Bearded Axe Restoration - NO Power tools

hey Luke here at the outdoor boys YouTube channel and I'm gonna be restoring this bearded axe from Slovenia and I'm gonna do it without any power tools [Music] I love doing these acts restoration projects and I've already done a couple this year and so check the video description for links to some of our other videos but this one's gonna be special this project is special for two reasons first off this axe head is so cool it's a bearded axe from Slovenia and I'm gonna do it without any power tools you know I can sympathize with you guys out there who don't have workshops who don't have the budget or the space for a lot of fancy tools and you want to do these projects but at an entry level and you can do it you can totally do it the first thing we're gonna do with this is we've got to get the raw stuff now normally I'd use an angle grinder but because we're not using power tools today I'm going to be using vinegar instead I've got myself a five-gallon bucket and a gallon of distilled white vinegar you can use any sort of cooking vinegar apple vinegar white vinegar rice vinegar whatever okay it's 5% acidity that's about the strength you want and we are gonna put this sucker in the bottom of the bucket and we're gonna cover it in vinegar whoo smells powerful all right I'm just gonna let that sit for a while and we're gonna start knocking that rust off so we left this soak overnight take a look at it well it's a little better but you can definitely see that the rust is coming off there's plenty of rough still on there so I'm gonna put it back in the vinegar and let it sit for a while but twelve hours in the vinegar definitely loosened some things it's been 24 hours let's see what we've got well definitely there's some improvement let's go put this in the vinegar bath for another 24 hours and I'm probably losing some acidity here so I'm gonna [Music] add some fresh vinegar got a full gallon in there all right it's been 48 hours and let's take a peek I think I'm gonna give it another 24 hours and see how that does all right it's been three days in the vinegar bath let's take a peek no not bad but it's not really making much more progress yes hit with the steel brush here well that looks pretty darn good I got about 90% of the rust knocked off with the wire brush I just think I need to just a little bit more time in the vinegar here to loosen up some of this more stubborn rust okay so the axes have been soaking in the vinegar for 3 and 1/2 days now and they're scrubbing it with the wire brush and then soaking it and scrubbing it some more than soaking it seems to work a lot better than just scrubbing it okay so you can see here we're getting really close to the end it's been about four and a half days now this is looking really good here but these little dark spots just right here and here those are those are some rust a little bits in here a little bits on the edge gotta get it all 100% of it gone looks really good I think I'm pretty much down to bare steel I'm gonna go wash this with some soap and water dry it off and see if I missed any spots I've had this cleaned up and out of the vinegar bath for only about five minutes now you can see it's already developing rust is starting a brown hue is starting to replace the metallic shine that it used to have so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and put an edge on this and once I'm done with that I'm gonna show you how we can keep it from rusting up on us because just the humidity in the air will cause this ax to rust unless we do something about it [Music] [Music] got a nice edge on this this is pretty darn sharp and there's a few Nick's in it and the edge is a little uneven but fixing that with hand tools is a major undertaking and when you're using hand tools you kind of got to ask yourself is it worth it and why little make it look prettier it doesn't really affect the performance of the blade that much you see here how the axe is already turning brown so we've got to do something about that or this axe will just turn into a ball of rust almost immediately so let me show you how to prevent rust without doing a load of leg work and polishing and all that sort of stuff all right guys so I've got the axe sitting in the vinegar bath I'm cleaning it up getting that new rust off and now I'm gonna try to blue the steel now there's a couple of different ways to blue steel you can use the perma blue kits and this allows you to do it with cold steel oh but I'm gonna try a technique I've never used before I'm going to be a hot bluing steel with an oil dip so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna take this axe when clean it up really good then I'm gonna heat it and once it's the surface starts to turn a little bit of a blue color I'm gonna dip it in oil and that should give it a very durable coating now there's a couple pros and cons with doing it this way one of the problems is that when you heat up steel to the point of blue you mess with the temper you mess with the hardness of the steel so generally this is something you only do with fundamental pieces fittings and things like that I really want to give it a try frankly I've never done it and this is a good project for it so I'm gonna do it I might mess with the the temper but frankly looking at the craftsmanship of this thing I don't know how good of a temper or heat treating it's got anyway so I wouldn't give it a go and see what happens you know it's part of the fun I'm gonna experiment so you guys don't have to but if that doesn't work then you can always use these cold bluing kits which don't affect the the temper or brittleness of the steel at all you're gonna rinse this in hot water and then use dish soap just scrub it okay I went ahead and set the oven for 550 degrees Fahrenheit so that should get it to a blue color I'm guessing it needs about 30 minutes all right the axe has been in for about 15-20 minutes let's check it out about 540 degrees on the axe so give it a little bit more we're gonna get it up to at least 540 stand in for 45 minutes let's get this out look at that it didn't quite blew it but it browned it that is a gorgeous color well that ax head cools down I'm gonna start working on the handle now in the past you've seen me use a lot of exotic woods like African mahogany and stuff like that so what I'm gonna do instead is I'm gonna use this piece of oak from a pallet so this is some salvaged oak here and you can see there it's plenty thick so that should fit in the axe head unfortunately it is a massive piece of oak and I have got to whittle this thing down by hand [Music] there did it I don't think I've been this tired a long time I'll get that that's pretty good [Music] so it's been a couple weeks since I've been working on this handle and I still have a lot of material to remove I mean they use the saw and the chisel to take away most of it then I would come in with with what's called a bastard grasp and this is going to help me shape it [Laughter] really slow going mounting this I'm trying to get this tight of a fit as I can but this is a hand forged axe and the hole on the bottom it's not the same size or shape as the hole on the top this fits easily into the bottom but it won't fit into the top [Applause] [Applause] [Music] it's sort of burned distressed aged look I think we'll match the look of the axe very nicely and it's a lot easier to do a lot less time than sanding out all those wrasse marks so nice little trick there if you want something looks pretty slick and unique this oak isn't like the dried exotic woods I've been using in the past videos it's soft you know it's it's not as part of a wood and it's a little bit green so it actually compresses quite a bit and it'll shrink as it dries [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] alright guys check this out look at that that is a good-looking act I am really pleased with how that turned out that handle looks amazing sometimes wouldn't you restore an axe you don't want it to look brand spankin new you want to keep the weathered look have an old-timey patina on it and have all the pits and dings still in there and then you want the handle to match and the sheath to match - this is just really all pulls together well the whole thing looks just fabulous well guys here I am at the testing tree can't do an axe restoration video without chopping some wood so I got to see how this bearded axe does well hopefully you guys had as much fun watching this video as I did make in it and I hope it proves the point you can have a lot of fun doing projects like this even if you don't have power tools even if you're on a tight budget well if you guys enjoyed this video check out my cool restoration playlist where I've got a bunch of videos me doing fun projects like this and also I've got my blacksmithing video playlist where I have my blacksmithing projects as well thanks for watching we hope you guys enjoyed this video if you'd like to see more great videos from the outdoor voice youtube channel don't forget to click Subscribe we put out new videos every week and don't forget to hit that Bell button so you'll get notified when we put out another great video

Channel: Outdoor Boys

Views: 1,659,977

Rating: 4.6944942 out of 5

Keywords: Bearded axe, goosewing axe, Bearded axe restoration, axe restoration, ax restoration, restoring axe, bearded axe restoration, goosewing axe restoration, no power tools, hand tools, restore axe with hand tools, restore axe without powertools, axe sheath, axe handle, make an axe, make a bearded axe, make a goosewing axe, Slovanian axe, antique axe, vintage axe, old axe, old axe restoration

Id: tAFL1h5GKPw

Length: 17min 2sec (1022 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2018