Axes and Beyond

hi essential craftsmen thanks for coming back axes have lately enjoyed a resurgence of popularity and they become collectible there would be a question perhaps of why a double bed axe or why a single bit axe they have different strengths and weaknesses a single bed act is also a hammer it makes it the most useful tool you can have in the wilderness if you've got to pick one tool to have with you if you're going to be stranded in a wilderness environment it needs to be an axe it's a weapon it will drive stakes it acts as a hammer it will cut you can use it for skinning and gutting game if you need to it's the versatile tool if you are a woodcutter if you're falling timber a double-bedded axe gives you the luxury of having one edge that's to be kept razor-sharp at all times and one adds this to be used if you know you're going to be working in close proximity to the ground thereby in danger of dulling your tool you keep track of that by flattening or putting a small notch on at the end of the axe handle on either the doll or the sharp side just so you can keep track of it so without looking down you know whether or not the perpetually sharp edge or the dull ball expendable sacrificial edge is in close contact with the ground so that the transition can be made in mid-stroke without stopping to look this is an olympic-style falling axe the extended bits the narrowness of the bit was developed to reach through the thick bark on the Douglas fir trees on the Olympic Peninsula and the redwood trees in Northern California Southern Oregon this hatchet is flat on this side so you can hew a flat line raising the chips it's sort of a chisel on a handle essentially like a broad axe a brush axe I guess that's obvious but small fines and small diameter pieces that yield to the blow are hooked and cut off I can tell you from using ones as a kid these are miserable similar in appearance different in purpose from a Pulaski this is developed for cutting fire trail you can chop and you can grub handy tool in in construction concrete forming this is an under cutter when our forefathers were logging the forests they had not yet figured out that the undercut which directs the fall of the tree could be cut out in a pie shape and section part of the reason for that was a crosscut saw was so hard to make cut uphill so they would cut two parallel slices to orient the direction of the fall once the slices were cut into the tree this under cutter was used as a chisel on a handle to chop the face out an under cutter this is a log brand this is actually our family's log brand I grew up logging my dad was a logger and a mill worker this is how logs are identified before they were put on a truck when logging with less mechanized than it is now though it is still part of the industry my dad and mom and my brother and sister and I have been devoutly Christian and this signified the mark that was understood to have been sort of code for the Christians in the primitive church it was my dad's choice for his logging brento so here are examples of two two chopping tools that can be used for the same purpose but are not intended for the same purpose this is a boys X it is Swedish a nice little axe on a beautiful old handle for chopping wood this is a splitting maul 8 pounds it is not for chopping it's for splitting step back NATO split that I hope yeah so there's nothing sharp about this it's for bruising and pushing apart splitting maul eight pounder this is a picker room intended entirely for drawing wood toward you like this yeah this is a monster Maul it is a modern adaptation of a splitting maul for the record I hate it the pipe handle is lifeless in my hand I do not think that that severe triangle is any better it feels bad but I never was able to break the handle out of this thing for my dad and he appreciated that but these are just better they're graceful they feel good in your hand the handles longer now I will have perhaps have some object but they like a monster Maul you're welcome to them splitting wedge you get a piece that just won't split start it in use the back of the splitting maul keep in mind as it upsets and those edges become less and less attached to the wedge at some point they will come off sometimes at high velocity one final type of axe this is a wire X this is what loggers used before they had cutting torches you would take a double bit attacks it was entirely sacrificial stick it slightly cross-grained into a piece of wood hopefully on a knot lay the cable across the edge of the double bit attacks and then simply chop onto the cable onto the double bit attack you can see how soft that is that's probably pretty much pure wrought iron way softer than the carbon steel cutting edge of the axe and that double bit would cut the cable propelled by the wire ax nothing to it at the 7/8 inch diameter winch line off a d6 cat long live the cutting torch a wood slick is like that carpenters hatchet we were talking about where the cutting surface is in a plane all the way out on one side with the handle tipped out of that plane so it can essentially be used as a plane rather than a chisel to smooth upright to a vertical face wood chisels are great tools it should have a handle about 24 inches long froze I seem to have four or five this is a tool for splitting shakes visualize a shake bolt Western redcedar out here the fro is placed at the edge of the block it is driven in with the wooden club or mallet until the fro is embedded about halfway and then you twist and split off the shape here are some tools which are entirely agricultural and not lumbering these are the blades to size for mowing grass or drain we hae think of mowing hay field with these I have seven still on handles I'll show you in a minute this is a hay saw but hay was put up loose in shocks it would tend to tamp itself down over time in the winter a farmer could if this were sharp cut saw if you will into the pile of loose hay which had compacted over the months since it was stacked up and cut into the pile so he didn't have to pull out great big poorly defined shapes so this is a falling wedge an early one because now they're made of a very high-density plastic in between the steel wedges and the plastic wedges magnesium was used the reason for that was if you drive a steel wedge into the back of a cut being made by the chainsaw the chainsaw encounters the steel wedge you have a lot of filing to do but visualize the back cut on a tree that has the face put in it to direct the fall the tree begins to backwards to pinch the back cut this wedge is driven in to lift the tree and push it in the direction you want it to go this is a barking spud that has been gravely abused it's been used as a chisel but on a wood handle this is used to peel the bark off of a tree this is a lipped adds on a handle it doesn't fit it this was used to hew a log into a beam configuration also handy for cutting slices in your boots grub hoes more adzes post hole diggers an early weed eater weed whip it's called sticking bars a modified PV used this modification allows you to roll the log up hold it up so you can cut the firewood probably about a three pound pickaxe now I'm not an expert on these things I'm a carpenter but I have spent my youth logging I've grown up in a logging culture so I know somewhat about this

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 280,739

Rating: 4.9596715 out of 5

Keywords: axe, Double bit axe, axe restoration, logging, tools, shop tools, shop tour, axes, adze, blacksmith, arbor, arborist, tree trimming, tool tips

Id: OUZ_Bdas7t8

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 06 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/hoilst]

That was amazing. I like how he mentioned his expertise is confined to the PNW.

Finally, an explanation for the length of the Puget Sound axe!