence we need to always address stress risers. They occur everywhere there is flex. I build custom rods. Rod blank breakage occurs at a point anywhere a component is added, like the guides the reel seat. Boat builders/ fiberglass layers, bike frame builders etc etc. And now another perfect example the axe handle. Excellent job bringing this into view.
Yeah, sounds more or less right as a guidline. There can be some pretty drastic ones in axe handles, but I'm generally in favor of minimizing them as a guideline, as long as other function is not compromised. Thanks for weighing in.
I have learned a lot watching your channel. I made my first handle out of some osage orange that I have on my land. the axe head was free as well. There are several negative issues with my work but the handle won't fail anytime soon.. I am satisfied with the gain of knowledge though.
You have to put in the time and go for it to learn. What people are afraid of as failures are more accurately seen as investments in the future. I bet it's gorgeous wood.
When thinking solely in terms of ergonomics, I have found that the user benefits more from the thinness being at the upper half of the handle. I fit the bottom 10 inches to my own hand and gradually thin leading to the middle to upper part with the thinnest area being right above the mid point. This allows even the most giant hand size to feel comfortable and shape it to their own liking and still get the thinness needed for increased flex and function. When flexing I have found the shock to be absorbed more so when the handle is tuned in this manner rather than the thinnest part being closer to the bottom or bottom half, or even feeling like it has to be thin all the way down. This just from my own experience shaping and tuning a couple hundred handles.
Interesting. I know that if the head is fixed and you push on the end of the handle, given an even thickness, the bend will be greater near the head. For whatever that is worth. Drop in handles, like the basque axes are thicker near the head and gradually thinner. I don't seem to have any problem with thin handles, but my hands are not very big. Thanks for commenting. Always good to hear the voice of experience.
Outstanding presentation Stephen. With over 30 years professional experience as a steel fabricator I can say unequivocally that sharp inside corners are a huge problem. Sharp outside angles (like at the butt end of your handle) are not. Any time that you are cutting into your material square corners are to be avoided. Working in steel, cutting a square inside corner will always stress and crack at the corner. They must be given a radius. The more radius you can engineer into it the better. Thanks for pointing out that the axe is a dangerous tool and no joke. That can't be stressed enough. Chainsaw too.
Danger, Danger.. Never hurts of reiterate.... I don't know the math at all, but I would assume that the strength curve is not linear and that there are diminishing returns, but it does seem fairly obvious that the more gradual transition the better. Thanks for the input.
You would think it's obvious, but I see square cuts and sharp inside corners more often than not. I don't know the math either, but I agree that there are diminishing returns, though typically other design considerations intrude before those are met.
Great video, very informative! Check out the Basque axe handle it is unique and very thing at the point where most axes have a large palm swell it has just a little hook and I have no issues hanging on and have decently large hands.
Thank-you for this video! I'm in agreement in regards to slimmer handles performing better, and the bitter pill of breaking/replacing a haft is easier to swallow once the user realizes that handles are consumables. This will be a video that I'll direct people too when they want to have a discussion on handle design. That being said, I've heard folks that have had no experience with thin handles complain that they're hard to grip effectively. At least with handmade handles, it's completely possible to make a more pronounced palm swell that is easy to hold. It's simple enough to show someone. Take a hardware store handle that's thick and bulky and have them hold it at their side, then relax their grip but don't drop the handle/axe. In many cases they can't. Then hand them a thin handle with a proper palm swell to repeat the test and they can relax their hand to its natural position without dropping the axe. The same concept applies when using the tool. With thick handles you must maintain more pressure at the palm swell to keep control during the swing, but it's rapidly fatiguing. When you're tired, you miss more. A thin handle causes less fatigue, keeping you accurate longer and providing more work before you're spent. It's fun to see someone notice the difference for the first time.
I keep doing these deep dives into unprofitable subjects, so I'm glad you are too :). It's nice to feel like I can take the time to do important illustrations and take time to work out long essays on stuff like this. Tanning videos perform a lot better, but I'm hoping this will have a broad ripple effect over time.
SkillCult I sure the information was just about everybody I know I’m not sure how people feel about patron on her supporting your channel but I do what I can and I enjoyed all of your content. PS the strap you made me is super awesome I’ve used it several times.
This concept can be scaled up or down too. I was a custom goldsmith for almost a decade, where I tried fitting a tiny hammer head onto a new handle. I intentionally carved (what I thought was) a "great", tight 90-degree corner just below the eye of the hammer head, and then proudly used the hammer... for a few strokes, until it broke. In my stupidity (or insanity?), I repeated the install process on the now-slightly-shorter (and thicker!) handle. Guess what? Iit quickly broke again. I was stumped, but now I will refit it with these concepts in mind, and I'm guessing it will survive. Thanks! :)
I think that is a great example, because it scales to the other end when using the rule of extremes, opposite of thining of a baseball bat or 2x4. The 90 degree is one thing, and also the total flexibility of the handle. Looking at old hammer handles, they usually have a very skinny waist in the upper 1/3rd or so. That is going to bend a lot and take up much of that back shock energy. I think if you look at really old jewelers hammers, you'll likely find that they have a lot of handle flexibility built in. IF they have the original handles that is! As with axes, newer hammers tend to have closer and closer to just oval chunks of wood for handles. I just checked ebay and there are some old german goldsmith hammers with insanely long skinny shafts. Check them out by serching "tiny hammer" They actually have chunky 90 degree angles and joints up at the eye, but the handle flexibility obviously more than makes up for it. I would guess those handles were made or customized by an experienced crafstman. I think of idealized handles as flexing and distributing stress all the way up to the top of the eye. I don't know how true it is, but it's a helpful way to visualize stress distribution. But they don't necessarily need to if that stress is softened enough somewhere in the design.
Thanks for sharing this information with the Axe Community. Totally agree with the technique points, including what some call "floating the axe"... lighter grip just before strike impact. Can't really control the direction or strike placement at that point, so letting it "float", and then reengaging the grip after the shock gets absorbed, to "catch" the axe handle, and protect your grip or hands from the shock. A hard grip will sometimes be stronger than the handle itself, and the weakest or least resilient part of the system can fail... Thanks again and Axe-on! Peace, Rooster
Also, I think control is almost the wrong attitude. I've noticed that when I'm in the zone, it's almost more like I'm getting out of the way more than I'm steering. A heavy grip on the axe and trying to be too engaged in aiming and adjusting during the swing can easily lead me to less accuracy. And yes, I think a hard grip can allow stresses to stack and play out in the handle between two opposing forces. The Head is super heavy and if the grip is super heavy, the handle in between might be collateral damage. One thing I've been meaning to work into a video somewhere is to propose the idea of thinking about if were to throw our axe into the work not hold on to the handle at all when the axe strikes, how weak would the handle have to be to actually break. It would just whip and flop around playing out the excess energy. I'm not advocating that, but the rule of extremes would contrast that with iron man taking a death grip on an axe and the relatively flimsy handle would be stuck between two powerful intertias. So, yep, I agree that the death grip can increase the likelihood of handle breakage, especially if it is used to try to drive the head into the work when the bit strikes. I think the idea of driving the head with the handle after it hits, and the idea of control and grip are all part of the same misguided assumption about how the system works at it's best. There may be a time and place for that approach, but not much in regular axe work.
@@SkillCult Good conversation, and good content. One of these days, I'll make it out to your neck of the woods. We can compare notes and then turn around and pass it forward... Keep up the good work! Thanks, Rooster
A slender handle is so much more pleasant to use . I agree that the steel edge of the eye against the most narrow point of the handle is the weakest spot .All the wood handled tools I can recall the break started at the eye .only exception was trying to pry a rock out of the ground with a shovel burried into the ground against the rock prying and bending the handle to the breaking point.
it would be interesting to survey breakage type percentages. It seems like the greater number must be near the eye and most of those initiating either where the grain is heavily violated on the back, or right at the bottom of the eye. I know most breaks I've suffered over the years were at or near the eye.
I just made a handle for an axe head with lugs at the base of the eye, it made it so that I couldn't put a shoulder on the sides of the handle to seat the head against. It is pretty heavy at roughly 4 lbs. The resulting handle, based on the width of the eye, is about 3/4", it has a bit of swell on the front and back of the handle to seat against. Have you ever made a handle for a head like that, and if so, did it make much difference? I can still seat it lower in the future if necessary. The flexibility in the handle is pretty amazing, very little vibration when making contact, it is made from black locust. Love the videos, thanks for all the info. Still new to the realm of axes. It all makes a lot of sense and is making all the difference.
Having lugs or "ears" can interfere with seating the head. It either bottoms out and the eye does not seat well, you have to carve out space for them, or the handle, as you said, can't really have much of a shoulder. I think the ideal solution is to thin the lugs so that they taper outward on the inside so when you drive on the head, they just follow the contour of the side shoulders. i did that on my husqvarna forest axe, because it seemed like the best engineering solution to the problem. ruclips.net/video/wuSivairNSg/видео.html I think ideally, they would be made this way and taper to pretty thin at the bottom of the lug. That may not be practical in cheap production work, but it's an easy mod and a small scale, botique or custom maker can do it easily enough. I'm not much of a blacksmith, but I would probably make a drift that had shoulder compensation built in exactly this way, so it could be forged in instead of filed or ground.
Thanks to Issac Newton, he gave us the tools to examine the forces in an object called newtonia mechanics, which is the basic of today's engineering science. Looking at the ax handle as a cantilever beam sticking out of wall of concrete and you apply a force on the end of the handle, the highest stress point is where the beam exist the wall (or handle exiting the bit). The stress here is called the bending moment, which the bending stress = (Bending Moment times dist from the centroid) divided by the moment of inertia. Since the both have the same eye area, they should break at the same stress. Bending force (properly called Moment Force) is a multiplier (Force times distance) and is the force that breaks most tools. Trying to pull a stuck ax out of a log, I broke a many of ax handles. Being over 250 pounds and over 6 foot, I can swing an ax. But, I tried your approach using a short/ light Ax ( a Fiske with a v shaped bit and sharp) and I am very pleased with the results. Going to try your Chord wood challenge! Real enjoy your videos, there Awesome!
Cool. Even when the head is not fixed, as in when it's stuck, I think the greater density and total mass of the head must create situations where the handle it working against the head in a way similar to a beam sticking out of a wall as you describe, and vice versa with the heavy head bouncing around working against the handle. Me too on breaking handles on stuck axes. That is one of the things that led me to thinking of axe handle breakage and stress distribution in these terms.
Hello from Norway. Good video about axes and I agreed of your opinions. Some of the brakage of the axes comes from bad handling of the axes to. Some wood types who are easier to break if it is used wrong. In Norway we use a lot of ash(ask) or birch(bjørk). It does matter from which part from the tree you make handles to. Birch is best from a straight growing tree and from bottom of the tree. The outer layer of the tree is best here, because of flexibility. Hultafors brand is a good brand from sweden who are much used in scandinavian parts of the world. WR Norwegian fellow
Yes, I just did some videos on how people break axes by using them forcefully. ruclips.net/video/y-P0rDvok3Q/видео.html Are handles there preferred with the growth rings of the tree running parallell to the axe head, or across it? Or does it depend on the wood?
An intelligent and well communicated discussion, quite geeky, I loved it! I agree completely , I've seen it play out in practice. Would you consider the use of a distal taper in knife and sword making a similar concept? The concept as I understand it is that the gradual taper in the steel distributes the stress evenly and encourages the steel to bend not break. Therefore it's more resiliant. Just curious on your thoughts. Great stuff, take care, Wade ...and yes I will check out and sub your blog!
I don't know what distal taper is in a knife. I think there are some broad concepts that can be applied, but they still have to take into account the actual stress applied in use. There is also an obvious compromise between increasing shear strength by increasing dimension and creating load sharing in parts of the knife to compensate for high stress areas and weak points in the design.
Probably been mentioned, but one of the biggest benefits in terms of practical use is the improvement in the transfer of shock to the hands when using thinner handles. This is something that is easily observable in an A to B comparison with anyone who has any experience with an axe, or perhaps even no experience. I know the video wasn’t intended to sell ergonomics, but as far as all around benefit, I would think the the lack of shock/vibration or whatever it’s called, would be close to the top of the pros list of thinner handles.
