Axe Handle Guard | Fastest, Easiest, Least Expensive, and Strong DIY Method!

welcome back to the channel today we're going to teach you how to make the fastest simplest easiest axe handle collar that you can possibly make to prevent issues like this [Music] now what this is is damage from what's called an over strike which is basically just missing what you're trying to chop missing the piece of wood and hitting the axe handle itself instead of on the blade of the axe now this happens to me on all different sizes of axes this is my marble small camp axe and you can see i over strike with it and this is my chopping axe this is the cold steel trail boss 23 inch handle so i do it with both of them i also do it with my maul and my sledge hammer now there are three common reasons that damage happens like this one you're inexperienced you just don't know how to use the axe properly and that kind of couples with reason two which is the wrong technique and number three you're tired you've been swinging the axe all day and your aim is just off because your muscles are just done so for me it's usually a combination of the three i'm not an axeman i'm not a bush crafter and i haven't done a lot of chopping in my life although i've done some and now i'm having to do more since i have a wood stove there are plenty of videos out there to show you the proper technique one of the best is coal cracker bushcraft he does a great job at explaining things in his videos now the most common type of over strike is when you come down over the top of the log and you're too far and you hit the handle like that over strikes can also happen if you have a glancing blow like this you come down over the log in a glancing blow and it hits that's probably what i did in this instance this is how you want to hit the log from the center outward you don't want to hit the log in here like this either because once this goes through you are going to hit your handle on this portion of the wood right here so there are four types of materials that are commonly used as an overstrike color on an axe or a swinging hand tool one of those is some sort of metal leather some sort of plastic or some sort of cordage in my opinion the cordage is the easiest fastest and simplest way to make that strike color and you can easily replace it if you need to leather work is fun and it makes a nice collar but it's much more labor intensive as is the metal wranglerstar does a really nice over strike collar on his hand tools but in my opinion it's just way slower and way more labor intensive so the two best pieces of cordage to use for this project are 550 paracord or number 36 bank line i don't have any bank line so we're going to use paracore today you can also use jute to wind but make sure it's a thicker jute twine this one is a four millimeter juke twine now the jute isn't quite as durable as it frays a lot but it's easily replaced and extremely inexpensive you can also use a really tough contractor's twine which is this string here which is used to string up forms it's very very tough but it's going to take you a lot longer because it's a lot thinner now let's show you how to make that collar with the paracord so if you have a protective sheath that is on your axe head and has a strap that comes around the back you want to make sure you adjust your protective ax handle collar to not interfere with that as you can see in our case we made this sheath a couple years ago if you want to see that video check at the top of the screen but this one just sits on the edge of the axe head and doesn't fall off no need for a strap it will not come off now for us we're going to be using the paracord and for a four to five inch collar on your axe handle you're going to need about 15 feet of paracord if you use a thinner cordage then obviously you're going to need more what will also determine that is the thickness of your handle so what i found helpful is when you melt the end of your cordage you want to flatten it as much as possible and you'll see why in a few minutes so what you're going to do first is make about a six inch bite in your quarters you're going to leave about an inch sticking up out of where the end of the collar is going to be hold it with your finger in place and start wrapping it around keeping it as tight as possible is also going to help you when we get to the end once you're at a certain point it's going to start to hold itself now make sure that bite that you made stays on the side of the ax handle throughout the entire process so here's a little trick when you get to the end you want to have about an inch of cordage left over what we're going to do is put that through the remainder of our loop now while you're doing this you can continually kind of massage it into place and tighten it up cinch it up where you need to from there we're going to take our leatherman or just a regular pair of pliers and we were going to pull on this top portion here and we're going to pull this little tail underneath all of this cordage underneath the collar try to pull it about an inch underneath your collar now we can trim this piece off to about a half an inch and then secure it with our lighter and that's it here is our collar super fast super simple and super easy you can use it just like this or you can take it one step further and make it a more monolithic piece let me show you how to do that and we're going to do that with this gorilla brand super glue make sure when you're playing with super glue you've got protection so just take your glue take the top off and we're going to pour it down onto our collar we're going to move it around with our glove and we're going to get it into all the cracks and crevices what that's going to do is when it cures in about eight hours it's going to make this hard shell around it it's also going to fuse everything together because the paracord is made from nylon so super glue will melt that you don't want too much on here but you want it to start to fuse the paracord together and soak into the wood a little bit got it nice work we hope that was helpful for you now i'm going to show her how to do it now go check out this video right here which shows you how to not get ripped off when buying firewood bye you

Channel: Country Living Experience: A Homesteading Journey

Views: 37,646

Keywords: axe handle guard, Axe Handle Guard | Fastest Easiest Least Expensive and Strong DIY Method!, diy axe handle guard, leather axe handle guard, paracord axe handle guard, axe handle, axe handle wrap, how to replace axe handle, leather axe handle protector, leather axe handle wrap, handle, axe junkies, bushcraft axe, how to handle axe, paracord handle wrap, splitting axe, a better way to split firewood, leather, paracord, paracord wrap, splitting maul

Id: LROvFQ3haFc

Length: 7min 26sec (446 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021