BEST $40 AXE EVER REVIEWED

welcome back friends to the shop we have here the much anticipated much requested and promised tabletop review of the new german-made ocean compton small forest axe man i'm excited to share this with you i have had it sitting here um played with it a little bit but i wanted to kind of explore it together and talk about it and and go over why i think this is probably one of if not the best value of small axes that i've ever come across and before we start at the time of this video i purchased the sax two weeks ago on amazon and it was for forty two dollars forty two dollars with free shipping and i was not expecting very much at that price but this comes from an awesome brand this is not a no-name brand this is a brand that's been around since what well it says right there 1781 some of you my more astute subscribers will probably recognize this actually is the most expensive axe on amazon at over 400 dollars i think this is the beautiful ocean's compton i probably won't say that twice racing yaks the most expensive axe i've ever bought oh that's a mad there's a b strip that thing kind of scares me a little bit to be honest but it's from the same brand and at forty dollars i couldn't believe it so let's go over it uh and uh should we start to let's just start at the sheath we'll just go over everything and see what we got and then in the next part of this i'll do a video showing you so you got a brand new axe what do you do to get it ready to put it in its tip top shape and it seems like the cheaper the axe the more expensive the more time it takes to to get it up to speed like when we buy a g grand force brooks right it's ready to go it's ready to race right out of the box and like a ktm there no need for sharpening no need for upgrading the sheath no need for anything no need for stripping varnish and paint and stickers that's what we have here all right let's take a look at the sheath the sheath is nothing to write home about but for a 40 sheet it's better than i would have thought it's made of some sort of a vinyl with a velcro enclosure but it is riveted and it is reasonably thick and i have no doubt that this would probably last a long long time as long as the velcro lasts so you know it's not ideal but it's better than nothing you know if you're going to have this for a truck a truck a truck axe or you're going to throw it in your fishing boat it's pretty nice if you put a super keen edge on it to have something to protect that and we don't have all have time or the ability to go out and make sheets for everything that we own so it is what it is right it is what it is and it is what i'll call serviceable now we have a beautiful just a beautiful design here this is that i'm always i'm kind of tempted to refer to these as the american acts patterns but you know this is a company that's been around well about as long as america's been around so uh it's a little arrogant for us to think that we have invented all the axes but just the real good ones uh but kind of a classic pattern you see a lot of these on european some of the fiskars uh older axes or not the fiskars but the bacos look very similar to this but this is a nice nice little design and a great shape unfortunately it's not a two-handed axe um and that's that's probably fine i you know i'm always the benchmark of course is the grand forks brook small forest axe and it just it's one of those things that just got everything perfect and you can actually use it as a two-handed axe it's no we're not we're not really about that that's it's uh you could buy five of these for the price of that so but a good design very simple lots of weight up on the pole a good flat pole there it has the hallmarks of a of a tool that's made it's probably forged i'm saying i like the roll marks in here instead of the laser cut you know i know the laser cut's more precise and and we're starting to see that now but i love those old press marks of the old uh roll marks in there with the name and the bullhead and you could just tell by looking at it whoever put this together and they care you know they care they care about um the way that the handle's painted the you know the the yellow identifier you know the nice big roll marks um it's beautiful just beautiful it's not without its faults though we have um we have improper grain orientation meaning that we have the growth rings running the wrong way now is that a show stopper would i be bummed about that if that happened to me on my axe you know i have i've kind of changed evolved on this over the years and and i've had this discussion with friends that you know are in to the hand tool thing and do a lot of axe handles and we all pretty much agree now that on the smaller axes i wouldn't make a big issue of it it's just really not going to matter now if we get into something like this right or a big axe or a splitting maul yes we're going to want proper grain orientation we're going to want to see those growth rings you know running the right ways to give it strength and if you don't know what i'm talking about you see these growth rings here in the handle these are are you know imagine the tree from the end grain they have a tendency to they can have a tendency to delaminate when when pressed if you really put a lot of strain on them and the idea that the old timers had was that if we orient these 90 degrees to this this way right we're going to