How to Pick and Hang a Store-Bought Axe Handle

[Music] hey guys welcome back to the art of craftsmanship my name is Dustin and today in the shop we are going to be rehan dling this axe so this is an axe that I bought and handled for my brother Devin behind the camera about a year and a half ago maybe two years ago and he used it a bunch and then had a couple over strikes and because of that handle is cracked now up near the eye so I'm gonna go ahead and take this one off and I'll rehand alit with another store-bought handle store-bought handles can be great and they can also be really crappy so I'm gonna show you what to look for how to look for how to pick out a really good axe handle and then what you can do to them to customize them to make them fit really well in your hands and kind of give you the desire to just want to get out there and use your axis awesome as I'm taking this axe head off I'm gonna take a look at what I did to hang this axe and then just kind of reassess it and look you know kind of what I was doing two years ago and what I do now and then kind of give you guys some tricks and some tips on the best way to hang your axes so the first thing I'm gonna do because I want to try to preserve this handle so I can look at it and kind of learn from what I did is I'll go ahead and drill out most of this wedge you see I also have these metal wedges in here we'll see if I can pop them out as well so I can reuse them for future hangs [Music] [Music] yes I'm sure a lot around it somewhat [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right it's a good-sized step which you can tell that was well in there I was holding really well so they definitely do their job [Music] [Music] alright that was the other one got a whole bunch of carnage there now so if you guys watched my last video which is the making of bushcraft axe I actually cut this piece of the handle off when I was hanging the head and I hung on to it because I like to use these as drifts so they're already shaped you know like the eye obviously this one's smaller but works pretty well for actually getting in there and driving the axe handle back down through the eye [Music] alright it looks like it was a pretty good hang there's not a ton of what we called ninja shelf which is kind of this right here when you kind of get where the axe is sitting on a ledge of wood so you know it's not wedged as tight as it could be so just a little bit there but mostly it's a pretty good fit maybe could have lasted a couple more years if my brother didn't over strike it too many times but another Rojas looks like it's pretty good and it's kind of cool I forgot this but you can see these grooves were made by what's called the eye ridges so inside the eye they're ridges of metal that were designed to help hold the X eye on ax head on the handle better and yeah those are those are typically in Kellie True Temper heads so this is most likely a Kelly wood slasher Michigan pattern axe I have three handles here these are all ones that I purchased from hardware stores and they all have really great qualities of good axe handles so what you want to look for are three main things you want to look for grain that's parallel so you look at the end of the end of the handle and you can look at the bottom make sure you have grain that's running parallel to the side of the axe and also parallel to the way your axe head is going to hang that's your strongest grain structure the second thing you want to look for is grain run out and so grain run out is when you have grain that is going straight but then it comes off and you lose it and you can see that in rings on the side of your handle so this one also has grain that runs all the way down from the end of the handle all the way to the head and so it's nice not a lot of great and run out and the third thing I look for is a really straight handle because you can have really great grain no run out and you look down the handle and you've got a warp in it so that's another thing to deal with so you want to look for a straight handle with no warping look for parallel grain to your axe head and then also look for no grain run out in the sides or as a little now grain when that was possible another thing I look for is to make sure I check at the top of the eye that the kerf is cut as straight as possible so you know it's right down the middle on this one so that's really nice and then there's a kind of a debate that goes back and forth about heartwood as opposed to SAP wood and what's good and what's not and all the axes that I've handled I've used handles with just SAP wood just heartwood and a combination of both and they all work perfectly fine I haven't really found anything to be less quality when it comes to SAP wood and heartwood you can make that decision on your own but that usually doesn't make or break a good handle for me so this one it looks really good so we're gonna go ahead and use this one and move on when you buy a store-bought axe handle it's gonna have a coating of varnish on it the majority of the time when you get them from big box hardware stores and manufacturers of axe handles put a coating of varnish on it because they want to keep them clean throughout the manufacturing and the shipping process so between the warehouses that they're made and the hardware