The $50 axe worth $200. Best value in the axe market today. Council Tool 3.5 pound Dayton

um this is a council tool three and a half pound dayton um and i think it's the best the best buy on the market um for a full-size spelling act so put it that way uh you can buy it for about 55 bucks and you could buy it for 55 bucks four years ago five years ago uh i believe this is at this point new old stock which is why i think it's so cheap this is still the uh the red head council tool axes they're all painted aluminum wedge but before and i haven't seen it that's all still in the box here we go we've got that council tool three and a half on dayton um one of the best reasons to buy a council tool axe is the handles these handles are beautiful now 2022 stamp which i think is awesome um these handles council tool is just nailing these handles you know one one thing that i have noticed i did notice in in my other dayton is this is this is hung on a shelf here so the first thing that we're going to have to do is pop off this um pop off this aluminum wedge and that is actually easier than you might think but i have to go check i have to go check the clock to make sure i'm not late for this appointment so so basically what i'm going to do is i'm going to take a uh whatever size drill bit this is uh this is 5 30 seconds and i'm going to drill a hole down into this aluminum wedge and then what i'm going to do is ah there it is take this piece of angle iron i'm gonna thread the hole that i made in the uh in that uh aluminum wedge thread a bolt through this angle iron into that wedge and i'm going to pop that wedge right out and it worked beautifully last time just beautifully so let's see if we can't do that same thing again i wanted to mention is you want to drill your hole um towards the uh towards the bit third of the ax that way when you do go to use that leverage to get the wedge out you have it working in your favor and not against you okay well what the heck ah running out of air okay it's a little little ballast stall in the hole which is not really a tap fluid but it's what we're working with now you don't want to go too much bigger than the wedge because then your threads are going to go into the wood and that's you know you don't want to fasten the wedge to the wood you want to get as much wedge as possible we're going to take a little more ballast all here on the straw and we just want to flush all that out okay so now here's where the magic happens i'm going to take my bolt and the way i think about it is i want to pop it out this way if you do this way you're going to ruin your axe if you do it this way your fulcrum is going to be the top of your pole so that's how i'm going to thread it here and i want to thread it again we want leverage working for us not against us so i want to thread it oh that bolt's too small i thought i had the right bolt i must not obviously there we go okay all right okay so let me see if i can can get you here all right so if this works out the way i wanted to then what's gonna happen is that wedge is is going to pop out and it's still going to be attached to the bolt and the angle iron and then i'm just going to have an ax handle on on the um on the head so let's see all right boys and and my my 0.6 female viewership i looked up my viewer statistics and i have .6 percentage female viewers so to my you know and i don't think that's a female i don't think that's a woman i think that's a guy that's borrowing his girlfriend's or wife's phone so so anyways i'm pretty excited about that that worked out great um you know and so here you go it my hole was just slightly wider oh focus slightly wider than the bit and uh it worked out just beautifully the the bottom of the eye is a little bit sharp and so when it gets hung it really wants to create a shelf and uh i ideally you want your axe head to be over the wood not into the wood over the wood creates an incredibly tight friction mechanical bond um you know when you go into the wood you're just pushing all the wood out of the way and you're not going to get as tight a fit as you want um so what what i discovered i believe is the issue is the bottom of this oxide just needs to be tapered a bit and so i took an old uh round file you know what what is this one uh this is a seven thirty seconds and i am just chamfering the edge and obviously you don't need to do it at the top i mean you can if you want but you don't need to um [Music] but what you get after you're done with this process is an axe that punches so far above its weight okay so basically i don't want to take off any of this awesome forged texture um i'm gonna keep that sticker got it okay um i don't want to get rid of any of this amazing forged texture i just want to take the paint off and the uh the tool that i'm gonna use to do that is is just a basic you know braided uh braided um um cup cup wheel so we're gonna just get started okay now it's pretty much just a question of how clean do you want it um that paint this is like it must be a dip paint i think they probably dip it because the eye is coated through and through as well uh it's a very very i would imagine durable high quality paint uh it's just not the look that i'm going for um i do have a walnut blaster um i i got my media blaster from harbor freight for like 15 bucks and then the the bag of walnut shells was maybe a little more and i'm gonna spray in in these eye uh ridges here uh to get the paint out because i want as much grip in the outside as possible and then i'll do the same thing when i go over to uh just remove the last little bit of paint okay so i've got my uh i just have a little what is it maybe a five gallon air compressor and while that's running while that's charging up i'm gonna go ahead and see if i can't get some of these high spots taken out of the eye [Music] and i just don't want to be able to feel the high spots anymore with my finger all right that is now smooth and we've got a nice chamfer there both sides all right let's get to media blasting our biggest problem right now is moisture in the air i've got this just a little harbor freight media blaster with some walnut shell in it i don't have an inline moisture filter which you really do need if you're going to media blast when it's as humid as it is right now so i'm going to try to hit the important spots uh just because i think i'm going to have maybe just a few minutes of blasting time before the the system just fills up with air [Music] [Applause] okay so it's just way too humid out there right now if i had an inline moisture filter