Double Bit Axe Restoration and Rehandle

[Music] you hi guys welcome back to the art of craftsmanship my name is Dustin and today we'll be working on a double bit access duration I was fortunate enough to pick this axe up from a yard sale in West Virginia for $27 it's a true temper Vulcan double bit axe with the original handle in it which is really cool unfortunately this handle does have some a spot that's been broken off probably from an over strike when some swinging the axe and missed and hit here so the cheeks here have been snapped off so I it's pretty secure but I'm really not I don't really trust it just you know it's not something that you kind of play with when you're swinging an axe over your head so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take the handle off I'll remake the handle from scratch there are some really kind of cool things about the handle it has the original True Temper stamp burn onto it as well and it has some some small rivets or nails that someone put into it and at one point as well which is really cool so I'm gonna I'm gonna take that off I'll cut the head off and we'll move the wedge and all and and then rehand alit the same way it was and do my best to kind of keep the same size this True Temper Vulcan this head on it you'll see it says True Temper and Vulcan it doesn't it's a Kelly work so a lot of times a lot of these heads you'll find the true temper Callie heads really good heads and I have a couple of them myself this one doesn't say Kelly on it which tells me that it's from after 1949 so it's a post 1949 head that's when the true temper and Kelly compost company stopped using the Kelly name on their axes on some of their axes so I know this was post 1949 which is fine still great shape great head it's got perfect the edges are perfect on both sides there's no chips at all there are even almost still sharp so I'm really not gonna have to do too much work from it probably just take a small sharpening puck and sharpen up the edges a little bit let's go we'll get started and now let's head down to the shop come on [Music] all right first thing we need to do is remove the handle from this head so I'm going to use a coping saw and I'll cut it off just below the eye and work on getting the the wood out from the eye [Music] switch from the cut just below the eye we give too close because I don't want to scratch up the eye with my soul but close enough that we'll be able to may be able to drill out and pound out fear so remaining bits of the do really like this axe was secured with just a wedge and not metal wedges as well so I'm gonna try to do that as well when I get to that point just do a wedge of sort of wedge and cross wedges I think they'll hold fine so we're gonna start drilling out now in this wedge and see if we can get that out [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] let's see if we can get her out see it's starting to slip down head something down being stubborn [Music] she's going now boost hitting the bottom bottoming out alright you see we're almost there alright alright so I just finished up getting the rest of the wood out of the eye and then we had a couple pieces that were kind of stuck in the side so we got those out and it's ready to take you to the wire wheel [Music] [Music] you can see already here just with a few minutes of wire wheel and you can see the difference between the two sides how nice this looks once you get off all that surface for us on the wire wheel does a great job well not on the grinder [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we're good I mean that was maybe 15 20 minutes of wire wheel like I said this one started out in really good condition it didn't have a lot of pitting unit and not a lot of rush just a little bit of surface so not much we just took that's the wire wheel and got it all cleaned off it's still a nice really nice edge so we'll head back over to the bench and start marking off how we're gonna set this on the handle I'm gonna go and with a little bit of a file and put just the smallest chamfer on the bottom of the eye here that way when it seats down on the axe handle it'll sit really nice and tight right now it's got a little bit of a sharp edge so I'm gonna file that out and then we'll start cutting out the wood handle the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna start working on this handle this piece of hickory has a really nice grain structure here at the end it's forty-five that's the piece I'm gonna use even though the grain is running 45 it runs the full length of the handle so ideally it would be parallel to the to the blade but a 45 degree angle is really strong you can see here this one has a 45 degree angle as well so also we really want to focus on your grain structure running all the way down so as long as your grains not running out or running down on your piece of wood then you have a plenty strong handle for the length of the handle so I know that this piece has the grain running all the way not gonna have any tear out or running out so should be good to go I measure out so this handle would have been thirty and a half inches I got a little bit more off so far there so almost exactly thirty and a half inch handle plus the height of the head which is just over three plus we want to add a little bit more on top and make sure you have plenty of wood to be proud of the head when you save it all the way down on the cheeks so add two inches or so more I'll put us about 35 and a half so I'm just gonna round up to 36 so we have plenty of wood to work with and start cutting it out handles around it obviously so I'm tracing around try to just keep my pencil up vertically and obviously I can't trace this spot