stores everyone's handling them putting them in and out of bends looking at them which is what you want to do when you're looking at an ax handle but that's why they're varnished just to keep them clean throughout that process you don't get kind of dirty handprints all over your wood handles so I'm gonna go ahead first thing I'm gonna do is scrape off all that varnish with cabin scraper [Music] this is just a little bit wide so I'm going to take a little bit off here but at the same time I'm gonna bring this you know this where the bottom of the eye goes in here on the handle there's just a big Ridge so I'm gonna take some of that off as well I know that's going to be too much so I'm gonna flatten that off and then also kind of bring down the side of the eye on this side and you get it so I can just start to fit the head inside the top of the handle it's still a little bit wide in the front take a little bit more of that down just taking a regular pencil and scraping some of the graphite right on side the lip of the bottom of the eye so when we test it on the handle you see what's touching all right so you can see that it's only the eye ridges that are touching right now so that's good that means I have space all day around it so I'm gonna get and put the head back on and I'll start to seat it see how far I can get it down before the rest of it starts touching as well so once I got the head on just a little bit tap it on then I'm gonna flip your axe upside down and hit from the bottom of the handle when you buy a handle like this from the store it's going to have a flat spot cut on it don't do any customization on this part of the handle until you have your seat of your head perfectly and your head's wedged on and then we'll come back and we'll cut this off and we'll make it look nice and it'll fit really well but you want this flat spot to be able to use it to actually hang your head so you can see I have a little bit of wood curling here and here about the same spot on both sides so the front part of the eye so I'm gonna go ahead and remove the head now see where I have more graphite that's rubbed off and keep removing some until I can get it seated down all the way nicely down on the shoulders here you can see where the graphite was rubbing I'm just gonna come in take that off and then go a little bit further down when you're hanging an axe that has these irises don't worry about trying to like dig out lines for them they're gonna you want them to be sitting in the wood that holds it nice and tight so just worried about tapering your axe eye so that way the head fits evenly all the way around these are gonna you want them to dig in and hold nice and tight into the wood [Music] I starting to sit really well I could maybe bring it down another 1/4 of an inch or so you see there's still just a little bit of curl on both sides right we're right where they've been hitting on the front but there's no shelf it's sitting nice and down wedging nice and tight down on these shoulders you can see the shoulders have a nice taper they don't they don't come out they don't go in at a harsh curve they taper nice and even so it's wedging down on same thing with the back here it's a nice even taper into it so you always want to get these nice and even you get a nice tight wedge fit so I'm just about to seat this axe head for the final time so there's a few things I want to do beforehand first I just want to mark off where the top of the eye is doing here approximately because as of right now the kerf is only down this far so I want to cut this down at least 2/3 the way down to the bottom so I'm going to bring it down to maybe somewhere around there both sides and the last thing I'll do before I seed it for the final time is I'm just going to come in and chant for the bottom edge of this I file it out so it's a nice smooth transition [Music] [Music] oh that is nice all right one more all right I'm just checking for straightness it looks like the bit is in line parallel with the handle nice and straight and you just see this really nice taper into the the eye of the axe and then we have just a really nice fit up so just a tiny bit of curl here and the tiny bit in the front but otherwise a really nice tight fit all the way around the back of the eye here was chamfered here so it even though it looks like a gap it's actually fitting really tight inside there and I do have the slightest bit of a gap in the front still but everything else is just fitting is so nice and tight that I'm not going to worry about that it's not gonna make any difference in the performance of the head it is hung just a smidge close which I was trying to do so that means the bit is tilted down just a little bit but it just see they're really nice on here and that just the ergonomics of the head will work really well so I'm really happy with that hang so we're ready to move on to the next step just checking the length of the eye this is two and a half inches so I'm gonna make sure I have a wedge that goes all the way to the front of the eye all the way to the front and back and I had this piece of bubinga and that's actually exactly two and a half inches there so I'll be able to cut down from there and use this piece as a wedge [Music] [Applause] [Applause] so I got this wedge pretty much finished where I