Hi Steve, good to see you my friend!!! Have been thinking of you while all the fires have been going on. Great explanation of how the handle stresses work!!😀😀👍👍 My favorite axe is a 3 pound Plumb double bit with a very thin handle. The thin handle seems to absorb the shock much better than a thick handle dose. Hopefully you are feeling better. Take care my friend!! Your friend Al.
The fires this time were not close to me. I had to breath smoke for a couple of weeks, but that's all. We were lucky this time, but it's a matter of when, not if.
My axe handle broke yesterday while chopping wood and now I know the problems with my axe handle (it was thick all over and thin at the eye and I was overgripping it) I'll attach a new handle today or tomorrow with these new adjustments and will share the results.
You should take a look at videos of SE Asian sledgehammers. They use a longer handle of whippy material and use the flex to increase the speed and impact. It looks really odd.
I've seen those in a video. Very neat. There is an axe too, look up a video called something like Jungle axe showing a super flexible handle, something like rattan.
Thank you !!! great video refreshing to see actual knowledge and useful information from someone with experience and a coherent thought process on a subject which I find to be extremely rare (hickory is good Bois dark is better)
Hey SkillCult community, isn't the curing of the axe handle a key element of axe handles breaking at the eye? When the axe is cured with linseed or other oil after the head is seated, as is typical, the oil does not propagate into the eye equally as it does throughout the rest of the haft, because the wood in the eye is under compression. Thus the wood in the eye & the rest of the haft will by curing have different physical properties, & this difference may be a cause of breakage at the eye. I ask this with the acknowledgment that I have only watched a few SC vids, & thus have surely missed out on a lot of the conversation. Apologies if I've missed the boat or failed to pay attention to a relevant segment, but I've recently watched a few vids on various channels on oiling/treating axe handles, & was surprised not to have come across a mention of this issue. Regards, G.M.
Thanks a lot. As usual, clear and useful knowledge from the video. On that note, i am wondering if the other way of hanging handles on axes might make better sense. I am referring to some Spanish and Italian axes that use no wedges but slip through the eye of the axe. First, those handles are easier to make and replace. Second, you can have a few handles for the same axe and change them as needed. And thirdly and connected with this video, those handles are necessarily thinner since the whole handle needs to be slimmer than the eye. Typically they thin down smoothly from the very top to the end of the handle rather than increasing in girth near the eye as your typical wedged handle does. I wonder if that way of thinning down makes it even stronger or less prone to breakage. I guess the proof would be in comparing the experience and frequency of breakage in both axes.
You could take a look at Home tanning of furs and skins by Farnham. You can read it online for free. Download at skillcult.com/freestuff I don't really know what is out there. My friend George Michaud is threatening to write a book, but we'll see.
See some.commemts here about certain axes with bigger eyes. I'd add that many old hand forged axes from Maine have larger eyes as well. It can be tricky to find a handle to fit these eyes though.
That is very interesting. I've not seen any, but you can imagine not many maine axes make it to the west coast. A common argument is that thin eyes were made possible by the magical properties of hickory. I'm not sold on the idea yet, but perhaps a larger eye was used or maintained to use woods like maple and white oak.
My last ax handle split in half long ways, I think it was a defect in the wood. I was wondering if that kind of break was common and what kind of stresses would cause it.
This and your videos on head weight versus velocity were super helpful for me to understand why my 23 oz. framing hammer was so awkward. its a vaughan with a straight handle and they manufacture it with a belly in the middle of the handle where I feel the need to grip it, instead of towards the end, because the head is pretty heavy. I shaved the belly out of it with a block plane so its totally straight and about 1 1/8 x 3/4. more flex now and more natural grip with my finger tips coming around to touch my palm, so my elbow feels a lot better after using it all day. I also took a grinder to the chunkier parts of the head and probably took it down a couple ounces, now wherever I grip the handle the shape is the same so my grip doesn't change and I have more control with the lighter head in whatever position I am swinging. I am wondering if you have videos or know some good videos or information on what handle cross sections are good for different applications - what I mean is if you imagine cutting across the grain where you grip the handle what shape would it be looking at the end grain - oval, rectangular, oxtagonal? I'm a carpenter, and novice firewood gatherer. thanks. -Weston
Hi Weston. I don't have a lot of opinion on cross sections actually. I haven't given it a lot of attention. It would be interesting to look at old hammer handle designs v.s. newer ones to see if there is the same trend toward increasing thickness over high performance. I have a feeling that might be the case, but I haven't paid enough attention. I know that most of the old ball peens I have bought have had very thinned out portions just below the eye.
"Were dealing with real life, not just armchair theory". Dude this is my new favorite channel on Facebook. Love your content Steven. Your like me, to old for bullshit anymore.
@@SkillCult haha. Well you know what they say. Your only as old as you feel. Which makes me like 65. But keep up the great work man. I love all the content on your channel. Soooo much better than 99% of the other content on RUclips. I can always tell when someone has a wealth of knowledge and intelligence that is guided by experience and trial and error rather than fads and trends. I have shared a lot of your videos of axe content with a few axe groups I'm in on Facebook. Keep it up man!
great video as always, makes perfect sense. If you ever see bow makers they carefully to shave down certain areas so the stress is evenly distributed and the bow does not snap under tension, why should an axe handle be any different?
I wish that analogy had made it into this video. It was actually in my notes, but I managed to forget to hit that talking point on this second video take. I did use it in the blog post though. I think it is one of the better comparisons to draw to help people understand that basic concept of even stress distribution.
I think the basque axes are really the ideal for strength, no shoulder at all with a even taper, less palm swell though. I always forget what to say in my videos, remember after iv'e edited lol
A flaw I notice in axe handle design is that at the shoulder where the shape defies the grain, it’s offset entirely to one side. Making this deviation more extreme. From handling other eyed tools it would make more sense to me if the shoulder was symmetrical to make the deviation less extreme and the handle overall stronger. Is the purpose of the offset shoulder just to better facilitate the curve of an axe handle?
That's an interesting question or angle because it begs more questions. Obviously double bit axes have that kind of configuration. If we subscribe to the balance improvement theory of poll axes, it would mess with balance to have a straight handle that has a cut across the grain at both the front and back. I'm not saying I do, but it would definitely affect balance. Another point is that the back of the axe handle may be stronger in that direction, because it's wider than the front edge of the eye/handle. Of course double bit axes essentially have that kind of configuration, but it would interesting to know if they are any more likely to break on the front side when chopping than on poll axes where the handle comes more straight or barely curved out of the eye at the front. I've always preferred to have the narrow front edge of the handle come more or less straight out of the eye, because I consider it very vulnerable. The main use of the axe is using the bit to chop and split and the pressure applied to the bit should cause the handle at the front edge to stretch, while the back side is compressed. Then again, if pounding with the axe, that vulnerable cutaway at the back of the handle would be under stretch. But again, it is a lot fatter and might be less likely to split along the grain because of that. Somehow the idea of cutting away both sides doesn't really sit right with me, but I'm not sure there aren't more reasons. I certainly don't recall seeing it on many poll axes, if any, but of course that doesn't mean it's not a sound idea.
SkillCult it certainly is a lot to think about. I’ve wondered if it may even be better if the offset were reversed so that the grain coming from the thickest portion of the eye was uninterrupted leading into the handle, though I definitely see your point about the thinner front portion needing added strength as well. Having learned to swing with hammers first I greatly prefer straight handles (my most used axe is a double bit), I’ve got a couple nearly identical old Connecticut pattern axes I need to fix/handle. I think I may put a curved handle on one and a straight handle with a symmetrical shoulder on the other and see how they preform. Especially since the conni is a particularly poll heavy axe.
Good stuff. It maybe makes a case for doing what you did on the Husqvarna (I think?) where you were rounding over the inside edge of the eye before putting the head back on. I thought that was a really interesting idea, to potentially reduce the stress concentration. It certainly seemed like a good idea to try. But all this talk of handle breakage is clearly not as important as how fine a grit you use when polishing, and what wood you use for a wedge to get a cool contrast picture for Instagram. Don't you pay any attention to Axe Junkies?
Well, at least not having a sharp edge, but I have given some thought to more radical versions of that. I think if one approached the eye more from an engineering standpoint, it might end up looking and functioning quite a bit different than the average axe, or possible any axe. I have some ideas brewing, but carrying them out is another thing.
If I understand you correctly, your main point is that a thicker handle will break more easily because of the stress concentration and the additional mass along the handle. You're partially right in your asessment that the additional mass will facilitate greater vibration in the dynamic scenario, but I want to add that the increase in cross-sectional area will more than make up for this. The stiffness increases more than enough to make up for the added mass. I'm sure you've experienced this, as a thicker handle will more easily transfer the vibrations to your hand/arm/shoulder. As for the point about the stress concentrations, this is also partially correct. But you are using a simplified explanation of stress concentration in an isotropic material. The truth is that wood is not isotropic, and has an important layered grain structure that you willingly neglected in the beginning of the video. This grain structure actually matters (as I'm sure you know from your work). You said you weren't willing to prove your theory. That's ok because this kind of math can get so tedious and academic it's east to loose track of what's being proved. But if you could show physical examples of broken handles with pictures of the breakage pattern then that would go a long way for the comparison of thick vs. thin handles. Other than that I agree with what you're saying and it is unfortunate if consumer culture has a negative impact on our tool designs. Edit: Also I would like to know your opinion on the fiskars axe with the hollow fiberglass handle? I think it's garbage.
I think it is a very complex problem. For one thing, the handle is thinner in one direction, and stresses can vary a lot, the most drastic example being side to side, v.s. front to back. I don't really follow on the thickness and vibration. My take is that when high force is applied, the wood wants to flex and it will "try" to flex, but it can only flex a lot at the thinnest point. That doesn't account for a lot of potential variables, but trying to map them all out and prove them with math and controlled studies seems like a waste of time, v.s. chopping more. And I'm not at all confident it would yield very practically useful results anyway. Regardless, thin handles are very usable and there are other reasons to use them. In my experience, they don't break more easily, and if anything less. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
I wonder how well tape holds up if its wrapped near the head of an axe. Could duct tape or some kind of rubber tape reinforce or ease the stress that travels through the handle at all in the long term? I always thought it was aesthetic or for better grip, never really looked into any properties that dampen any of the recoil or shock that travels through it.
Tape can help a lot in holding the wood together so that it doesn't fail under stress. That can be especially useful below the eye where stress is high and the wood fibers are often damaged by overstrikes. If I use anything, I prefer to use thin rawhide. But tape works.
That logical extreme scenario where you set out to break a handle was fire. I'm going to try to generate some discussion in the r/axecraft because I think this should be more prevalent. All my buddies have factory handles that are thick as donkey dongs and I lack the knowledge and energy to convince them to shave them down. But I'm glad I know.
I use that rule of extremes thing a lot. It's incredibly useful in all sorts of scenarios. The more I use it, the more I like it. I've gotten a lot of comments on you shaving down our gransfors handle in that one video lol.
@@SkillCult I'll guess the comments are negative. No one likes to see a masterpiece defaced lol. I use the extremes with the kids, it conveys the point clearly and helps them develop a framework for imagining potential outcomes.
I am new at tanning and attempting to tan my first deer hide. I don't have much land like you do. Do you think garden mulch would work for tanning a hide. If so do you have any recommendations for selecting it. If not do you know a decent commercial tanning solution for making brown hairless leather out of a deerskin. Thank you!
it's possible, but it depends on what species, bark or wood, how much it's been rained on or rotted etc. You will probably have to cook two or more batches in a row in the same water to get it strong enough, but again it depends on a lot of things. See my recent vid on tanning materials. There may be more around you than you think. ruclips.net/video/gbD2h3g0_Nc/видео.html
I have a 2x2 (1 1/2 inches) Red oak stick about 7 feet long that I screwed up while woodworking that I use as a big prybar and it's tougher than it looks. And when you look at a wooden shovel it's about that thickness too and if you ever used a 6 foot spade you know you can pull on that handle pretty hard before it will snap. Even a shop broom is pretty tough I have snapped a few of those and it took a beating. What I am trying to say is that wood is tougher than it looks. Especially kin dried hard lumber like ash and oak and maple so why not shape it to something that feels good in the hands. Worst case is that it will break on impact and you will feel it right away when that will happen and don't go hard with a sharp tool until you know how to handle it.