here because that's where the piece is broken out from the overstrike alright I'll just check the width of this now against my original measurement of two and seven-eighths you can see I'm jumping up to the one just because I can't get to the end of the hook so go up to the one so I have to go up to 3 and 7/8 you can see from the one up to the 3 and 7/8 we're still over by about an eighth so we have plenty to spare when we're taking wood off both sides I think at this point I'll just extend these out to my full width and then we'll cut that out along here okay so just past the bottom of the handle so I'm actually going to cut along this line on the bandsaw so that's funny now we don't worry about trying to cut cross-grain on the bandsaw we can come down this edge and cut the side out [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] what we'll do is we're gonna call it a night tonight but tomorrow we will mark this handle off try to find the best great grain orientation draw it off on here on the edge and then we'll we'll take it outside and on the draw horse and we'll start up taking material off of this and doing our final shaping see you guys in the morning morning guys today we are going to be working on shaping the handle we'll be using the draw horse this design is based off of a design from the homestead craftsman so I'll put a link to his video in the description below what we're gonna be doing is marking off the width of the handle so we have the general shape of the handle cut on the bandsaw so now we need to orient the handle width wise and fortunately I have a lot of wood to work with this is a 1/4 Hickory piece so the grain orientation is really good on it but I can make the handle even stronger by just tracing the end of this handle down and following the grain the way that it goes from one side to the other it's not perfectly straight down this piece of wood so because I have so much wood to work with I can kind of skew the end to one side on there and then Vaughan's fold on this side a little bit and follow the grain perfectly straight so they'll make the strongest handle possible so trying to start closest to the end where the eye of the axe will be that's the part that really matters the most so I want to make sure I get that material down first and then I can go back in and work on the handle the handles not as I mean it's important but it's not as important to get it perfectly right because we want the the part of the handle that is all the way at the eye it's got to fit really nice and tight into the eye the axe head [Music] and we'll do a mark at the top of the head so we're working with and that's actually leaving us with about an inch and a half two inches this is not gonna be the most accurate line but it will give us a reference so there is the reference then I'll come outside of that by maybe an eighth of an inch all the way around [Music] take this inside to the bandsaw now and trim off the extra part on the handle that way I'll have a nice straight line so I can I down make sure my eyes straight [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] so I'm using the round side of this rasp right now because I need to cut into the shoulders and I need to cut a concave depression so I want the shoulders to be wide all the way around the axe head will slide down on and it'll sit on those shoulders and so this part of the wood and I needs to be concave so use the round side then when we're doing the spot we're rounding over the top how do you want to just take your time don't try to rush it just take small passes and check your size often all right so I'm just now getting the end of the eye to the right size into the axe head so what I'll do at this point I'm gonna stop on using the draw horse I'm gonna move inside where I can clamp this into my vise nice and tight make sure I have no movement on it and then work the rest the way down to get the eye to fit really well keep working down till it fits [Music] [Music] you can see there how clearly the pencil helps to mark off where your eyes touching where you need to keep removing wood [Music] [Laughter] [Music] good we're fit all the way down to the shoulders now once I actually fit it with the hanging the head the proper way it'll slide down all the way the rest the way so I'm gonna take this off now and then we will move on to shaping the handle first I'm gonna remove some of the material with the draw knife just to get down to an octagonal shape and then we'll move over to the bench grinder so occasionally when you're using your draw knife well when you're using your draw knife you want to be sure that you are careful about the grain run out so you get a situation like this where you start pulling some material off at the draw knife you want to flip your draw knife around and work against it so that way you don't dig down to the grain and dig too far into your hand [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] all right so I've gotten down to the majority removed from the handle now I'm starting to feel really nice and it's close to the original handle which is I'm going for so close to the width close to the thickness as well so I'm just going across the green in long strokes and that will help to even out your rasp so you could keep your strokes long instead of doing short strokes like this if you your long strokes takes off an amount across the top all the way as you move down so you get an even amount of wood removed and you get an even surface I'm gonna make it quick kind of just a line Brown where yeah fawns foot is I'm the original handle just so there's a little bit of guidance on taking down some material [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we're