i'm sure it would be better but i do not have one of those so i might have to invest in one uh so what i'm going to try to do just to knock off the paint that's in the eye is take a half round file and just buzz that off okay so basically what i am doing now is i'm working my way through just you know it's not a full polish or anything but just through a basic polish of the axe here just to get a little bit of shine on it and i love i'm kind of copying uh what brandon cochrane does with their axes they have just the natural forged texture and finish in the back and then they they go to like a real nice full polish i'm not doing a full polish i pretty much just started with uh 120 grit and am going um just real light passes up to a thousand here and it hasn't actually taken me very long just get a little shine on the axe [Music] ah so what we're gonna do from here take my little buffing wheel you know and check that out real pretty and i think i do want maybe just one 36 inch ax handle i want to slide this down a bit i i do want it to be proud proud of the i want a proud hang by maybe maybe a quarter inch all right worst injuries i've ever got from an axe are from sawn the dang kerf i mean i seriously and if you've got your axe handle pretty much dialed in um i only use the fine side the round side really you don't want to use the flat side here that's how you're going to make your shelf problem worse if you have one use the half round side on on the um i guess it'd be medium grit and then you just kind of want to angle it towards the handle facing down kind of in towards the handle at an angle so you can create a nice taper so i don't know if you remember what it looked like before but here's what it looks like now and that is something that i can just barely feel with my finger i might actually deepen this taper a bit and these daytons can be kind of an interesting hang because if you if you see this slope that slope means you know unlike a jersey or a connecticut or uh michigan or any of the other ax patterns what i think makes a dayton unique is there's a there's a slope a slope to the eye and so you have to plan for that when you when you seed it because you're going to have your your taper needs to be here it needs to be there and i'm exaggerating whereas you know any other axe that has just a flat bottom of the eye you can you can just taper it flat and you're good this one has to be curved otherwise what's going to happen is you're going to get a shelf at the at the bottom and actually you really do want that mechanical bond at the front and the back more often or or more you need it more than you would in the middle because you're not going to get rocking in the middle you're going to get rocking out the front and at the back now let's just get a test fit here oh we got to go down well it's actually not going down as far as i thought it would all right let's see [Music] and it just doesn't want to see i'm having trouble this eye check my hang god that's pretty that is a pretty pretty axe beautiful all right i use a lot of glue when i do use it because you can always wipe it off but you can't put it back on the one benefit to hardwood wedges is um they're not as prone to cracking or or not you know i'm not even going to say cracking because sometimes cracking is what you want they're not as prone to smashing when you put in a poplar wedge you have to be real careful to hit it straight up and down [Laughter] okay so now i'm gonna take one of my sharper chisels and just chamfer over that edge we'll go out and test it regret this but uh got these big red oak rounds here this is one of the smaller ones uh this one it's one of the last ones i loaded fairly thin so um should be small enough to handle it with a good full-size axe so got a good edge on there let's see how it does nice kindly sized pieces um that's working great um i think i'm gonna put up a second one of the smaller rounds here and we'll get her split [Music] why don't you go dunk that in the in the tub it'll fill up there you go this is a bit taller so i gotta step back just a little bit here and if you're gonna go over the middle like that and it's a bit tall you do have to be careful i think i'm gonna go just right down the middle you oh there's an ant yeah there's ants all over you they like wood with bark on it okay so here we go here's uh three or four rounds of uh of real big red oak uh probably 70 80 year old red oak plus a toy boat thanks duncan say hi hi [Laughter] so um this is a 55 axe you guys and i would put this ax up in terms of uh after i've i've done uh a little bit of work to it in terms of fit and finish i would put this up against grants force holzbrook helko any of those guys um you got that just gorgeous forged texture there um i i'm it's so humid that my media blaster is not working so i've got uh some of that red paint left in the in the stamping there um i don't hate it to be honest um i might leave it beautiful beautiful hang here with that poplar wedge just a little bit of that red paint left on top i haven't trimmed anything off the sandal i thought i was going to initially but i figured i should have at least one 36 inch ax a lot of people polish up these poles real nicely grind them flat i might do that later the the handle from council tool is just they have their handles dialed in so well let's get a better stick you know you can see that groin orientation that's how i like it uh 45 degree slope there and there we go bang on with the hang duncan's helping me stack my wood here thanks buddy uh you know this is this is a felling axe you know it's three and a half pounds it's a dayton um beautiful beautiful axe look at all that wood for a 55 axe i promise you you will not get a better deal anywhere and that's what's so impressive to me about council tool is their axes are so functional and they're they're such a good value with just a little bit of work this thing is uh really heirloom quality and i haven't even you know some guys will take it even further than i have full polish on the bit um polish on the back and grind it flat i haven't done that i might do it i think this axe is well worth your money you know i i can't recommend this axe enough 55 bucks takes a wicked sharp edge beautiful handle i mean in terms of just form beautiful beautiful handle i love it so um this video is probably long enough already thanks duncan we'll catch you next time

Channel: Urban Lumberjack

Views: 71,555

Keywords:

Id: pLbaYvd7YUQ

Length: 23min 37sec (1417 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2022