What’re your feeling towards the Basque style axes? Logic would dictate that a slip fit would remedy this problem almost entirely. I know their design isn’t valid in this conversation but it’s a simple solution to what could be a simple problem.
They clearly do not have many of the same problems or at least not to the same degree. This video would be pretty much unnecessary if that design had been stuck to. I don't have the experience using them to say much though. It seems unlikely that this more problematic system, more difficult to haft, to remove broken handles, to make handles, and propensity for coming loose, more drastic violation of grain and more variability in the parts of the handle that lead to poor stress distribution were all made for no good reason. Are the reasons good enough? can't say. I mentioned them in the blog post, but the main point is that they avoid almost all of the problems I'm talking about.
SkillCult You caught me! I’m now subscribed to the blog :) I’ve used it as a reference several times but didn’t think to subscribe for one reason or the other. “Infotainment” took over without me realizing as I once was an advocate for blogging.. ooff. As far as the reasons why we evolved from this design, I honestly don’t know. I would like to believe this was brought on by advancement in engineering and not industry it’s often the ladder. I’m certain you have your reasons for not using the basque axe you own but it will be my weapon of choice for next years cordwood challenge. Which I will cover why in a future video on my newborn youtube channel.
@@seff2318 I just haven't got around to it yet. I didn't get to do a lot of chopping last year. Looking forward to giving it a good trial though sometime. See ou in blog email land :)
Just checked the blog and realized you already commented on the issue of Basque handles. Ignore my comment them and just refer to the blog. By the way, yes the handle of those basque handles is beech and the reason is because competitors (some of those axes are used for international competitions) reported that beech wood heats less when they are competing. Not very relevant for the average user since we are not going to attempt to cut a log under 90 seconds, but I have one and works and holds just fine.
It's an interesting question. It's hard to believe that the ancient form of axe with drop in friction fit handle was abandoned for no good reason. Clearly if you watch Basque axemen at work, they are highly functional axes, but a slew of problems were created by evolving toward bottom fit wedged handles.
Your use of "common sense" is refreshing. The response is "it makes sense." chuckleCould you some time revisit axe profiles. Looking at a couple of 3 1/2 # axe heads, an inexpensive Canadian pattern Garant and a Hulks Bruk Montreal pattern there is quite a difference in profile.. The Hulks Bruk I bought in the late '70s when I moved to northern BC for $45.
We'll see. It's a complicated issue that I don't feel like I have a really good grasp on, but there are some fundamental things that should always be in the conversation.
In my country, Montenegro, we use axes with a much larger triangular shape eye. The handle biger at the top and is placed through eye of the axe. Much stronger, more resistant than american axes. Did you ever come across on big bearded axe with wide eye?
@@SkillCult Tnx for reply, I appreciate it. I will be great to have opinion from scientist/engineer mind set such as yours on this axe design. If you come across with something like that, please mention is some future videos. Keep a good job with youtube channel!
It seems this is a problem of perceived quality, and how the average person purchases an axe at the store. 95%+ of people do not use their axes as often or thoroughly as people watching this video. So when an average person sees a thin handle versus thick they grip both and perceive the thick one as “better” or more manly and vote with their money. This then incentivizes the companies to add larger handles because that is what people are buying. People buy thicker then the companies make them thicker. The cycle continues and the consumer loses out and doesn’t realizes it unless they use the axe a lot to notice. Great video! A lot of well thought points, but thought this one was an economic point that wasn’t addressed.
I think there's also the manufacturing of the head itself are an issue. It's like they put on a super thick handle in order to get away with a super sharp bottom of the axe head at the eye. One step in the manufacturing is one less family to feed and if you don't need to ground the bottom edge of the eye then that could save the company 50 to 70k a year. It's one of those things in the throw it out mentality that we live in also that they almost want the axes to break in a few years and sooner with poor execution.
Built in obsolescence doesn't seem out of the question. Also, people expect junk these days and often won't complain or return things. I hope that is changing with the internet and more reviewing and returning happening.
@@SkillCult - Not sure about that at all. The internet is filled with people that have no clue what they are doing yet have millions of subscriber. Especially in my trade woodworking. There's a guy out there that was working out of his basement and he was doing cool stuff so what ever then I see him do an error that nobody that works with wood for a week would do. Like probably the most dangerous thing you can do on a table saw that people learn quickly never to do. Leave a comment on how dangerous it was and I got blasted by like 200 people saying that I didn't know shit. THen there's a guy Charles Neil the guy is probably the one of the best woodworkers in the USA and he ends up with like 40 views on his videos.
Hi Steve, any thoughts on some of the european handles, particularly german handles where the back of the eye is square and whether it makes any difference to the handle strength/resilience?
Oh yes, I'm quite sure that it does make a difference in shear strength. But not as much of a race car as the American axes. The usual narrative is that there were such a ridiculous amount of trees to cut here that axes were refined to be higher performing. I imagine too that it had something to do with the mentality of the settlers rejecting tradition and being increasingly more about invention than tradition. Yankee ingenuity and all that.
I don't think there is much flexibility even in the relatively thinner handles. Why? From bowyer's bible: double the width = double the strength, double the thickness = cube the strength of the wood. Thinner handles aren't really thin enough for noticeable flex. This is testable. Put two axes into a stump, side by side. Try to flex both laterally in any direction. The thick handles are like overbuilt bows...way too much strength capacity, never gets tapped. Handle breaks at the wood-steel hinge as you expertly explained way before the wood can flex much. Thinner handles same problem. That hinge will give way before that relatively thicker (but still thinner than the THICK handle) segment of the THINNER handle. I have a Rinaldi polless axe from Baryonyx Knife. It is pretty straight down from the eye. It doesn't flex perceptibly at all. You couldn't really see the flex. I don't feel a flex. So if it flexes, it does so slightly? I'm probably wrong but stupidly believe I am not. I do think the stresses are much better distributed with gradual transitions. I would even go as far as to say the handle should be unbroken wood fiber all the way from tip to tip following a single growth ring in hardwood just like a bow. My biggest question is: what if the handle was whip-like thin and we added filler to the eye to an underbuilt eye wood section to fill the axe eye and built a riser ring just under the head for added strength? Perhaps we could glue on flax or milkweed fiber or sinew/rawhide? Would the reduced mass of the handle lead to different blade flight characteristics? Maybe there is a point of no return when the handle is too thin? I'm thinking it would be cool to get an axe to efficiently accelerate by lower the handle mass.
For every reason in this video, but also from weak wood. It is not uncommon to get hickory, ash and other woods that have been attacked by fungus. It is not obvious, but makes the wood brittle so that it snaps across like chalk. If that happens and it's not very splinttery, that is probably the issue. If it is splitting down at a long angle it's probably just breaking along the grain.
I believe the eye of an ax is shaped as it is because how they where made during the old days. By folding an section iron flat bar and forge welding a bit of high carbon steel for the blade (check out Peter Ross a historical Blacksmith). The iron just wants to make this shape when folded. According to Roy Underhill, the poll of an ax is an American invention because the Europeans did not have the Hickory Tree, which required the extra mass to chop it. I believe you hit the nail on the head concerning the ergonomics of a slender handle. The Maddox has a large eye and is mentioned in the bible which illustrates it's been around a long time, but, it doesn't feel right if you need to choke up on the handle, and takes away the multi-usefulness of the tool, which is common for western culture. The stone ax was a multipurpose tool that could be removed from the handle, used as a chisel, plus the handle had a wedge on the end for bark removal , and, furthermore, the handle could be used as a hammer (4 in 1). The stone ax dates back to 600 years ago, which isn't a very long time. I'll make a ax using stone age technology but use steel instead of rock and let you know how it works.
I suppose it does tend toward a teardrop shape from forge welding a wrapped eye, but it can still be drifted out into pretty much any shape. I'm not buying Underhill's theory on that. There are heavy axes with no poll.
Yes, you can drift the eye to any shape, but, it takes a lot of work. They were getting paid by the unit, and, it's human nature to take the least path of resistance. Iron is a tough martial to shape. I have a forge and it's remarkable how much effort it takes to drift something by hand. A press makes easy work of it, but, them old timers didn't have machinery. Interesting though, the shape works out from a mechanics of materials point of view. Wood is stronger in tension than in compression, which is different from metal which is normally equal in both tension and compression. During the normal chopping swing, the egg shape of the eye has less cross sectional area on the tension side and more area on the compression side. Even when the ax is stuck and you yank up on the handle, the bottom side is still in tension and top in compression. Serendipitous or by design? I think it's just like the way the pyramids built in Egypt, trial and error. The poorly designed ones don't last the test of time! Someone figures out a better mouse trap (faster, cheaper, and better) then it's copy and past down the line of time..
I don't know but Roy might have it right. Like you have said, the experienced woodsman used a small ax head with a slender handle for accuracy. There where used the multipurpose tool ie building shelters , setting snares and chopping wood. The name of the game is making chips, right? Looking at the properties of Hickory, it has a remarkable higher Modulus of Elasticity and compression strength, which may have been the driver for something new. Plus, I have a very cool book you would probably like. "Museum of Early American Tools" by Eric Sloane. He gives an Illustration of the 1600's British and German and shows the polls did't start to appear in the 1715's and are Anglo American. He shows many Tanners tools, as well!
Thanks Steven. I think if the axe is used as it was designed to do it should last a very long time. Any tool (most) that is used for other things will not last as long. The demo you showed for lateral abuse is not what the axe was designed for, but I get your point. I do understand that the axe is used for splitting firewood, but was it designed for that purpose? If we look at a true splitting maul we see a different eye in the head that takes a completely different handle shape, a head and handle shape designed for the purpose of downward force. Is the handle of a splitting maul stronger than an axe handle? My guess is much stronger. More to say but I don't type well!
An axe and handle may not be designed for high lateral stress on a regular basis when used as intended, but it may very well be evolved to deal with incidental lateral stress, which is very common. The main incidental causes of lateral stress I see are side impacts in bucking and felling and they can also be quite high in limbing if the log is struck ahead of the limb by bad aim. I see side impact type of stress to be less common in splitting. I measured some mauls and sledges for the blog post. They are consistently 1 inch or more wide, where most full sized american axes are about 3/4 and boy's axes more like 5/8. And they are somewhat oval, so a bit longer in the bit to poll dimension. Since there is not issue with keeping the heads thin, they can afford to have wide eye, which would partially compensate for the smaller front to back dimension. The other difference is that they don't usually stick as hard due to the shape and one of the highest stresses applied to an axe handle it wrenching it free from a cut, and the hardest sticks are usually in splitting. I would think that the splitting maul is a fairly recent invention, or at least recently popular. materially poorer people would use what they could afford, which was probably often a single worn down axe that did everything. Whether a maul handle is stronger might depend on what direction and what stress is applied. It clearly has more shear strength in the side to side direction, but I'm not so sure about the bit to poll direction. And we have to account for the heavier head applying more stress to the handle with it's greater inertia. I got tired of breaking them and bought a fiberglass handle for my sledge, which would have broken a dozen times the way I use it lol. I love that fiberglass handle! :)
That sharp angle allows the wood to know where to fracture/split up into the eye. We want to confuse the wood so it doesn't know where to break. The old saying "a bull in a china store" can easily apply to an axe handle, know it limits, don't just crash it into the tree, it needs care. I will offer a reason they are making the handles thicker, it might be bunk but fun all the same, they want them to break, sell more axes, and handles, its good for business. We all know axe handles break, they will, they now make them to break even easier. Planned obsolescence They did the same with the incandescent light bulbs, and sawmills, look at Woodmizer and all the little gizmos it needs, they are designed to wear out after so many repetitions. .Its the way of today. Back in the day when they were really chopping trees down they wouldn't tolerated fat handles. I really needed a good axe handle talk video, made for a great finish to the day.
I buy a ton of lumber from sawmills. Guess what they don't use 3000$ sawmills. You can't even get a decent trailer for that price do you really think a decent sawmill that is essentially it's own trailer would be that price??? In the end you get what you pay for and you can't say that a 3000$ sawmill is compatible to a 100 000 sawmill like the ones that the people that do it for a living have. As for the axe handle. They build them to sell them. If a guy walks into a hardware store and sees a 100$ axe and a 50$ axe and the cheap one has a thicker handle than the expensive one he is going to wonder why its so darn expensive. An average Joe going camping with friends will buy the name brand heavy duty axe. If you use the axe and had one break you would know that it breaks ether flush with the eye or in line with it so why would you need a handle that is bigger than the head and it's just feels better in the hands.
