AX HANDLE UPGRADE.

For Thousands of years man has used the axe.

  

However, its appearance in human history came much later than the hand axe.  The earliest example of an axe dates to about 6000 B.C.  The axe took a simple tool, the hand axe, or wedge, and combined it with another simple tool, a handle, or a lever.  Adding a handle is called hafting.  Hafting the axe increased the power and efficiency of the tool.

 I've been felling saplings, cutting off smaller limbs,using 

Dogwood trees for ax handles for the past ten winters. 

They do well in a pinch with fairly strait lengths and they have the right girth for gripping and the price is right.

Beau did give me a new ax handle for Christmas a year back, for my Michigan axe.  Double bit axes have two sharpened blades facing in opposite Double-bit axes were designed as felling axes and the additional blade could be used without having to resharpen the first.

So, only my two splitting mauls were in need of new handles for this coming winter.

 

Then as I was leaving the council meeting last Friday, Marty called me over to the truck and he gave me two beautiful oak as handles that he had made.

Each Oak handle was nicely sanded and given a layer of linseed oil to help prevent it from splintering. 

Now, with re-handled mall in hand its time to  drop another dead elm and block up some more fire wood for winter.

You never know who's watching when your alone in the timber.