Hand Carving a Honey Locust Hatchet Handle

today we're going to be extracting uh handle such as this honey locust Hatchet handle from the Greenwood split Billet here also honey locusts so in fact what I get out of this if it doesn't crack itself to bits as it dries as honey locusts often does it should look very similar to this one it's about 20 inches I call this style of ax a 20 inch Workhorse I do a lot of hewing on the stump with this kind of thing splitting barbecue wood so this is one that I did previously from some of this same stuff that I just got from the local log dump and you may notice it's quite a bit larger oversized compared to the finished one you can only rough it down rough it out down to a certain size you have to allow for warpage and shrinkage as it dries I'm gonna give this a year or two this this batch of handles if they don't crack at least a year preferably two before they're dry enough to hang ahead on them because if it keep if the wood keeps shrinking if it's not completely dry then the head will come loose see I have to start with the Billet that's quite a bit quite a bit oversized to get one handle out of this if I got real greedy I might be able to try to get two but that often results in getting zero in my experience so what I want to go for is the middle section about the middle one third of this honey locust this lighter light yellow sapwood portion it's not as strong as this darker Heartwood it also is even more prone to drying cracks so I want to eliminate all that I may or may not be able to get a smaller blank from this inside portion here but the uh the meat of what I want to get is right here about a two inch wide strip up the middle I'm going to start by splitting that out and back here on the shave horse is the entire complement of tools that will be used the shave Force itself hammer and a wedge hatch it for some rough viewing draw knife and a little bit of smoke shave for a tiny bit of refinement at the end without further Ado Let's uh see how well we can split this out I did select a log that is perfectly clear as far as I can tell no knots no squiggly green no no evidence of bug activity anything it's going to be in there to weaken it would be a deal breaker other species that can work for this that you may have access to in North America are of course Hickory which I never do seem to find much of that Ash is great sugar maple White Oak Ironwood what else Katrina what am I missing oh pecan yes in the Hickory family Kentucky Coffee Tree is probably great I haven't used it but what I've seen of it it seems like it would be a great wood for that for this purpose split is running a little bit which is expected I don't mind that in this case here we go that is probably big enough to be a smaller Hatchet handle here's what I want I want to make sure that this piece gets split more or less right in half and actually I think yeah I can split a little bit off of this one too one side or the other you know what I think we're going off this side less hatcheting let's go now this particular honey locust tree the wood splits very nice and clean makes this a lot easier I'm scoring across the top before running that split all the way down go here's yep very nice I don't really see any anything uh that is undesirable in here sometimes you find hidden inclusions and that kind of thing this looks great one thing I am going to do first before I start hatcheting is go over to my miter saw and cut off an inch or two of each end because I've got drying cracks coming in already this was sitting at the log dump for I don't know a couple of weeks and so these drawing cracks in the ends are probably at least an inch deep already but this should still allow me to get about a 20 inch blank out of there I'm gonna go cut those ends off before I start hatcheting so here's my fresh split honey locust blank trimmed on the ends and waxed I dip the ends in melted paraffin wax to provide a water barrier so the ends won't crack I'm going to do just a little bit of cueing knock off some bulk now because I have terrible tendonitis in both my elbows I and Hatchet work is one of the primary causes of that and because with a well-tuned draw knife and a shave horse with a nice carving wood like this I can actually work probably faster with more control I'm now going to switch to the draw knife to appreciate the kind of before and after of what will happen on the shave horse here we've got roughed out to the point I'm going to get to today and then I have this much bulk to remove initially I'm just going to clean up my blank basically make a two by three kind of square it up make sure I get all the sapwood off make sure there are no hidden cracks running anywhere and also the draw knife is going to find the grain direction for me that's very easy foreign [Applause] foreign foreign all right foreign all right foreign what's up oh foreign foreign I could do a little more with the draw knife if I slow down and watch my technique this this stalk of wood is a bit prone to tearing and to make sure that doesn't happen I can switch to a Spoke shave so I'll do that okay I've set this book shake to take a very aggressive shaving foreign foreign up s thank you foreign stringy fibrous quality to it at least it often does and this this particular stock is true to that um there's no point since I'm just roughing these out for now and trying to get real clean finish Cuts or anything I think I'm pretty close I could take it down a little bit more this would be all right you can get a little bit more Dimension off of this and it'll dry a little bit faster okay but if I leave any real bad splinters like this raised up they're not dangerous now because the wood is the fibers are soft and flexible but as they dry those will be major Splinter hazards this will would will probably require either a rasp and scrape uh scraper to finish it after it's dry or abrasives just the way it's cutting it's probably not going to take well to a blade so just tear out don't have to worry about that right now pull that good I'm gonna write the date on it so that I know exactly when it was uh roughed out green and can give myself the appropriate amount of time actually that that eye is a little on the thick side I'm gonna just take a few more passes the draw knife take it down maybe another quarter inch okay that's fine I believe it is the summer solstice today so now that I have the date on these they need to go somewhere to dry very as slow as possible preferably a partially climate controlled basement if the basement's too damp they'll get moldy and you definitely don't want to mirror a heat register or you know a vent or uh a window fan or anything like that where they get too much airflow so the slower they can drive the better knowing that Locust is especially prone to those drying cracks I might even overnight for a few nights just at night time throw them in a plastic bag wrap it up and let some of the Interior moisture Wick to the surface and then take that out in the morning and let them dry or air out in the throughout the day just for a few days maybe a week initially and then I just gotta wait a year or two okay

Channel: Bastionhead Woodworks

Views: 2,337

Keywords: draw knife, drawknife, drawknives, draw knives, sharpening, honing, vintage, axes, ax, axe handle

Id: pfhZFUNscDs

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2023