Yes, and your craftsmanship isn't free. I have the tools to do the job but have never made one and wouldn't want to experiment getting fit right on nice wood.
Yes, and your craftsmanship isn't free. I have the tools to do the job but have never made one and wouldn't want to experiment getting fit right on nice wood.
Get yourself a few scrap pieces of whatever wood you like and give it a whirl. You'll get the feel of how that particular wood works and if you mess up, no big deal. XP gave us all a great thread to follow here.
Little bonus. The shavings dry out really quick and are excellent tinder for getting the wood stove going. Or, you can use it as antique pilgrim toilet paper, your choice. Lol!
This took about 2.5 hours of patient draw shaving. When getting a handle to this point you have to take your time because if you go too deep it could cause a pull out that will make you start over. This one is going inside to dry with the other one.
I got my hatchet handles finished today. Unfortunately due to a crack I had to drastically shorten the fawns foot on the one I made out of heart wood. Very frustrating as it would’ve had a nice shape to it. I blame myself for the mistake because the crack developed while hanging the head several times in the fitting process and I don’t think I left enough flat area on the end for it to take that kind of abuse. But anyway, let’s go through fitting the head.
First step is set the head on the handle and eyeball where it’s straight with the handle. Once it’s straight, trace the eye from the inside. Now that you have the eye traced start shaving it down to shape. And a heads up, the eye is smaller on the bottom then the top. Some of you may know this but I didn’t until I fitted my first axe.
Once you get close to your eye outline start fit checking it periodically. I keep shaving fine layers off until the head just fits. Once it goes on a 1/8” I check to make sure my alignment still looks good. Don’t let your eye chase varying thickness in the handle. I know there are times where the head looks off center because of a high spot in the handle that hasn’t been sanded away.
Now hang the handle in your hand with the head down. Give the end of the handle a couple sharp whacks with preferably a wooden mallet. The head will draw up the handle and when you remove it, the curls show you where you need to remove more material. I usually do this several times to ensure a nice tight fit.
Once I get down to near full seating depth I switch out the draw shave for a rasp. Some use a rasp for the whole process but I do most of it with the shave. At his point small adjustments go a long way. You want I nice tight fit on the final seating to ensure a strong pinch when you set the wedge on the top. In this process I also did a lot of shaping of the handle just below the head.
Here it is only needing some fine adjustment to the handle near the base of the head. Oh no! Loose fit up top! No need to panic, remember the eye is bigger on the top than the bottom.
So in this process here’s where things went bad. I had to trim this crack off the fawns foot and now the handle looks goofy. It feels great in the hand and there’s enough swell left for a controlled grip but it just doesn’t look right.
The other one I finished today came out much better. This is the one I did for a friend that gave me an axe in exchange for rehandling this hatchet. My better work goes to someone else, rightfully so. This one feels great in the hand.
Once I get down to near full seating depth I switch out the draw shave for a rasp. Some use a rasp for the whole process but I do most of it with the shave. At his point small adjustments go a long way. You want I nice tight fit on the final seating to ensure a strong pinch when you set the wedge on the top. In this process I also did a lot of shaping of the handle just below the head. View attachment 100541View attachment 100542View attachment 100543
Nice job that wood is nice the rasp is a good tool
one day I couldn’t lay my hands on my carpenters half round rasp
So I used a blacksmiths rasp for shoeing horses it is coarse one side and medium the other side one edge is coarse and one is fine and a bonus it’s nearly 2” wide
So haven’t gone back to the small rasp
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