have that a lot more strength we're going to mitigate that problem of delamination and the peeling apart but it's so rare i mean i can't say it i've ever seen it on a small axe so i wouldn't worry about it too much you're still getting a good value but it looks to be a really nice clear either an ash or a hickory handle i would say being european it's probably ash now ashes is of course your number two choice for ax handles american hickory being the very best and of course you know you could expect here you know i think i did when i researched this axis was american history and the reason being is that hickory if you've ever worked with it man it's a tough wood it's really tough and it's really resilient and it has a wonderful our beautiful spring to it and really good dampening properties so it doesn't when that axe or that tool handle hits the whatever it's striking and the vibration doesn't transfer into the hand there is bad but the best thing about that american hickory apart from its toughness is just it's got a beautiful snap to it it's a lively snappy wood that actually assists you in the swinging of a tool rather than just a dead flat feel you'd feel like from a piece of oak or different things like that so i don't really know but one of the other ash of course like we see in the european tools is pretty common and that's and that's a good alternative as well i would not be happy unhappy without with the ash see right here in the sticker made in germany so we do have the real deal we've got the yellow markings on there what's my feeling on paint on tool handles i paint my tool handles mostly just for identification my granddad always painted the tips of his handles red and the only reason was we hunted in big out camps with lots of men and all everyone had tools and axes and it was easy to confuse things not only that when it was you could find it in the sometimes find it in the snow a little bit better so i've always painted mine black on the smaller ones on the tool handles and shovels just for an identifier and just had a tradition but i don't care for it too much on tools hand tools like this or small axes or hatchets because it's just so slippery it's slippery and if you're going to be using this for an extended period of time it'll give you bruises or not bruises but uh blisters on your hands very uncomfortable so in our acts uh our next axe video we'll be getting rid of all that and i'll we'll talk more about that but looks like we've got some sort of a clear varnish lacquer on there which is also a bummer you can see here on the on the racing axe there is no they put nothing on it just raw hickory that's ready for linseed oil that's the way that it should be what's funny you know that these cheaper axes like this um all of this stuff costs money to do it costs money you know there's an extra step to put the paint on here there's an extra step to put the paint on here there's an extra step to put all these stickers and stuff on there where you take your premium brands right they don't do any of that they've taken away all that stuff and yet they charge more so for manufacturers what i'd rather see is rather than having all this paint on here and the stickers and such i would rather have a sharp edge from the factory maybe take the guy's time that was spent on painting handles and and heads and have them put nice edges on there same because graham for grand force brooks that's that's what they did is they they're our premium brand but they've stripped it down to its bare essentials there is nothing like that there's no stickers that come on them there's no really logos they're just um just clean and simple so you could even get the price down more that's that's all i'm saying we have here check this out we have this could be hard to focus let me pull i'm just going to turn this a little bit of an angle here all right do you see you see the eye there we go so we've got just a traditional wedge in there but we've got that what's you see on all those german tools those beautiful conical wedges the first time i saw those was on a german tool and i it took me a long time i finally found some and this is what they look like right here and i think that this is a far superior way to the old kind of the american style of just the metal wedge and the reason being is that well you know i was thinking you only when you put this wedge in here when you when you put your wood wedge in and you cross hatch it you know at a 45 or so with one of these the idea is is to just to really press that wood out you know that's been man's um the great enigma is over the millennium is how to secure a metal head to a wood handle whether that be a tool of war or a garden implement it's always been a problem keeping it tight you know because that's dangerous you don't think about it but having if you're working around other men you know let's say you're working you're chopping wood or you're working in a mine and there's guys all around and you have a four or five six pound tool head that comes off its handle and is flying loose in the air there's been many a men killed that way so it's an important thing to to get right you know for eve especially for us too if we have our families around or working with our kids so i the idea is to put that in there and to really wedge that in there so it's not going to come off well these conicals are are cool because they they push