I wouldn't rule out that built in obsolescence might factor in some cases, but I think it is in many cases due to not understanding the problem well. Axe manufacturers either need to be axe users, employ or consult with users, or stick with tried designs and not change them.
@@timberdoodles4647 - I paid almost 20 000$ a few months ago for a trailer. Trust me 60K is cheap for industrial equipment. A person that is using this day in and day out will pay between 200K to 1 million dollars for a quality machine. Maybe more. I can buy a F150 for 60K.
It's gotta be cheaper too; I'm sure the a lot of machine automation cutting out handles and having them generally thicker reduces margin of error. Im fine thinning the handle out within reason, id like to see them get fitted properly
Steven, I want objective proof that you're not a scientist! :P My hands are very large four and a half inches across at the knuckles 10 in from the heel of my hand to the tip of my middle finger and there is no way I would take one of these new Chinese axe handles that has a circumference of 4 1/2" over an old North American made 2 3/4"...
Good luck with that :). Woowza dude, those are some serious mitts! Don't sweat that seed money, I'm never going to get around to figuring it out. I can't remember what I sent who or whatever. If you want to paypal me something to cover shipping, that would be helpful. I think is was just under 10.00 US.
Hi Steven, we appreciate all you do, can i post your turn of century and recorded writings on coal dust land improvement on STOP THE CRIME.NET for the solutions website? Deborah Tavares and myself believe more removal of brush and dead wood are a proactive approach to wildfire suppression. She asked for the best presentation on making /using biochar and you've done it.
I tend to believe that there may be some manufacturing design compensation happening perhaps in part to what I perceive as the continued introduction of poorer and poorer wood handle material. It really is hard to find new axes fitted with proper handles, as well as finding proper replacement handles. Grain orientation is often ignored, there's heavy figuring present, and often accompanied by too much heartwood. I imagine that with less than ideal wood, there are just too many rejects that come off the shaping machines when attempting delicate profiles...and some simple office folk opted for thicker designs. That's my tinfoil hat theory anyway.
I think you are probably right on the wood quality. A straight grained piece of quality hickory is much less likely to break in the handle body than a weak piece with strong runout, knots or a large proportion of brittle heartwood. Another factor is that the more the wood is thinned, the more likely it is to warp after milling. A crappy piece of wood, with aberrant grain and internal tension is much more likely to twist and warp once milled out of the confines of a larger dimension of wood.
sounds like folks should be tillering there axe handles. I’m not a scientist ether but rumour has it bows can withstand lots of stress/compression/shock.
That is more or less what I'm proposing I suppose. I always flex test handles with the three finger flex test when I'm fine tuning them. It's not a perfect analogy to compare to bows, but it's very useful. I actually had a section talking about bows in the first take of this video, but managed to forget it the second time through. It's in the blog post though.
I've definitely thought of that to study axe handle flex and also mechanics of chopping and splitting. I actually just sold my camera that did high frame rates, but it was still only 120 frames per second, which is pretty good, but 240 or higher would be better. That 120fps is the only reason I almost kept it.
Stihl axes have that horrible handle design. After messing with quite a few handles other than make your own, council tool handles are my favorite. They still need thinning but come the closest
I tried my friends stihl splitting axe it felt horrible it was like holding the wrong end of a baseball bat! I have never tried a council tool axe, the first axe I bought was gransfors Burks and I really like them all my work axes are granfors.
I like the profile of council tools and they are thin enough to use out of the box. I prefer to take quite a bit off too, but they are good. Probalby because they have been making the same handles continuously for a long time with no interruptions.
i never heard of an axe breaking. very rarely. if it happens so what replace it and go on. why so much fuss about axe handles? i think american axes break because they are all twisted up like that. try making it straight and slightly tapered towards the end of the handle. american ones dont break all that often either I think.
People break them all the time. Maybe we are all completely incompetent. The type of breakage addressed in this video has almost nothing to do with whether the handle is curved or not.
Increasing the size of the eye to match the handle size increases the size of the head, if the handle is twice the thickness, the eye and therefore the head needs to be twice the size and twice the weight. Do you want to use an overweight axe all day?
For sure. I mention that in the blog post. The interesting question is why did American axes evolve to the configuration we have now, which basically pushes the practical limits of the handle material by making the eye just about as small as can reasonably be gotten away with? European axes on the american patterns usually have larger eyes, and remain practically the same weight. The difference might seem small, but it does make a difference. If you look at the eye size on the gransfors axes v.s. an American axe of the same weight, the difference can be significant.
I couldn't disagree with you more. Don't be careful for fear of injuring your leg. Or as I like to say giving yourself a pirate swagger, a manly scar, and a party story about how you could have gone pro if it weren't for that freakish lumberjacking axe injury! So go for it, fortune favors the bold and I will take an axe wound over a chainsaw mishap or my name's not "Lucky Oops Lefty"
Holy cow. There's a first time for everything, I guess. 😅 You make a lot of sense with everything I've ever seen you upload - so thank you for that. Things that make me stop the video half way through to think about, and really wrap my brain around. Thanks again for all the time and effort you put into all this!
Stephen, I am a Mechanical Engineer and you are spot on on axe handle design. Thanks for the informative video. This makes me want to model some axes and run finite element analysis to put some numbers to the theory.
I also wonder how many people think they like thick handles just because that is all they have used. Like have you ever handed a thin handle axe to a thick handle user and let them use it for an hour and they still say they like thick better? I know the first thin handled axe I used was a big surprise for me even though I had seen your videos and understood the theory. I was blown away at how much better it performed.
Great idea. I'd love to see the result of your FEA. Yes Im a science geek too
it is a strange feeling to switch between thick and thin for sure.
I started out years ago with a thin handled axe I inherited from my uncle, who got it (I think) from his dad. Eventually I had to replace that handle because it was quite old, poorly cared for and checked. That axe never performed the same way again and until I found these videos, I had *never* considered it was the handle. Good stuff!
I just never really think in those terms. For me the approach is almost always experience first, informed by any kind of formal testing as needed. I do think though that for someone with the propensity and ability to approach things from that end could provide some really valuable insight. The problem with actually testing any theories is that materials vary a lot and are relatively expensive. We also would have a hard time coming up with experiments that really imitate real life stresses, which must get pretty complicated. Like rooster and I were discussing in an above comment, the user style has whole a lot to do with those stresses as well and how the energy applied to the system ends up playing out. I can still think of useful tests to do, but I'll leave that to you, because I'd rather just go chop wood :). It would be cool if someone gave axes or even just axe handles, the treatment Tim Baker gave bows. It's probably not going to be me. To do it right would require a whole lot of chopping.
@Matt Hagler You're totally correct about the thick / thin handle and it's comfort and performance. I have my cheap first axe (thick fiberglass handle), and an old head I picked up at a yard sale that I fitted with a hickory handle.
I thinned down the thickness of the hickory, and could not be happier with how it feels and "steers". Plus there's the huge difference in feel between 'glass and wood, leaving no comparison between the two now. The old axe is now dedicated to chopping roots in the stony dirt.
In my experience on the cordwood challenge, my original thin handle on my vintage double bit broke. Needing to rehandle in a timely fashion to get back in the fray, I stuck a stock handle on it without thinning it down. It cut like a completely different ax. I felt each stroke much more in my arms and shoulders. I finally took time to tune the handle using the thin original as a template. Made a world of difference in my strokes and stamina in a days work on the challenge. Really appreciate you exploring these topics with us. No scientific proof from me on thin handles except my experience and what my body tells me.
I've never thought about handle thickness this way, but as long as watch the explanation the more obvious it becomes to thin my axe handles more. thank you for your effort to provide such a usefull knowledge
Excellent video. I've seen and held in my hands old handle designs that were done that way for a reason. Falling axes from the 19th century into the early 20th century had thin handles back when people were making a living with the ax. My favorite was a 42" handled felling ax.
The first thing I do when re-handling a ax is thin the shoulders...for flexibility and to remove the sudden stop and bounce back a thick shoulder gives when seating the head.
Well done.
yeah, if you look even on ebay at old axes, there is an obvious difference just with stock handles. And it seems more than likely that high level users and pros were further tuning handles. Why wouldn't they? I was pretty shocked when I started doing youtube years ago and literally could find no one that was tuning up axe handles. I like to think I've changed that bit. I hope so.
@@SkillCult There's a recent video on my channel where I actually took measurements. What is interesting in the old handles is the accuracy of the measurements done strictly by eye....heh...the handle I am doing was close too. Finger sensitivity is not as accurate as a caliper but it can be done.
Sanding???was done with a bit of glass in many cases. I learned a lot as a 16 year old from an old sawyer. HE lost his leg in a cable accident around a steam donkey engine. From 19 years and beyond he worked in the filing shop. What a boundless font of knowledge. He spoke of re-handling an ax and the next evening having it fly through the door of the filing shack.....for another STRAIGHT handle.
I’m a mechanical engineer-and this was a great video. I also design and make tomahawks and really enjoyed your point about “extremes” to illustrate how an axe works as a system. I have a throwing tomahawk-the design is light and throws very fast, so when the axe blade or spike sticks into a wooden target, the deceleration is virtually instant, yet the hickory handle has its own momentum trying to continue spinning forward, and this results in severe shock and vibrations. Your video has me thinking I should shorten and taper down the handle thickness, maybe even reduce the length. Less mass in the handle means less handle momentum and should reduce the shocks and vibrations. I will experiment to see if this prolongs the life of the handle. Best regards.
I think all my tomahawk handle failures have been from getting hit with other tomahawks lol. Hard to say how that will play out I guess. It's such a complex system. I feel pretty unsure how much the mass of the handle maintaining it's momentum really matters, but it certainly seems that it would be a factor. I love that law of extremes. It applies well in so many places to understand and explain things. Cheers.
You are stating in a most articulate manner what I've observed in restoring old axes. I've not seen a single (old) handle that wasn't flexible and graceful in shape exactly as you describe.
Thanks as always!
You can really see the difference just scrolling through old axes on ebay.
Good points for people to consider when shaping a handle and hanging an axe head for the first time. Most hardware store handles can be thinned and reshaped quite a bit.
Couldn't agree more, just through use and my starting with composite handles to factory wood, to thinned and profiled. The way my hands feel after putting in work is all the proof I needed. For what it's worth, we performed these same type of smoothing and profiling operations on some high stress components in race cars to help them live longer.
Couldn't agree more! I made the same progression: composite, to wood, to profiled wood. No comparison. Each step significantly better than the previous.
I think the concepts you discuss are sound. I love how you term "the axe as a system," that is a great. For me, the examples of the extremes make it easier to see the value of the "sweet spot," because it shows the nature of the stress riser as you discuss, but it is also plain to see that too thin of a handle would easily snap along the shaft. Of course the reality is that it is a consideration of differences within the realm of what is actually being produced, and I would tend to agree that the trend has gone the wrong way in the direction of handles being too thick. My favorite axe is a 2 3/4 lb Woodings Verona from the early 90's, made in the USA. By the way, it has almost a perfect wedge-shaped head with just the very slightest contour, and it seems to bind up in wood LESS than the concave axe heads I have. The handle used to be much smaller and I didn't like it mostly because it lacked a palm swell. It broke with a bad over-strike. That was my bad more than it was the handle's fault, but it happened. I found a replacement handle which to me is perfect in terms of grain orientation as well as its contours and thickness. It is thicker than the one that used to be on there, but significantly thinner than the handle of my Husqvarna multi-purpose axe. I like the Husqvarna axe a lot, but I am going to thin out the handle.
yes, I probably should have talked about the handle breaking in the body more, but I think it's self evident that it will eventually become too thin. I don't think it's safe to assume too much about how thin that is though. There is also the user and type of stress applied that would favor certain types of breaks in certain places more.
I agree I have broke lots of oversized axe and hammer handles and I haven't broken any slimmer handles I always assumed that it was due to poor wood quality.
Hey Stephen edholm! I want to give you a sincere thank you for what you do in your chanel, for everything but manily your axe videos,im a young man and have had rheumatism since a young age and your knowledge and energy have helped me alot to further my new intrest in axes and its uses,i love bucking and splitting firewood as its a great pain-reliever from finger to shoulders and neck,for me this is truly amazing and i would not have gotten there if it was not your your videos,its impossible to really express all this in a comment section but i hope you see this and take it to heart that what you do have helped me create a sunrise in my life. For this i cannot thank you enough, as finding strength with this disease is a true maze. My sincere thanks goes to you stephen.
