Welcome... and Warning:
Because I seem to have “an ax to grind” with many folks (some fellow ax nuts, some nuts in other ways), perhaps I ought to apologize beforehand for any ego-harm some of my comments (plus unintended prejudices and bias) in the discussions below may cause.
Rest assured, however, that my intent here is to elevate the potential usefulness of an ax – one of the tools which, as the future unfolds, I believe we will be glad that we know how to apply seriously and efficiently.
At the same time I wholeheartedly welcome constructive criticism, of course.

April 25, 2013

Review: Barco "Cruiser" Ax

Post written by Ashley Vido; now a
contributor to the blog along with Peter.  


Earlier this year we ordered a two-pack of double bit "cruiser" axes from the Barco company in Pennsylvania; one for a fellow ax user in Nova Scotia, the other for us to test out and review. 

First of all, let me say that I consider this ax to be very unique. I'll elaborate on that, but for now, some of my first impressions:

Barco's website description of their axes sounds very impressive. They don't say too much on the specific product descriptions, but the implication is that these are US made:

"These are the finest quality US made axes available. The Kelly Perfect® features a full polished head with deep bevels to reduce binding of the head in the wood, painted a distinctive blue, while the Kelly Woodslasher® line is painted red with polished edge."

However, I am not convinced, and though I would like to think that this company would not deliberately mislead their customers, at this point I am doubtful about the origins of this cruiser ax.

The most obvious thing to cause my suspicion that these "Forged with pride in the USA" axes are imported, was that the heads are not stamped with any name or trademark, or even weight. The heads do have a faint
"BARCO / WEAR SAFETY GOGGLES USA / 08 1" printed on one face.
(Oh, thanks for reminding me, where did I leave those safety goggles that I always wear when using an ax...?)  As soon as the red paint is removed, the only mention of USA is gone with it. If one of the last remaining ax manufacturers in the US was proud of their product, don't you think they would be sure to leave a prominent trademark, one that will speak to the quality of their axes in years to come?

Back to the actual ax (whatever the origin), the "2 1/2 lb. Kelly Woodslasher Michigan double bit cruisers" from Barco.

Taking a closer look at the one we kept, it seemed worthwhile to document how the edges had been ground. Or over-ground, I should say. The edge had been unevenly ground, too much taken off at the top and bottom corners, with one corner nearly burned and a big burr left on the edge. 



Peter spent half an hour thinning down one of the faces to the kind of edge we keep on our felling axes, which is thinner than the standard these days, but nearly on par with how the old fellas in these parts liked their axes. He didn't file right up to the corners, but the top right one already looks like it's had too much metal removed.



I should add that we hadn't done anything to the handle by this point; I could already tell that, at 20mm, it was thicker than I would like to use (though admittedly thinner than most conventional ax handles these days), but Peter suggested that I try it out as is.

So, I ran off into the woods to give it a test run, felled a small green fir tree and then quickly hewed a short piece of the trunk. 


The thick handle bothered me, and I felt like it should have been longer for the weight of the head, but overall, I was pretty pleased with the little cruiser by that point. Impressed with how clean a hewing job it did, I was already thinking about the review I'd be giving it; if not glowing, at least pretty positive. Well, that was before I went to limb the few small branches…

About three-quarters of the way along the length of this little tree, something felt wrong. There was a fair bit of swearing involved when I looked at the ax; the edge had gotten both chipped off and bent over -- "rolled" is the proper term, I think. So I went back over the length of the tree and located the largest limbs, which were all smaller than 1/2 an inch in diameter.


This is where I started feeling that I was in possession of a pretty unique little ax; I've never before heard of this happening. I am by no means knowledgeable when it comes to steel quality and forged tools in general, but I was under the impression that edge tools can sometimes be too hard, causing the steel to chip, or too soft, causing it to buckle or bend over. Never seen both at once though…

Here's a closer look at the edge. Unique, all right! ;)


I had taken another ax along that day, a 2 3/4 lb. Swedish military surplus single bit on a 27" handle, with the edge filed down the way we like them. So before heading back home, I felled and limbed another fir with that one. The edge remained intact…

Then for good measure I chopped down and limbed a third tree using only a kukri knife, a new one that a good friend had kindly sent for us to test out. The edge on this kukri was thinner than others I'd seen, but when put through the same treatment as the cruiser, it passed the test with flying colours, no damage whatsoever.



Thus I suspect that it can't have been only those 'tough' branches that were to blame… 

Back on topic, now:  At Peter's suggestion I took the cruiser out again, this time using the opposite face (I took the burr off and smoothed the transition between the micro-bevel and the rest of the face but did no actual re-shaping this time). I managed to take down a small green beech with a great deal of effort, and the edge had virtually no penetration ability, unsurprisingly.

The next day Peter removed the damaged edge on the first face, this time leaving a thicker profile on it. By this time I had gotten tired of using that handle the way it had come from the factory, so I took a rasp to it and pretty much just removed the lacquer, then smoothed it down with a piece of glass. Never got too close to the head though…

I happened to think of taking photos of the labels on either side of the handle before removing them. 