equally from all sides that's kind of what i like about them so you're getting pressure you're getting a ton of pressure when you press these things out versus this one here i i mean there's just so much more surface area it's just there's no question about it so i finally found them i found them from this company taco fasteners offers them high quality ones and that's where i got them so i'll put a link to that and they come in all different sizes so it's a good idea if you work with your wooden tools to have a little box like this with just your wedges and different things these are mostly from my granddad and you know for you that i've bought over the years but i'm going exclusively to these chronicles it'd be really interesting to see i think i've got a loose splitting a splitting maul with a loose head on it and i wonder if a guy put in two of these punch two of these big guys in there if that would tighten that up well maybe we'll see have to see on that when i get that out of the shipping container uh but it i like that those conical deals are are super good super good and you can see that that in there what else we have here well is it sharp we'll find out because it will be when i get done with it but i doubt i doubt i can no no it's not very sharp it's serviceable but it's close it's got a good bevel on it it's symmetrical um it's a good host for a sharp edge on it we're going to be talking about sharp here i'll be careful i cut my arms doing this so many times yeah that's the way that's the way that an axe should be hair popping sharp but i'm not worried about it because i think we've got a german-built axe here i don't know what the steel makeup up on it is but i'm assuming it's going to be pretty good and you know you can they're just not going to produce junk the germans just don't work that way all right but that's a pretty beautiful unit very handsome aesthetically it's nice it's really thick and heavy up here in the handle which is nice for durability see how slight this is there's not that there's nothing wrong with this but the chance of this breaking from over strike is is way way higher if you're a new axe user or you're just getting into it and you want to get your first you know nice quality german-made tool or german-made axe you know this might save you a little bit because you're going to have some over-strikes and over strike is when you you come up really short and hit the handle it's going to be way less likely to break because it's thick and robust the handle is ouch i'm glad that wasn't too sharp the handle is fitted and it's fitted pretty nicely pretty nicely looks like it was probably pressed in there but good handle short even it's got a nice palm swell this is a much nicer handle than what you'd see on a uh equivalent axle from like um husqvarna who's kevarna they make nice heads but their handles are kind of chintzy and cheap you know they'll be the same thickness all the way through here with no difference right here no swell on the back and you know they do that because it takes less wood it's cheaper and just cheaper takes less wood where your nicer axes are going to be swollen at the bottom and contoured to fit your hand and made by people who use tools and and know what a tool should feel like and how it should work with the body but that's it well that's a nice little unit very nice little unit and for 42 dollars i mean i don't know that i've ever seen anything come close to that it's really really nice really really nice all right next video we'll go through um from tip to tail from everything we'll put the razor sharp hair popping edge on it i'll show you how to do that we'll strip off all this paint we'll strip off all this varnish in this yellow we'll get some boiled linseed oil on there and we'll really make this thing shine and i'll just kind of do a little tutorial and show you when you get a brand new axe like this what you should do and how to make it your own and how to make it as good as it can be all right well thank you for watching guys i sure appreciate it if you don't mind take a moment and click the thumbs up thumbs up the rest of the day i've got a whole box of um honeydews i've got broken toys from the sweet loaf she asked me to repair and broken christmas ornaments and i'll probably just be in here by the wood stove doing that watch today my hamilton khaki i like to mix it up people always say i gotta i'm not a big watch collector but i i like watches i have a few of them half dozen or so and i rotate them around and every time i wear a different watch people ask what happened to the old one what happened to the to the garments like no nothing happened to them i just it's kind of fun to just to pick and choose the watch that you're in the mood to wear and this is a good one reminds me my granddad every time i remember him teaching me how to wind a watch i remember it like i was there i must have been four or five years old when we sat out in his back porch and he took his watch off and he showed me how not to overwind it and i just remember that as clear as i was there all right thanks for watching may god bless you and your families please keep us in your prayers and we'll see you all on the next video [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 177,977

Keywords: Wranglerstar, youtube

Id: TdZz3xI0riY

Length: 17min 3sec (1023 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 22 2021