Best regards from sweden,
Dude that's awesome to read. Thanks for sharing. I've got my own issues with autoimmune disease right now and unfortunately, using axes doesn't make it better. I can hardly do any real physical work for a while now. It's a nightmare. unfortunately I think it's slowly becoming the norm to have some level of problems like this as our genetics interface with industrial society. Best of luck to you figuring out more stuff that keeps you functional and helps with pain. I have pain and discomfort, but it's not severe, it's more the fatigue and malaise for me and some neurological stuff. Hugs and high fives buddy. Stay safe out there. :)
Last night the axe handle I was using splintered near the middle. Fortunately just some blood blisters on my fingers and a small cut in my palm.. I was shocked. I did not think this was possible. That break is what led me to your video as I wanted to better educate myself before looking for a new axe. Thanks for the information.
It does happen. Most frequently it's from strong runout of the grain. I can't prove it in any way, but i think the majority of breaks are at the eye. stresses vary though, as do vulnerabilities in the wood.
Hi Steven, I want to start by admitting that I am an absolute beginner when it comes to axe work of any kind. That said, with my life experiences so far at the age of 49, I can totally understand all that you explained in this video. Call it a certain logic or having experienced different things that lend to a basic understanding of flex versus stress, either way, this all makes me feel like I've actually felt the difference between the two examples even though I have not in all actuality. I am prepping my very first axe for bushcrafting now and will be applying this logic as I modify my 24", 1 kg Stihl axe. Thanks for making it so simple!!!
Love your video. I'm learning a lot about axes and off grid culture. Thanks man.
Absolutely right. A person used to using a bad tool wrong will not understand the logic of a proper tool well. It's a tool that requires tremendous skill and practice to use safely and efficiently
Could you do some more felling videos with an axe, especially trees with a difficult lean/lay combination? In any case, thanks for down to earth content.
We'll see. Felling videos by competent fellers are very helpful, though obviously there are major differences and less control when felling with an axe. Leaners can be very dangerous. If in doubt, stay away if there are other options available. Also, I don't consider myself a very competent feller :)
Good advice. Growing up on two hundred acres of land, I’ve fell quite a few trees with a chainsaw, but have only recently been practicing with an axe, and mostly on trees less than 12” in diameter.
I’ve read Cook’s book and found it extremely helpful in theory, but I learn best by seeing or doing. Think about it. Even if you’re not the best, you’ll almost certainly a hell of lot more experienced than most of us.
Amazingly well-structured and detailed video, completely agree with everything in it and you definitely put things together clearly and concisely. Surprising you don't have way more views, dude!
I hear that quite a bit. Not everyone is up for 20 minute geekfests I guess :)
What a great video. Took me hours to find this info, and you communicated it clearly, answering all my questions.
In a world that made more sense, at least hundreds of thousands would have viewed this video. Oh well. Glad you found it though ;)
what you say is right on the money. but I would also like to point out that when you make a thin hand there is less meat so I tend to pay more attention to the grain and make sure the grain threads run from end to end in fact I even take my pattern to the woods and hold it to the trees until I find the perfect piece then bring it home to the saw mill. this is how to get a axe handle that stores can't sell an equal one of
I've been making a few axe handles lately and this is really useful, thanks!
Glad to hear that.
Hi Steven. I won’t look at an axe handle the same way again lol. Thank you for explaining how an axe handle works. I’ve watched many of your videos about axes. As a common guy. I thought an axe was just a length of wood with a lump of iron on the end. Cheers from Australia.
There is much more to axe handles too. The stresses are complex, so I don't think we can compensate for them all. it's just a matter of sort of averaging it out. Cheers.
Great info and demonstration..
I inherited an old double bit axe head, chose a handle with correct direction of grain. It worked well till I used it as a hammer, trying to drive wooded wedges into a log. The handle broke at it's thinnest point, just inside the head. I know I caused the break, that lateral stress being applied to the thinnest part of the handle. Always wondered how much the grain direction added to the issue.
Yeah, very weak in that direction for sure. I doubt the grain had that all much to do with it.
Very well said. I really enjoyed that presentation. The principles you shared are similar to what I teach in my making of fixed blade knives. Thank you.
Interesting.
In essence we need to always address stress risers. They occur everywhere there is flex. I build custom rods. Rod blank breakage occurs at a point anywhere a component is added, like the guides the reel seat. Boat builders/ fiberglass layers, bike frame builders etc etc. And now another perfect example the axe handle. Excellent job bringing this into view.
Yeah, sounds more or less right as a guidline. There can be some pretty drastic ones in axe handles, but I'm generally in favor of minimizing them as a guideline, as long as other function is not compromised. Thanks for weighing in.
I have learned a lot watching your channel. I made my first handle out of some osage orange that I have on my land. the axe head was free as well. There are several negative issues with my work but the handle won't fail anytime soon.. I am satisfied with the gain of knowledge though.
You have to put in the time and go for it to learn. What people are afraid of as failures are more accurately seen as investments in the future. I bet it's gorgeous wood.
Very informative as always! Thanks for the video!
Indeed
Spot on. 📌 I also find a thinner handle let's the axe head do more work so it equals less work for me.
When thinking solely in terms of ergonomics, I have found that the user benefits more from the thinness being at the upper half of the handle. I fit the bottom 10 inches to my own hand and gradually thin leading to the middle to upper part with the thinnest area being right above the mid point. This allows even the most giant hand size to feel comfortable and shape it to their own liking and still get the thinness needed for increased flex and function. When flexing I have found the shock to be absorbed more so when the handle is tuned in this manner rather than the thinnest part being closer to the bottom or bottom half, or even feeling like it has to be thin all the way down. This just from my own experience shaping and tuning a couple hundred handles.
Interesting. I know that if the head is fixed and you push on the end of the handle, given an even thickness, the bend will be greater near the head. For whatever that is worth. Drop in handles, like the basque axes are thicker near the head and gradually thinner. I don't seem to have any problem with thin handles, but my hands are not very big. Thanks for commenting. Always good to hear the voice of experience.
Outstanding presentation Stephen. With over 30 years professional experience as a steel fabricator I can say unequivocally that sharp inside corners are a huge problem. Sharp outside angles (like at the butt end of your handle) are not. Any time that you are cutting into your material square corners are to be avoided. Working in steel, cutting a square inside corner will always stress and crack at the corner. They must be given a radius. The more radius you can engineer into it the better. Thanks for pointing out that the axe is a dangerous tool and no joke. That can't be stressed enough. Chainsaw too.
Danger, Danger.. Never hurts of reiterate.... I don't know the math at all, but I would assume that the strength curve is not linear and that there are diminishing returns, but it does seem fairly obvious that the more gradual transition the better. Thanks for the input.
You would think it's obvious, but I see square cuts and sharp inside corners more often than not. I don't know the math either, but I agree that there are diminishing returns, though typically other design considerations intrude before those are met.
Great video, very informative! Check out the Basque axe handle it is unique and very thing at the point where most axes have a large palm swell it has just a little hook and I have no issues hanging on and have decently large hands.
Drop in handles negate much of the stuff I'm talking about here.
Thank-you for this video! I'm in agreement in regards to slimmer handles performing better, and the bitter pill of breaking/replacing a haft is easier to swallow once the user realizes that handles are consumables. This will be a video that I'll direct people too when they want to have a discussion on handle design.
That being said, I've heard folks that have had no experience with thin handles complain that they're hard to grip effectively. At least with handmade handles, it's completely possible to make a more pronounced palm swell that is easy to hold. It's simple enough to show someone. Take a hardware store handle that's thick and bulky and have them hold it at their side, then relax their grip but don't drop the handle/axe. In many cases they can't. Then hand them a thin handle with a proper palm swell to repeat the test and they can relax their hand to its natural position without dropping the axe. The same concept applies when using the tool. With thick handles you must maintain more pressure at the palm swell to keep control during the swing, but it's rapidly fatiguing. When you're tired, you miss more. A thin handle causes less fatigue, keeping you accurate longer and providing more work before you're spent.
It's fun to see someone notice the difference for the first time.
Great information, super happy that I’m a Patreon supporter ..
I keep doing these deep dives into unprofitable subjects, so I'm glad you are too :). It's nice to feel like I can take the time to do important illustrations and take time to work out long essays on stuff like this. Tanning videos perform a lot better, but I'm hoping this will have a broad ripple effect over time.
SkillCult I sure the information was just about everybody I know I’m not sure how people feel about patron on her supporting your channel but I do what I can and I enjoyed all of your content. PS the strap you made me is super awesome I’ve used it several times.
This concept can be scaled up or down too. I was a custom goldsmith for almost a decade, where I tried fitting a tiny hammer head onto a new handle. I intentionally carved (what I thought was) a "great", tight 90-degree corner just below the eye of the hammer head, and then proudly used the hammer... for a few strokes, until it broke. In my stupidity (or insanity?), I repeated the install process on the now-slightly-shorter (and thicker!) handle. Guess what? Iit quickly broke again. I was stumped, but now I will refit it with these concepts in mind, and I'm guessing it will survive. Thanks! :)
I think that is a great example, because it scales to the other end when using the rule of extremes, opposite of thining of a baseball bat or 2x4. The 90 degree is one thing, and also the total flexibility of the handle. Looking at old hammer handles, they usually have a very skinny waist in the upper 1/3rd or so. That is going to bend a lot and take up much of that back shock energy. I think if you look at really old jewelers hammers, you'll likely find that they have a lot of handle flexibility built in. IF they have the original handles that is! As with axes, newer hammers tend to have closer and closer to just oval chunks of wood for handles. I just checked ebay and there are some old german goldsmith hammers with insanely long skinny shafts. Check them out by serching "tiny hammer" They actually have chunky 90 degree angles and joints up at the eye, but the handle flexibility obviously more than makes up for it. I would guess those handles were made or customized by an experienced crafstman. I think of idealized handles as flexing and distributing stress all the way up to the top of the eye. I don't know how true it is, but it's a helpful way to visualize stress distribution. But they don't necessarily need to if that stress is softened enough somewhere in the design.
Thanks for sharing this information with the Axe Community. Totally agree with the technique points, including what some call "floating the axe"... lighter grip just before strike impact. Can't really control the direction or strike placement at that point, so letting it "float", and then reengaging the grip after the shock gets absorbed, to "catch" the axe handle, and protect your grip or hands from the shock. A hard grip will sometimes be stronger than the handle itself, and the weakest or least resilient part of the system can fail... Thanks again and Axe-on! Peace, Rooster
Also, I think control is almost the wrong attitude. I've noticed that when I'm in the zone, it's almost more like I'm getting out of the way more than I'm steering. A heavy grip on the axe and trying to be too engaged in aiming and adjusting during the swing can easily lead me to less accuracy. And yes, I think a hard grip can allow stresses to stack and play out in the handle between two opposing forces. The Head is super heavy and if the grip is super heavy, the handle in between might be collateral damage. One thing I've been meaning to work into a video somewhere is to propose the idea of thinking about if were to throw our axe into the work not hold on to the handle at all when the axe strikes, how weak would the handle have to be to actually break. It would just whip and flop around playing out the excess energy. I'm not advocating that, but the rule of extremes would contrast that with iron man taking a death grip on an axe and the relatively flimsy handle would be stuck between two powerful intertias. So, yep, I agree that the death grip can increase the likelihood of handle breakage, especially if it is used to try to drive the head into the work when the bit strikes. I think the idea of driving the head with the handle after it hits, and the idea of control and grip are all part of the same misguided assumption about how the system works at it's best. There may be a time and place for that approach, but not much in regular axe work.
@@SkillCult Good conversation, and good content. One of these days, I'll make it out to your neck of the woods. We can compare notes and then turn around and pass it forward... Keep up the good work! Thanks, Rooster
A slender handle is so much more pleasant to use . I agree that the steel edge of the eye against the most narrow point of the handle is the weakest spot .All the wood handled tools I can recall the break started at the eye .only exception was trying to pry a rock out of the ground with a shovel burried into the ground against the rock prying and bending the handle to the breaking point.
it would be interesting to survey breakage type percentages. It seems like the greater number must be near the eye and most of those initiating either where the grain is heavily violated on the back, or right at the bottom of the eye. I know most breaks I've suffered over the years were at or near the eye.