back in the shop again this morning I worked a little bit more on just finishing up the action do I have a couple friends here visiting today my friend Sean and his son Emery her in the shop what will continue worth I am I've kind of worked down with the rasp I'll continue with the scrapers to kind of put a nice surface on the outside without using sandpaper it gives a little bit more texture a little bit more purchase without the raised grain from the rasps [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we're gonna fit this on just to see where it's sitting like sitting all the way down on the shoulders I'm getting contact all the way around the wood and the eye a nice tight fit all the way around without hitting it a few more times and really getting to sit down on there we'll mark off about an inch or so above the eye let's see mark it off here I'll cut this off and then we'll cut the course so it cut the curve down about three-quarters of the way down the eye you don't wanna go all the way down to the bottom but this will be the curve the wedge will fit into I kind of just mark a general line down the middle close to the middle alright alright so now we're about three-quarters of the way down or the head will sit with that so the kerf is still above the eye by about maybe 3/4 of an inch or so so look at that on alright so next up we need to do is cut our wedge I'm gonna use a piece of cherry I'd like to get some contrast in the head so I'm gonna cut a piece of this off and then we'll we'll sand it down to get a nice wedge it'll just mark out the width of the eye I'll just come to my Cerf it's here so good general mark here you go up a little bit more if I had plenty of material [Applause] [Applause] so I still have my mark my be mark on the back so I knew which way the head would have been hanging the head it on snug it up just a little bit you should straight alright I'm gonna do the final hang there's time we really want to give it some good whacks and you can hear it I can hear it when it's really seated it'll start feeling and sounding like it's not going to go much further [Music] it's far now it's gonna go another shot all right ready for the wedge it's not super critical to put glue on your wedges you can do it without it but I like a little bit extra security that it gives all right I'm gonna start it here get it going and I'll move it to the floor so I have a nice solid surface behind [Music] so you see I'm starting to get a little bit of split in the wedge but it's almost maxed out as deep as it's gonna go so that's gonna have to work so it still letting me go a little bit deeper I have a second crack that just started so I think I might stop there it's pretty snug at this point I can kind of feel it just stopping all right so I've marked about a quarter inch or so so I'm gonna go now and trim off I'm gonna leave this broad leave the whole wedge and the top of the eye hand over the axe head I think that helps to the wood mushrooms out above the eye and can really work well to either accent all nice and tight [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] alright so the wedge one and really well I did split it on the top but it's it's so tight in at that point it was out of really tight really scare so I'm not worried about that at all the next step is to oil the handle up but first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna transfer these marks so I have on this existing handle the one that came off of it has these little nails that were in it they didn't know what they were there for and originally but then I went back in and I measured them and these two are exactly a foot apart and these are exactly 6 inches apart and I love that idea of having those markings on the handle cutting wood chopping things down you know those measurements are the most general measurements you have 1 foot 1/2 a foot so I'm gonna head in a we'll transfer that on kind of an interesting way I'm gonna heat up a nail and burn it into the handle [Music] handles all done and shaped wedged on so time to oil it up all right so this edge is pretty sharp already but I'm gonna touch it up I have a sharpening puck this is an arctic fox from Liam Hoffman has a 250 grit side and a 400 rift side we head and touch it up and get nice and sharp you have two different sets of angles usually one will be a wider as you can see here this one there's maybe a quarter of an inch all the way this one's about 1/8 so I'll be able to tell this one's gonna be much sharper and finer for cutting wood and this one will be a little bit steeper for my utilitarian side [Music] so load up and all sharpened up it's time to take it outside and see how she cuts [Music] [Music] [Music] alright guys well the axe works really well it's held the edge up the whole time which is just a you know it just shows that it's a good quality axe head hasn't slipped at all on the eye so it's good it works well I appreciate you guys watching this video if you liked it go ahead and give me a thumbs up and if you want to see some more coming up we have a few more videos coming up in the near future so go ahead and subscribe and we'll see you guys in the next video [Music] you

Channel: The Art of Craftsmanship

Views: 151,465

Keywords: axe restoration, double bit axe, axe, double bit, hot to hang an axe, making an axe handle, restoring an axe, restoring a axe, making a handle, true temper axe, true temper vulcan axe, new handle, axe handle, double bit axe handle, how to make an axe handle, double bit axe restoration, hickory handle, hickory axe handle, vulcan axe, straight axe handle

Id: Ge0wLWTWW_I

Length: 45min 37sec (2737 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 19 2017