How to Sharpen an Axe: Profile and Edge Geometry

[Music] hey guys welcome back to the art of craftsmanship my name is dustin and today in the shop i'm going to show you how to reprofile and sharpen an axe now you might find an axe at a store that just needs to be sharpened or you might find a vintage axe from a yard sale or something like that that has a good handle and it also just needs to be sharpened so i've done a bunch of different techniques and i've watched a bunch of videos and i've tried a bunch of different sharpening things over the years and what i'm going to show you today is kind of the best way that i've found to work through this process fairly quickly and come up with an edge that's really sharp and i definitely have some scars on my body to show that my axe edges are sharp so let's go ahead and get started [Music] so for this axe the first thing i think about is that this is a really straight bit it needs to be reprofiled now the profile of the bit is this nice gentle curve that we're looking for on the front edge this one has a really nice profile this one's pretty straight so it needs to be reprofiled now a great way to determine if you have a good profile or not is you can actually take your axe and you can lay it down on the surface and you're looking for the bit to be touching the surface right in the middle of your axe head now this one has pretty good it's set back just a little bit this one's even better when i lay it down we're almost exactly at the center of the bit so this is a great profile this is what i'm looking for today when i'm re-sharpening and reprofiling this other axe head you can lay your axe head flat to come up with the profile and we'll just use a compass so you're going to add one end of your compass to the toe which is the top edge of your bit and then you set your pencil at the top of the pole and then we'll make an arc line here now we'll do the same thing to the bottom one of the compass at the heel the bottom edge of the bit and your pencil line at the bottom edge of the pole and we'll make a second arc where those two lines crisscross that's where we'll use that to draw the profile of the front edge of the bit now we flip this around and put our end of our compass right on that crisscrossing mark bring your pencil in to the front edge as far possible as you can and then we'll use this to create our profile arc on the front on the bit the next part is easy we're just going to grind down to the line and you do have to remember that this edge is already heat treated so you want to keep it cool because if you let it heat up you'll lose that temper so just keep a bucket of water nearby just as you're grinding every couple passes keep dipping it keep it cool and you'll be good to go now that we've finished the profile on the blade we got to start thinking about edge geometry and we want to put a convex edge on this blade and so what we're looking at right now is basically an edge that is tapered but flat at the top because we've ground the profile now first thing we'll do is put in our bevel and our bevel angle which i like to use is 25 degrees so we're going to grind those 25 degrees on that edge so this is 25 we're just going to work on just that edge which will leave us with an edge that looks like this a nice straight point now we have two things on either side which liam hoffman likes to call it speed bumps and what these do is they slow down the axe as we go into the wood so we need to do is we need to round these edges over and profile this so that way we have a nice convex grind all the way which will leave us with a smooth transition from the side into that edge point which again is 25 degrees and nice convex edge which will cut into the wood really well now if you have a tool rest and you want to you can actually set this to 12 and a half degrees and find your edge that way on both sides but what i'm going to do is i'm just going to use this angle finder i'll set it to 25 degrees and i'll just sharpen it by hand keep checking i've done this a bunch so it's going to be fairly easy for me to do that but it is good to have your angle finder there and you can just check that edge each time as you go until you get that nice edge exactly where you want it [Music] [Music] so [Music] now that i've put in that initial 25 degree bevel i'm just going to slack in this tool rest that i can actually remove it and put a slack portion of the belt with the slack belt i'll be able to push into it and it's going to make a nice curve so i'll be able to remove those speed bumps a lot easier i've been working with the bevel up so i could see that front edge but now that i'm going to be convexing and just removing those speed bumps i'll be working with the bevel down [Music] so [Music] i started all my main material removal with a 60 grit belt and i moved on to a 120 and a 220 just to move through those progressions to get a nice shine on the blade now the whole time i was making sure that i kept the blade nice and cool by dipping in the water and i moved over to my 2x42 with the scotch brite belt to get a nice polish on the blade before moving over to do my final [Music] sharpening [Music] so i got out my 1 by 30 with my stropping belt i'm going to add a little bit of polishing compound and i'll put the final edge on the axe [Music] so [Music] hey [Music] all right well i am super excited to have breathed new life into this little collins legitimacy boyz axe really enjoy the profile now it looks really nice and the edge geometry is just oh it just looks perfect i'm sure this is going to cut wood like butter so it's been a fun day in the shop the process that i showed you with using a grinder is a really great process something that can be done really quickly as long as you're careful about heating up that edge you just keep your water nearby and cool it down so you want to ruin that temper now you can also do this with hand files and sandpaper and sharpening stones just want to establish that edge geometry first and then come back and remove those speed bumps so you have a really nice convex grind it'll cut through wood really well so thank you guys so much for watching if you're interested we'd love for you to check out our new podcast called the art of craftsmanship podcast on makery network and you can find that on all your normal podcast platforms i would also love you to check us out on instagram at the art of craftsmanship and patreon if you're looking for a way to support the channel make sure you like and subscribe and we'll see you guys on the next video now this i'm sure is hair popping and paper cutting sharp but it's designed to cut wood so let's head outside and give it a test [Music] [Music] so you

Channel: The Art of Craftsmanship

Views: 82,914

Keywords: how to restore an axe, axe restoration, axe junkies, vintage axe restoration, ax restoration, how to restore an ax, hanging an ax, collins legitimus, collins axe, legitimus, rehandle a, axe sharpening, how to sharpen an axe, ax sharpening, razor sharp axe, edgs profile, edge geometry

Id: 4EaJdf5ORiA

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020