I just made a handle for an axe head with lugs at the base of the eye, it made it so that I couldn't put a shoulder on the sides of the handle to seat the head against. It is pretty heavy at roughly 4 lbs. The resulting handle, based on the width of the eye, is about 3/4", it has a bit of swell on the front and back of the handle to seat against. Have you ever made a handle for a head like that, and if so, did it make much difference? I can still seat it lower in the future if necessary. The flexibility in the handle is pretty amazing, very little vibration when making contact, it is made from black locust. Love the videos, thanks for all the info. Still new to the realm of axes. It all makes a lot of sense and is making all the difference.
Having lugs or "ears" can interfere with seating the head. It either bottoms out and the eye does not seat well, you have to carve out space for them, or the handle, as you said, can't really have much of a shoulder. I think the ideal solution is to thin the lugs so that they taper outward on the inside so when you drive on the head, they just follow the contour of the side shoulders. i did that on my husqvarna forest axe, because it seemed like the best engineering solution to the problem. ruclips.net/video/wuSivairNSg/видео.html I think ideally, they would be made this way and taper to pretty thin at the bottom of the lug. That may not be practical in cheap production work, but it's an easy mod and a small scale, botique or custom maker can do it easily enough. I'm not much of a blacksmith, but I would probably make a drift that had shoulder compensation built in exactly this way, so it could be forged in instead of filed or ground.
Brilliant and your discussion applies to so much more than an axe!
Thanks to Issac Newton, he gave us the tools to examine the forces in an object called newtonia mechanics, which is the basic of today's engineering science. Looking at the ax handle as a cantilever beam sticking out of wall of concrete and you apply a force on the end of the handle, the highest stress point is where the beam exist the wall (or handle exiting the bit). The stress here is called the bending moment, which the bending stress = (Bending Moment times dist from the centroid) divided by the moment of inertia. Since the both have the same eye area, they should break at the same stress. Bending force (properly called Moment Force) is a multiplier (Force times distance) and is the force that breaks most tools. Trying to pull a stuck ax out of a log, I broke a many of ax handles. Being over 250 pounds and over 6 foot, I can swing an ax. But, I tried your approach using a short/ light Ax ( a Fiske with a v shaped bit and sharp) and I am very pleased with the results. Going to try your Chord wood challenge! Real enjoy your videos, there Awesome!
Cool. Even when the head is not fixed, as in when it's stuck, I think the greater density and total mass of the head must create situations where the handle it working against the head in a way similar to a beam sticking out of a wall as you describe, and vice versa with the heavy head bouncing around working against the handle. Me too on breaking handles on stuck axes. That is one of the things that led me to thinking of axe handle breakage and stress distribution in these terms.
Hello from Norway. Good video about axes and I agreed of your opinions. Some of the brakage of the axes comes from bad handling of the axes to. Some wood types who are easier to break if it is used wrong. In Norway we use a lot of ash(ask) or birch(bjørk). It does matter from which part from the tree you make handles to. Birch is best from a straight growing tree and from bottom of the tree. The outer layer of the tree is best here, because of flexibility.
Hultafors brand is a good brand from sweden who are much used in scandinavian parts of the world. WR Norwegian fellow
Yes, I just did some videos on how people break axes by using them forcefully. ruclips.net/video/y-P0rDvok3Q/видео.html Are handles there preferred with the growth rings of the tree running parallell to the axe head, or across it? Or does it depend on the wood?
An intelligent and well communicated discussion, quite geeky, I loved it! I agree completely , I've seen it play out in practice.
Would you consider the use of a distal taper in knife and sword making a similar concept? The concept as I understand it is that the gradual taper in the steel distributes the stress evenly and encourages the steel to bend not break. Therefore it's more resiliant. Just curious on your thoughts.
Great stuff, take care, Wade
...and yes I will check out and sub your blog!
I don't know what distal taper is in a knife. I think there are some broad concepts that can be applied, but they still have to take into account the actual stress applied in use. There is also an obvious compromise between increasing shear strength by increasing dimension and creating load sharing in parts of the knife to compensate for high stress areas and weak points in the design.
If there was a nobel prize in axe knowledge, you should get it!
Probably been mentioned, but one of the biggest benefits in terms of practical use is the improvement in the transfer of shock to the hands when using thinner handles. This is something that is easily observable in an A to B comparison with anyone who has any experience with an axe, or perhaps even no experience. I know the video wasn’t intended to sell ergonomics, but as far as all around benefit, I would think the the lack of shock/vibration or whatever it’s called, would be close to the top of the pros list of thinner handles.
Yeah, I've harped on that a lot in other videos a lot.
Hi Steve, good to see you my friend!!!
Have been thinking of you while all the fires have been going on.
Great explanation of how the handle stresses work!!😀😀👍👍
My favorite axe is a 3 pound Plumb double bit with a very thin handle. The thin handle seems to absorb the shock much better than a thick handle dose.
Hopefully you are feeling better.
Take care my friend!!
Your friend Al.
The fires this time were not close to me. I had to breath smoke for a couple of weeks, but that's all. We were lucky this time, but it's a matter of when, not if.
My axe handle broke yesterday while chopping wood and now I know the problems with my axe handle (it was thick all over and thin at the eye and I was overgripping it) I'll attach a new handle today or tomorrow with these new adjustments and will share the results.
You should take a look at videos of SE Asian sledgehammers. They use a longer handle of whippy material and use the flex to increase the speed and impact. It looks really odd.
I've seen those in a video. Very neat. There is an axe too, look up a video called something like Jungle axe showing a super flexible handle, something like rattan.
Thank you !!! great video refreshing to see actual knowledge and useful information from someone with experience and a coherent thought process on a subject which I find to be extremely rare
(hickory is good Bois dark is better)
Makes excellent sense, thank you.
Hey SkillCult community, isn't the curing of the axe handle a key element of axe handles breaking at the eye? When the axe is cured with linseed or other oil after the head is seated, as is typical, the oil does not propagate into the eye equally as it does throughout the rest of the haft, because the wood in the eye is under compression. Thus the wood in the eye & the rest of the haft will by curing have different physical properties, & this difference may be a cause of breakage at the eye.
I ask this with the acknowledgment that I have only watched a few SC vids, & thus have surely missed out on a lot of the conversation. Apologies if I've missed the boat or failed to pay attention to a relevant segment, but I've recently watched a few vids on various channels on oiling/treating axe handles, & was surprised not to have come across a mention of this issue. Regards, G.M.
That doesn't seem infeasible. It might matter how much the handle is oiled.
Good video.
Thanks a lot. As usual, clear and useful knowledge from the video. On that note, i am wondering if the other way of hanging handles on axes might make better sense. I am referring to some Spanish and Italian axes that use no wedges but slip through the eye of the axe. First, those handles are easier to make and replace. Second, you can have a few handles for the same axe and change them as needed. And thirdly and connected with this video, those handles are necessarily thinner since the whole handle needs to be slimmer than the eye. Typically they thin down smoothly from the very top to the end of the handle rather than increasing in girth near the eye as your typical wedged handle does. I wonder if that way of thinning down makes it even stronger or less prone to breakage. I guess the proof would be in comparing the experience and frequency of breakage in both axes.
can you make a video on a hair on hide
Maybe someday. It's requested a lot.
can you direct me to something helpful
You could take a look at Home tanning of furs and skins by Farnham. You can read it online for free. Download at skillcult.com/freestuff I don't really know what is out there. My friend George Michaud is threatening to write a book, but we'll see.
See some.commemts here about certain axes with bigger eyes. I'd add that many old hand forged axes from Maine have larger eyes as well. It can be tricky to find a handle to fit these eyes though.
That is very interesting. I've not seen any, but you can imagine not many maine axes make it to the west coast. A common argument is that thin eyes were made possible by the magical properties of hickory. I'm not sold on the idea yet, but perhaps a larger eye was used or maintained to use woods like maple and white oak.
Sounds about right. White Ash & Oak were the standard handle materials for the old New England Axes.
My last ax handle split in half long ways, I think it was a defect in the wood. I was wondering if that kind of break was common and what kind of stresses would cause it.
Yeah, that's not super common as far as I've seen. Who knows.
This and your videos on head weight versus velocity were super helpful for me to understand why my 23 oz. framing hammer was so awkward. its a vaughan with a straight handle and they manufacture it with a belly in the middle of the handle where I feel the need to grip it, instead of towards the end, because the head is pretty heavy. I shaved the belly out of it with a block plane so its totally straight and about 1 1/8 x 3/4. more flex now and more natural grip with my finger tips coming around to touch my palm, so my elbow feels a lot better after using it all day. I also took a grinder to the chunkier parts of the head and probably took it down a couple ounces, now wherever I grip the handle the shape is the same so my grip doesn't change and I have more control with the lighter head in whatever position I am swinging. I am wondering if you have videos or know some good videos or information on what handle cross sections are good for different applications - what I mean is if you imagine cutting across the grain where you grip the handle what shape would it be looking at the end grain - oval, rectangular, oxtagonal? I'm a carpenter, and novice firewood gatherer. thanks. -Weston
Hi Weston. I don't have a lot of opinion on cross sections actually. I haven't given it a lot of attention. It would be interesting to look at old hammer handle designs v.s. newer ones to see if there is the same trend toward increasing thickness over high performance. I have a feeling that might be the case, but I haven't paid enough attention. I know that most of the old ball peens I have bought have had very thinned out portions just below the eye.
"Were dealing with real life, not just armchair theory". Dude this is my new favorite channel on Facebook. Love your content Steven. Your like me, to old for bullshit anymore.
wait, old? Who's old?:)
@@SkillCult haha. Well you know what they say. Your only as old as you feel. Which makes me like 65. But keep up the great work man. I love all the content on your channel. Soooo much better than 99% of the other content on RUclips. I can always tell when someone has a wealth of knowledge and intelligence that is guided by experience and trial and error rather than fads and trends. I have shared a lot of your videos of axe content with a few axe groups I'm in on Facebook. Keep it up man!
great video as always, makes perfect sense. If you ever see bow makers they carefully to shave down certain areas so the stress is evenly distributed and the bow does not snap under tension, why should an axe handle be any different?
I wish that analogy had made it into this video. It was actually in my notes, but I managed to forget to hit that talking point on this second video take. I did use it in the blog post though. I think it is one of the better comparisons to draw to help people understand that basic concept of even stress distribution.
I think the basque axes are really the ideal for strength, no shoulder at all with a even taper, less palm swell though. I always forget what to say in my videos, remember after iv'e edited lol
Yes, I said in the blog post that this video and blog post would be mostly unnecessary if we had stayed with that primal axe style.
A flaw I notice in axe handle design is that at the shoulder where the shape defies the grain, it’s offset entirely to one side. Making this deviation more extreme. From handling other eyed tools it would make more sense to me if the shoulder was symmetrical to make the deviation less extreme and the handle overall stronger.
Is the purpose of the offset shoulder just to better facilitate the curve of an axe handle?
That's an interesting question or angle because it begs more questions. Obviously double bit axes have that kind of configuration. If we subscribe to the balance improvement theory of poll axes, it would mess with balance to have a straight handle that has a cut across the grain at both the front and back. I'm not saying I do, but it would definitely affect balance. Another point is that the back of the axe handle may be stronger in that direction, because it's wider than the front edge of the eye/handle. Of course double bit axes essentially have that kind of configuration, but it would interesting to know if they are any more likely to break on the front side when chopping than on poll axes where the handle comes more straight or barely curved out of the eye at the front. I've always preferred to have the narrow front edge of the handle come more or less straight out of the eye, because I consider it very vulnerable. The main use of the axe is using the bit to chop and split and the pressure applied to the bit should cause the handle at the front edge to stretch, while the back side is compressed. Then again, if pounding with the axe, that vulnerable cutaway at the back of the handle would be under stretch. But again, it is a lot fatter and might be less likely to split along the grain because of that. Somehow the idea of cutting away both sides doesn't really sit right with me, but I'm not sure there aren't more reasons. I certainly don't recall seeing it on many poll axes, if any, but of course that doesn't mean it's not a sound idea.
SkillCult it certainly is a lot to think about. I’ve wondered if it may even be better if the offset were reversed so that the grain coming from the thickest portion of the eye was uninterrupted leading into the handle, though I definitely see your point about the thinner front portion needing added strength as well.