like it there's a little bit of marks here but these are just pretty much superficial just on the surface so it's a nice even kind of taper both ways the last thing I'm gonna do before I wedge this is I'm actually going to round over the front edge of this wedge here this is where it's gonna be the front of the eye where it's the most narrow and right now it's wider than that spot I want it to fit into that hole really nice so I'm gonna go and round this over and then also chamfer the top edge of this as well as the back just a little bit that way just not a sharp edge so what I'm actually hammering in the wedge I don't have the chance of splitting out the wood there I just want to kind of put my wedge there and make a mark so here's the top of where the wedge is and I want to make sure that I don't sink this in all the way before reaching the bottom and not have be able to sink it further so I'm gonna come about another quarter of an inch or so I do want to leave myself plenty of room here because once I trim off the top I want to leave that up you know leave the top of the axe handle proud probably about 3/8 of an inch a quarter of an inch 3/8 of an inch so I'll just go ahead and trim this off now that way we're ready to put the wedge in [Laughter] [Music] [Music] so we're gonna use a little bit of wood glue this helps to I think it helps to lubricate it a little bit slide it in a little better but then also just keep it in the eye once it's in there I'm just gonna get it started here all right I'll hit it too much with the hammer on this end just because I'm hitting it with just a small amount of hammer head and that can crack your wedges cracking wedges at the end of the world but you know try not to if you can avoid it all right so we're gonna move over flip this upside down and put it on this piece of railroad track that I have and then I'll hit the end of the handle here and drive it in from that way [Music] I'll see I don't know if I'll be able to move back but it's set in there pretty well now [Music] it's definitely at least halfway down inside the eye and there is a little bit of a space here in the back the wedge is kind of filled all the way to the front which is I wanted because I was a bigger gap but I have a little bit of a gap here which isn't really a big deal but I think just to be safe I'm gonna go ahead and cut another little piece of boob Inga and just do like a little wedge just to fill that space in just to keep out any water or moisture things like that that could kind of get inside there and just wreak havoc so it's not completely necessary but I mean I have the wood so I'm gonna cut a little piece and we'll send a wedge down in there to fill the back in as well [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so now I'm gonna shape the end of the handle and I want to make this as comfortable in the hand but also look really nice so I'm gonna remove a little bit of wood in here so that way you have a little bit more of a dip that comes out to fit into your hand at the bottom and then right about here so I'm gonna that should be plenty of wood here I still want to keep you know relatively flat spot on the back but I'll curve this down so I'll go ahead and trim this off on the bandsaw [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] candy cane in there okay as well this turned out really good this is just a fun project I really enjoy using store-bought handles when they're of good quality and a lot of times they are you just kind of have to know what to look for I shaped this one down to fit really well for my brother's hands you know he's got big hands like I do so didn't make it too thin but just you know enough that it'll fit really well and feel really good in the hand so last thing to do is go outside and try it out it's a beautiful day right now it's snowing outside so let's go ahead out and we'll maybe cut up some branches chop some wood and see how she cuts [Music] [Music] alright guys well this hand will turn out really well it just shows you what you can do you take some time and just know what to look for when you're picking out store-bought handles take some time and just put a little bit of customization into it and it just you know they can turn out really nice and really beautiful and feel well and last you a long time as well so we hope you enjoyed the video we really enjoyed making it this is a fun project if you did go ahead and give us a thumbs up and if you haven't yet subscribed do that as well that way you just kind of see more videos as we're coming out and got and check out some of our older videos and follow us on Instagram as well I post lots of pictures up there so at the art of craftsmanship on Instagram and this is a great project we hope you really enjoyed the video we make we love making it this is a beautiful day it's a beautiful day to be out chopping wood and so we hope to see you guys on the next video you

Channel: The Art of Craftsmanship

Views: 183,722

Keywords: hanging an axe, rehang an axe, hickory handle, palm swell, fawns foot, true temper, kelly, wood slasher, single bit axe, axe restoration, hickory, craftsmanship, woodgrain, wood work, chopping wood, custom handle, axe handle

Id: rOA1sI9Zfn0

Length: 28min 32sec (1712 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 04 2019