How To Transform A $12 Harbor Freight Axe!

this morning when i went to film the weather was nasty i couldn't do what i originally planned but i did have an idea that's been in the back of my head for a while so after a quick trip to harbor freight i picked up one of these one and a quarter pound axes that seemed to be very popular right now and i thought i'm going to turn this into something special and then i thought if i'm going to turn this cheap axe into something special why not do it using cheap tools so all the tools i'm going to be using in this video were purchased at harbor freight i was partially inspired to use this axe in particular because cody from wranglerstar has been doing a couple videos on these and he made some minor improvements to them but you know to be honest i don't really like the way it looks and i don't really like the way it feels in my hand so let's get started let's see if we can make this a little more aggressively [Music] [Applause] [Music] i'm going to use these fancy vise grip protectors to get started here [Music] get in there finish that off with a file i'm even going to use oh yeah that's hot i'm even going to use the files that i picked up at harbor freight [Music] so i saw this technique on another channel so i'm gonna give it a shot because oh yeah did i mention i've never done any of this before so what's the worst that could happen that's working all right but it's taking a long time let's try the el cheapo sander and see what happens [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] that is looking lovely more to be done though before i go any further on the edge let's see what we can do to kind of how do you say unique this thing up let's go [Music] i'm gonna cheat here a little bit and use a dremel but i did buy the bit at harbor freight [Music] so foreign [Music] okay so they don't sell milwaukee at harbor freight but they do sell these little three inch sanding pads that are you can either put them in a angle grinder or your drill i always just use them in the drill and they work great [Music] [Applause] not perfect i have to cover my face where the camera will focus on my face not perfect but not bad let's address this handle because this handle is terrible i'll be honest with you i have pretty big hands and this thing is just not very comfortable i mean two-handed i guess it's decent but honestly probably most of the time you're going to be using this one-handed it just doesn't feel good so i want to address that for father's day kim and the girls got me this holtzbrook hatchet and uh it is very lovely very lovely and of course this is a lot smaller than this axe from harbor freight this thing is made so nice so beautiful and the handle is i mean obviously it's you know it's not the same deal but shorter but if you just look at the thickness of it i don't know if you can tell and just the way it's made even though my hands are bigger and this is pretty thin man it just fits in the hands so nice i'm going to use this as inspiration for the handle on the harbor freight axe i'm going to start out using this flap sanding disc on the angle grinder and see how well this works yeah i can tell you that works pretty well [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] time to get weird [Music] so and now you're ready for boiled linseed oil in case you don't know it boiled linseed oil is generally the preferred finish for like really nice axes and hatchets and try not to spill it like i did i want to make sure i get it in that hole there if you've never used boiled linseed oil before don't let you know using a new finish scary it doesn't get any easier than boiled linseed oil you just put it on let it sit for about 10 to 15 minutes and then once it is set and the wood is absorbed all it's going to absorb just go back and wipe the rest off and man it puts a nice finish on there i just picked up some of these leather shoelaces and i soaked them in some leather conditioning oil i'm going to dry that off me [Music] you're doing something like this and you need to change the change the camera angle i don't know move around a little bit or whatever or take a break it's good to have one of these clips around so that you can hold it in place and not lose all that work put a little more braid on here just in case i needed some more but i don't want this to be too big that is lovely lovely now as we all know an axe it ain't no good unless it'll cut paper right [Applause] it will cut guys i think i've proven it to be true you really can polish a turd now this axe is ready to split wood or split well whatever you want to split i boogered up the knot a little bit on the braid and the reason i braided that was because i felt like the one shoe string by itself uh was just too thin this is my first time i'm sure there's a lot of ideas out there that i could have done better and if you know some of them put them in the comments and if you want to see me do something like this again in the future let me know and i'll see you next time

Channel: HAXMAN

Views: 303,648

Keywords: diy, how to, tutorial, build, make, how to make, make stuff

Id: ARLvGQhycBA

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021