Having learned to swing with hammers first I greatly prefer straight handles (my most used axe is a double bit), I’ve got a couple nearly identical old Connecticut pattern axes I need to fix/handle. I think I may put a curved handle on one and a straight handle with a symmetrical shoulder on the other and see how they preform. Especially since the conni is a particularly poll heavy axe.
Good stuff. It maybe makes a case for doing what you did on the Husqvarna (I think?) where you were rounding over the inside edge of the eye before putting the head back on. I thought that was a really interesting idea, to potentially reduce the stress concentration. It certainly seemed like a good idea to try.
But all this talk of handle breakage is clearly not as important as how fine a grit you use when polishing, and what wood you use for a wedge to get a cool contrast picture for Instagram. Don't you pay any attention to Axe Junkies?
Well, at least not having a sharp edge, but I have given some thought to more radical versions of that. I think if one approached the eye more from an engineering standpoint, it might end up looking and functioning quite a bit different than the average axe, or possible any axe. I have some ideas brewing, but carrying them out is another thing.
If I understand you correctly, your main point is that a thicker handle will break more easily because of the stress concentration and the additional mass along the handle.
You're partially right in your asessment that the additional mass will facilitate greater vibration in the dynamic scenario, but I want to add that the increase in cross-sectional area will more than make up for this. The stiffness increases more than enough to make up for the added mass.
I'm sure you've experienced this, as a thicker handle will more easily transfer the vibrations to your hand/arm/shoulder.
As for the point about the stress concentrations, this is also partially correct. But you are using a simplified explanation of stress concentration in an isotropic material. The truth is that wood is not isotropic, and has an important layered grain structure that you willingly neglected in the beginning of the video. This grain structure actually matters (as I'm sure you know from your work).
You said you weren't willing to prove your theory. That's ok because this kind of math can get so tedious and academic it's east to loose track of what's being proved. But if you could show physical examples of broken handles with pictures of the breakage pattern then that would go a long way for the comparison of thick vs. thin handles.
Other than that I agree with what you're saying and it is unfortunate if consumer culture has a negative impact on our tool designs.
Edit: Also I would like to know your opinion on the fiskars axe with the hollow fiberglass handle?
I think it's garbage.
I think it is a very complex problem. For one thing, the handle is thinner in one direction, and stresses can vary a lot, the most drastic example being side to side, v.s. front to back. I don't really follow on the thickness and vibration. My take is that when high force is applied, the wood wants to flex and it will "try" to flex, but it can only flex a lot at the thinnest point. That doesn't account for a lot of potential variables, but trying to map them all out and prove them with math and controlled studies seems like a waste of time, v.s. chopping more. And I'm not at all confident it would yield very practically useful results anyway. Regardless, thin handles are very usable and there are other reasons to use them. In my experience, they don't break more easily, and if anything less. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
I wonder how well tape holds up if its wrapped near the head of an axe. Could duct tape or some kind of rubber tape reinforce or ease the stress that travels through the handle at all in the long term? I always thought it was aesthetic or for better grip, never really looked into any properties that dampen any of the recoil or shock that travels through it.
Tape can help a lot in holding the wood together so that it doesn't fail under stress. That can be especially useful below the eye where stress is high and the wood fibers are often damaged by overstrikes. If I use anything, I prefer to use thin rawhide. But tape works.
That logical extreme scenario where you set out to break a handle was fire. I'm going to try to generate some discussion in the r/axecraft because I think this should be more prevalent. All my buddies have factory handles that are thick as donkey dongs and I lack the knowledge and energy to convince them to shave them down. But I'm glad I know.
I use that rule of extremes thing a lot. It's incredibly useful in all sorts of scenarios. The more I use it, the more I like it. I've gotten a lot of comments on you shaving down our gransfors handle in that one video lol.
@@SkillCult I'll guess the comments are negative. No one likes to see a masterpiece defaced lol. I use the extremes with the kids, it conveys the point clearly and helps them develop a framework for imagining potential outcomes.
I am new at tanning and attempting to tan my first deer hide. I don't have much land like you do. Do you think garden mulch would work for tanning a hide. If so do you have any recommendations for selecting it. If not do you know a decent commercial tanning solution for making brown hairless leather out of a deerskin. Thank you!
it's possible, but it depends on what species, bark or wood, how much it's been rained on or rotted etc. You will probably have to cook two or more batches in a row in the same water to get it strong enough, but again it depends on a lot of things. See my recent vid on tanning materials. There may be more around you than you think. ruclips.net/video/gbD2h3g0_Nc/видео.html
@@SkillCult Ok thank you very much. I will try and see if I can find any ingredients in my area, and if not I'll try the multiple batch idea.
That looks like a fine axe and handle! ;-)
I have a 2x2 (1 1/2 inches) Red oak stick about 7 feet long that I screwed up while woodworking that I use as a big prybar and it's tougher than it looks. And when you look at a wooden shovel it's about that thickness too and if you ever used a 6 foot spade you know you can pull on that handle pretty hard before it will snap. Even a shop broom is pretty tough I have snapped a few of those and it took a beating.
What I am trying to say is that wood is tougher than it looks. Especially kin dried hard lumber like ash and oak and maple so why not shape it to something that feels good in the hands. Worst case is that it will break on impact and you will feel it right away when that will happen and don't go hard with a sharp tool until you know how to handle it.
What’re your feeling towards the Basque style axes? Logic would dictate that a slip fit would remedy this problem almost entirely. I know their design isn’t valid in this conversation but it’s a simple solution to what could be a simple problem.
They clearly do not have many of the same problems or at least not to the same degree. This video would be pretty much unnecessary if that design had been stuck to. I don't have the experience using them to say much though. It seems unlikely that this more problematic system, more difficult to haft, to remove broken handles, to make handles, and propensity for coming loose, more drastic violation of grain and more variability in the parts of the handle that lead to poor stress distribution were all made for no good reason. Are the reasons good enough? can't say. I mentioned them in the blog post, but the main point is that they avoid almost all of the problems I'm talking about.
SkillCult You caught me! I’m now subscribed to the blog :) I’ve used it as a reference several times but didn’t think to subscribe for one reason or the other. “Infotainment” took over without me realizing as I once was an advocate for blogging.. ooff. As far as the reasons why we evolved from this design, I honestly don’t know. I would like to believe this was brought on by advancement in engineering and not industry it’s often the ladder. I’m certain you have your reasons for not using the basque axe you own but it will be my weapon of choice for next years cordwood challenge. Which I will cover why in a future video on my newborn youtube channel.
@@seff2318 I just haven't got around to it yet. I didn't get to do a lot of chopping last year. Looking forward to giving it a good trial though sometime. See ou in blog email land :)
Just checked the blog and realized you already commented on the issue of Basque handles. Ignore my comment them and just refer to the blog. By the way, yes the handle of those basque handles is beech and the reason is because competitors (some of those axes are used for international competitions) reported that beech wood heats less when they are competing. Not very relevant for the average user since we are not going to attempt to cut a log under 90 seconds, but I have one and works and holds just fine.
It's an interesting question. It's hard to believe that the ancient form of axe with drop in friction fit handle was abandoned for no good reason. Clearly if you watch Basque axemen at work, they are highly functional axes, but a slew of problems were created by evolving toward bottom fit wedged handles.
Your use of "common sense" is refreshing. The response is "it makes sense." chuckleCould you some time revisit axe profiles. Looking at a couple of 3 1/2 # axe heads, an inexpensive Canadian pattern Garant and a Hulks Bruk Montreal pattern there is quite a difference in profile.. The Hulks Bruk I bought in the late '70s when I moved to northern BC for $45.
We'll see. It's a complicated issue that I don't feel like I have a really good grasp on, but there are some fundamental things that should always be in the conversation.
In my country, Montenegro, we use axes with a much larger triangular shape eye. The handle biger at the top and is placed through eye of the axe. Much stronger, more resistant than american axes. Did you ever come across on big bearded axe with wide eye?
I've seen some axes from that area, but not in person. They are very rare here unless imported recently.
@@SkillCult Tnx for reply, I appreciate it. I will be great to have opinion from scientist/engineer mind set such as yours on this axe design. If you come across with something like that, please mention is some future videos. Keep a good job with youtube channel!
It seems this is a problem of perceived quality, and how the average person purchases an axe at the store. 95%+ of people do not use their axes as often or thoroughly as people watching this video. So when an average person sees a thin handle versus thick they grip both and perceive the thick one as “better” or more manly and vote with their money. This then incentivizes the companies to add larger handles because that is what people are buying. People buy thicker then the companies make them thicker. The cycle continues and the consumer loses out and doesn’t realizes it unless they use the axe a lot to notice.
Great video! A lot of well thought points, but thought this one was an economic point that wasn’t addressed.
I think there's also the manufacturing of the head itself are an issue. It's like they put on a super thick handle in order to get away with a super sharp bottom of the axe head at the eye. One step in the manufacturing is one less family to feed and if you don't need to ground the bottom edge of the eye then that could save the company 50 to 70k a year.
It's one of those things in the throw it out mentality that we live in also that they almost want the axes to break in a few years and sooner with poor execution.
Built in obsolescence doesn't seem out of the question. Also, people expect junk these days and often won't complain or return things. I hope that is changing with the internet and more reviewing and returning happening.
@@SkillCult - Not sure about that at all. The internet is filled with people that have no clue what they are doing yet have millions of subscriber. Especially in my trade woodworking. There's a guy out there that was working out of his basement and he was doing cool stuff so what ever then I see him do an error that nobody that works with wood for a week would do. Like probably the most dangerous thing you can do on a table saw that people learn quickly never to do.
Leave a comment on how dangerous it was and I got blasted by like 200 people saying that I didn't know shit.
THen there's a guy Charles Neil the guy is probably the one of the best woodworkers in the USA and he ends up with like 40 views on his videos.
thanks again awesome
Hi Steve, any thoughts on some of the european handles, particularly german handles where the back of the eye is square and whether it makes any difference to the handle strength/resilience?
Oh yes, I'm quite sure that it does make a difference in shear strength. But not as much of a race car as the American axes. The usual narrative is that there were such a ridiculous amount of trees to cut here that axes were refined to be higher performing. I imagine too that it had something to do with the mentality of the settlers rejecting tradition and being increasingly more about invention than tradition. Yankee ingenuity and all that.
I don't think there is much flexibility even in the relatively thinner handles. Why? From bowyer's bible: double the width = double the strength, double the thickness = cube the strength of the wood. Thinner handles aren't really thin enough for noticeable flex. This is testable. Put two axes into a stump, side by side. Try to flex both laterally in any direction. The thick handles are like overbuilt bows...way too much strength capacity, never gets tapped. Handle breaks at the wood-steel hinge as you expertly explained way before the wood can flex much. Thinner handles same problem. That hinge will give way before that relatively thicker (but still thinner than the THICK handle) segment of the THINNER handle. I have a Rinaldi polless axe from Baryonyx Knife. It is pretty straight down from the eye. It doesn't flex perceptibly at all. You couldn't really see the flex. I don't feel a flex. So if it flexes, it does so slightly? I'm probably wrong but stupidly believe I am not. I do think the stresses are much better distributed with gradual transitions. I would even go as far as to say the handle should be unbroken wood fiber all the way from tip to tip following a single growth ring in hardwood just like a bow.
My biggest question is: what if the handle was whip-like thin and we added filler to the eye to an underbuilt eye wood section to fill the axe eye and built a riser ring just under the head for added strength? Perhaps we could glue on flax or milkweed fiber or sinew/rawhide? Would the reduced mass of the handle lead to different blade flight characteristics? Maybe there is a point of no return when the handle is too thin? I'm thinking it would be cool to get an axe to efficiently accelerate by lower the handle mass.
Is there a hatchet that is under $100 that you would recommend
I haven't seen most of what's on the market.
No worries thanks for the videos I learned a lot
The information on handle thickness is especially helpful and makes sense
I was chopping wood with a new axe and it snapped by the axe head eye, why would this happen?
For every reason in this video, but also from weak wood. It is not uncommon to get hickory, ash and other woods that have been attacked by fungus. It is not obvious, but makes the wood brittle so that it snaps across like chalk. If that happens and it's not very splinttery, that is probably the issue. If it is splitting down at a long angle it's probably just breaking along the grain.
I believe the eye of an ax is shaped as it is because how they where made during the old days. By folding an section iron flat bar and forge welding a bit of high carbon steel for the blade (check out Peter Ross a historical Blacksmith). The iron just wants to make this shape when folded. According to Roy Underhill, the poll of an ax is an American invention because the Europeans did not have the Hickory Tree, which required the extra mass to chop it. I believe you hit the nail on the head concerning the ergonomics of a slender handle. The Maddox has a large eye and is mentioned in the bible which illustrates it's been around a long time, but, it doesn't feel right if you need to choke up on the handle, and takes away the multi-usefulness of the tool, which is common for western culture. The stone ax was a multipurpose tool that could be removed from the handle, used as a chisel, plus the handle had a wedge on the end for bark removal , and, furthermore, the handle could be used as a hammer (4 in 1). The stone ax dates back to 600 years ago, which isn't a very long time. I'll make a ax using stone age technology but use steel instead of rock and let you know how it works.
I suppose it does tend toward a teardrop shape from forge welding a wrapped eye, but it can still be drifted out into pretty much any shape. I'm not buying Underhill's theory on that. There are heavy axes with no poll.
Yes, you can drift the eye to any shape, but, it takes a lot of work. They were getting paid by the unit, and, it's human nature to take the least path of resistance. Iron is a tough martial to shape. I have a forge and it's remarkable how much effort it takes to drift something by hand. A press makes easy work of it, but, them old timers didn't have machinery. Interesting though, the shape works out from a mechanics of materials point of view. Wood is stronger in tension than in compression, which is different from metal which is normally equal in both tension and compression. During the normal chopping swing, the egg shape of the eye has less cross sectional area on the tension side and more area on the compression side. Even when the ax is stuck and you yank up on the handle, the bottom side is still in tension and top in compression. Serendipitous or by design? I think it's just like the way the pyramids built in Egypt, trial and error. The poorly designed ones don't last the test of time! Someone figures out a better mouse trap (faster, cheaper, and better) then it's copy and past down the line of time..
I don't know but Roy might have it right. Like you have said, the experienced woodsman used a small ax head with a slender handle for accuracy. There where used the multipurpose tool ie building shelters , setting snares and chopping wood. The name of the game is making chips, right? Looking at the properties of Hickory, it has a remarkable higher Modulus of Elasticity and compression strength, which may have been the driver for something new. Plus, I have a very cool book you would probably like. "Museum of Early American Tools" by Eric Sloane. He gives an Illustration of the 1600's British and German and shows the polls did't start to appear in the 1715's and are Anglo American. He shows many Tanners tools, as well!
Thanks Steven. I think if the axe is used as it was designed to do it should last a very long time. Any tool (most) that is used for other things will not last as long. The demo you showed for lateral abuse is not what the axe was designed for, but I get your point. I do understand that the axe is used for splitting firewood, but was it designed for that purpose? If we look at a true splitting maul we see a different eye in the head that takes a completely different handle shape, a head and handle shape designed for the purpose of downward force. Is the handle of a splitting maul stronger than an axe handle? My guess is much stronger. More to say but I don't type well!
An axe and handle may not be designed for high lateral stress on a regular basis when used as intended, but it may very well be evolved to deal with incidental lateral stress, which is very common. The main incidental causes of lateral stress I see are side impacts in bucking and felling and they can also be quite high in limbing if the log is struck ahead of the limb by bad aim. I see side impact type of stress to be less common in splitting. I measured some mauls and sledges for the blog post. They are consistently 1 inch or more wide, where most full sized american axes are about 3/4 and boy's axes more like 5/8. And they are somewhat oval, so a bit longer in the bit to poll dimension. Since there is not issue with keeping the heads thin, they can afford to have wide eye, which would partially compensate for the smaller front to back dimension. The other difference is that they don't usually stick as hard due to the shape and one of the highest stresses applied to an axe handle it wrenching it free from a cut, and the hardest sticks are usually in splitting. I would think that the splitting maul is a fairly recent invention, or at least recently popular. materially poorer people would use what they could afford, which was probably often a single worn down axe that did everything. Whether a maul handle is stronger might depend on what direction and what stress is applied. It clearly has more shear strength in the side to side direction, but I'm not so sure about the bit to poll direction. And we have to account for the heavier head applying more stress to the handle with it's greater inertia. I got tired of breaking them and bought a fiberglass handle for my sledge, which would have broken a dozen times the way I use it lol. I love that fiberglass handle! :)
Also, a thinner handle will allow you to wear gloves more comfortably and effectively.....Awesome vid
That sharp angle allows the wood to know where to fracture/split up into the eye. We want to confuse the wood so it doesn't know where to break. The old saying "a bull in a china store" can easily apply to an axe handle, know it limits, don't just crash it into the tree, it needs care. I will offer a reason they are making the handles thicker, it might be bunk but fun all the same, they want them to break, sell more axes, and handles, its good for business. We all know axe handles break, they will, they now make them to break even easier. Planned obsolescence They did the same with the incandescent light bulbs, and sawmills, look at Woodmizer and all the little gizmos it needs, they are designed to wear out after so many repetitions. .Its the way of today. Back in the day when they were really chopping trees down they wouldn't tolerated fat handles. I really needed a good axe handle talk video, made for a great finish to the day.
I buy a ton of lumber from sawmills. Guess what they don't use 3000$ sawmills. You can't even get a decent trailer for that price do you really think a decent sawmill that is essentially it's own trailer would be that price??? In the end you get what you pay for and you can't say that a 3000$ sawmill is compatible to a 100 000 sawmill like the ones that the people that do it for a living have.
As for the axe handle. They build them to sell them. If a guy walks into a hardware store and sees a 100$ axe and a 50$ axe and the cheap one has a thicker handle than the expensive one he is going to wonder why its so darn expensive. An average Joe going camping with friends will buy the name brand heavy duty axe. If you use the axe and had one break you would know that it breaks ether flush with the eye or in line with it so why would you need a handle that is bigger than the head and it's just feels better in the hands.
I wouldn't rule out that built in obsolescence might factor in some cases, but I think it is in many cases due to not understanding the problem well. Axe manufacturers either need to be axe users, employ or consult with users, or stick with tried designs and not change them.
@@answeris4217 Have you priced Woodmizer lately? some reach into the $60.000 + range. My mill was $16,000, 25 years ago.
@@SkillCult Craig Roost on the Axe Junkies is working with Council Tool on axe design.
@@timberdoodles4647 - I paid almost 20 000$ a few months ago for a trailer. Trust me 60K is cheap for industrial equipment. A person that is using this day in and day out will pay between 200K to 1 million dollars for a quality machine. Maybe more.
I can buy a F150 for 60K.
drive the heads in real deep... good stuff....
i think its just cuz there using more and more crap wood with poor grain so the thicker handle makes up for that.
That may be true. Thin handles are more likely to warp after being milled as well.
It's gotta be cheaper too; I'm sure the a lot of machine automation cutting out handles and having them generally thicker reduces margin of error. Im fine thinning the handle out within reason, id like to see them get fitted properly
Steven, I want objective proof that you're not a scientist! :P My hands are very large four and a half inches across at the knuckles 10 in from the heel of my hand to the tip of my middle finger and there is no way I would take one of these new Chinese axe handles that has a circumference of 4 1/2" over an old North American made 2 3/4"...
Good luck with that :). Woowza dude, those are some serious mitts! Don't sweat that seed money, I'm never going to get around to figuring it out. I can't remember what I sent who or whatever. If you want to paypal me something to cover shipping, that would be helpful. I think is was just under 10.00 US.
@@SkillCult I sent you $35Cdn. as far as I can remember, that should cover Jeff & I.
@@trollforge Okay, thanks. That will come in handy right about now.
How to fix wooden axe throwing hatchets not to break
don't throw them :)
Hi Steven, we appreciate all you do, can i post your turn of century and recorded writings on coal dust land improvement on STOP THE CRIME.NET for the solutions website? Deborah Tavares and myself believe more removal of brush and dead wood are a proactive approach to wildfire suppression. She asked for the best presentation on making /using biochar and you've done it.
Yeah, no problem. Sharing is good....
I tend to believe that there may be some manufacturing design compensation happening perhaps in part to what I perceive as the continued introduction of poorer and poorer wood handle material. It really is hard to find new axes fitted with proper handles, as well as finding proper replacement handles. Grain orientation is often ignored, there's heavy figuring present, and often accompanied by too much heartwood. I imagine that with less than ideal wood, there are just too many rejects that come off the shaping machines when attempting delicate profiles...and some simple office folk opted for thicker designs. That's my tinfoil hat theory anyway.
Unfortunately profit margins win over sound engineering.
I think you are probably right on the wood quality. A straight grained piece of quality hickory is much less likely to break in the handle body than a weak piece with strong runout, knots or a large proportion of brittle heartwood.
Another factor is that the more the wood is thinned, the more likely it is to warp after milling.
A crappy piece of wood, with aberrant grain and internal tension is much more likely to twist and warp once milled out of the confines of a larger dimension of wood.
sounds like folks should be tillering there axe handles. I’m not a scientist ether but rumour has it bows can withstand lots of stress/compression/shock.
That is more or less what I'm proposing I suppose. I always flex test handles with the three finger flex test when I'm fine tuning them. It's not a perfect analogy to compare to bows, but it's very useful. I actually had a section talking about bows in the first take of this video, but managed to forget it the second time through. It's in the blog post though.
Do not use wood that has tiger sripe grain. It will rip because of inherent weakness.
I’d like to see a side by side slow motion axe strike. Thin vs. Thick. Down the RUclips hole I go.
I've definitely thought of that to study axe handle flex and also mechanics of chopping and splitting. I actually just sold my camera that did high frame rates, but it was still only 120 frames per second, which is pretty good, but 240 or higher would be better. That 120fps is the only reason I almost kept it.
Stihl axes have that horrible handle design. After messing with quite a few handles other than make your own, council tool handles are my favorite. They still need thinning but come the closest
I tried my friends stihl splitting axe it felt horrible it was like holding the wrong end of a baseball bat! I have never tried a council tool axe, the first axe I bought was gransfors Burks and I really like them all my work axes are granfors.
I like the profile of council tools and they are thin enough to use out of the box. I prefer to take quite a bit off too, but they are good. Probalby because they have been making the same handles continuously for a long time with no interruptions.
opps let's make an ax-cident at the 6 minute mark - was this pun an accident? lol
Actually don't think it was. I should have said mistake, dunno... It was an axeident.
Good
i never heard of an axe breaking. very rarely. if it happens so what replace it and go on. why so much fuss about axe handles? i think american axes break because they are all twisted up like that. try making it straight and slightly tapered towards the end of the handle. american ones dont break all that often either I think.
People break them all the time. Maybe we are all completely incompetent. The type of breakage addressed in this video has almost nothing to do with whether the handle is curved or not.
@@SkillCult you should do some leather videos.
Dumb question warning: couldn't they just make the eye less thin?
Increasing the size of the eye to match the handle size increases the size of the head, if the handle is twice the thickness, the eye and therefore the head needs to be twice the size and twice the weight. Do you want to use an overweight axe all day?
@@sunshaker01 fair point
For sure. I mention that in the blog post. The interesting question is why did American axes evolve to the configuration we have now, which basically pushes the practical limits of the handle material by making the eye just about as small as can reasonably be gotten away with? European axes on the american patterns usually have larger eyes, and remain practically the same weight. The difference might seem small, but it does make a difference. If you look at the eye size on the gransfors axes v.s. an American axe of the same weight, the difference can be significant.
@@SkillCult I live in italy and I can confirm this 100%
🙄
I couldn't disagree with you more. Don't be careful for fear of injuring your leg. Or as I like to say giving yourself a pirate swagger, a manly scar, and a party story about how you could have gone pro if it weren't for that freakish lumberjacking axe injury! So go for it, fortune favors the bold and I will take an axe wound over a chainsaw mishap or my name's not "Lucky Oops Lefty"
Holy cow. It says no views. Am I the first?!?!?
I guess so :)
Holy cow. There's a first time for everything, I guess. 😅
You make a lot of sense with everything I've ever seen you upload - so thank you for that. Things that make me stop the video half way through to think about, and really wrap my brain around. Thanks again for all the time and effort you put into all this!