Good thing too, this one had a very important message, as I was soon to find out.


Not as thin as I'd like, but it sure felt better after being slightly flattened, with the lacquer removed.



Then I headed off into to the woods and picked a medium-sized poplar to test it out on.



I was nearly done notching it, when I took another swing and the handle came back empty, with the head lying in the snow at the base of the tree. I just stared in disbelief. No, I never hit the handle; that fine American hickory just couldn't take the combination of the soft green poplar wood and the girl swinging it. (Weren't these cruisers supposed to be used by grown men?)



The "wear safety goggles" is still faintly visible; now I understand... Shouldn't they have added "wear steel toe boots"?


I'd be interested in hearing some opinions on this one; have you ever seen such a porous-looking hickory?



Another thing we realized once the handle broke was that the wood was amazingly light, not even close to the weight of normal hickory. If we take Barco's word that the handle was USA hickory, not some strange Chinese wood that looks like an Aero bar on the inside, then our tentative conclusions are that this wood had dry rot.

Okay, but we didn't give up on this ax yet; Peter knocked the remaining broken handle out of the eye, and quickly fitted it with a thin (18mm) 30" maple handle. This time I tried splitting some firewood with the still original (thick) face. This ax does not have a great splitting profile, but it worked fine with the "flicking" technique I use.



Then, with that lovely new maple handle, I headed off to see what damage I could do next. Taking along the Swedish military surplus ax again, I did some comparisons of the chopping efficiency. Not a real fair comparison, but the Swedish ax's extra weight and the Barco's (now) longer handle balanced out a little bit. 
I took down a pair of dying poplars, trying to make an unbiased comparison of the effort expended, then did the same with two larger firs. (One more strike against this "USA" cruiser: the steel has such poor edge retention in comparison to all of the other axes I've been using. I could hardly believe how fast it dulled even while bucking poplar with no knots.)



The Swedish ax won, hands down. I chopped the trees down in approximately 1/3 less time, and as I limbed their respective firs, the Swedish ax left much "cleaner" cuts, while the cruiser tore the bark surrounding the limbs more.




I wasn't happy with the edge on the cruiser (the one that had been thinned, damaged, repaired and left thicker) so in the spirit of second chances, Peter filed it down again, though not quite as thin as the first time. Again, I chopped down a couple firs, then carefully limbed them. Whew, no damage! Then I took down a tiny little fir to use as a pushing pole for the larger trees, and started limbing the 1/4 " diameter branches. Whoops, there goes another piece of the edge! A few good cuss-words, and I headed home, since I hadn't taken a back-up ax along that time.

That was the end of my using this ax for the time being. During the time that I was testing the Barco cruiser, I'd also done some chopping with several other axes of adequately thin edge profiles, none of which ever suffered torn edges and broken handles. I might add that the maple handle is still intact, after being put through tougher treatment than the hickory one lasted long enough to endure...

So, would I recommend this ax to anyone based on my experiences? Com'on, now, do I really have to answer that one? ;)


Addendum by Peter Vido:

There were two features of the Barco Cruiser that glared at me immediately upon the first visual examination. I told Ashley that I would comment on these in some sort of 'addendum' to her review and that she could leave that aspect undiscussed, which, for the most part, she did. 

Now, however belated, here are my observations:

It occurred to me that 'our' Cruiser was likely among a batch of early Monday, or end of the shift on Friday, ax heads. Either that, or its edge was ground by a person new to the job -- to whom no one adequately explained that the corners of the bit (all of them) ought to be 'babied'… 

Furthermore, the loose-handedness of the grinder accounts for only a portion of what I perceive as a notable flaw with both upper corners.  Namely, I believe that the original designer of this ax pattern meant it to have slightly more steel in the upper corner. (If he didn't, I think he should have.) :)     

Yes, the 'Michigan' is among the North American ax patterns with more (if not the MOST) rounded corners. My intent here is not to debate the respective virtues of round versus more sharply pronounced corners, but to point out that -- in view of the 'inevitable' shape-shifting many ax faces will undergo during the subsequent use -- it is unperceptive on part of the makers to NOT provide the ax users with some grace in this regard. 

[It is indeed rare to find an old (while also much used) ax with an even face -- meaning one that still somewhat resembles the edge lines of the initial model. Most have far more steel missing from the upper half of the bit than the lower. This is 'natural' because the upper half receives way more nicks than its lower counterpart. When these damages are filed/ground off, the ax owners often do not re-shape the rest of the face so as to maintain the original line. The reason is simple -- it takes a lot of time to make up for even less than a 1/16" nick.]

Anyway, I have a suspicion that when BARCO made their 'moulds' for these heads to be shaped in, an error had occurred and that little extra bit of steel has no room within the mold to be accommodated. Just a speculation…

The conclusion? 
Well, I'd like this 'Cruiser's overall shape better if the upper corners extended at least 1/4" further forward and then gradually blended with the rest of the line towards the centre of the bit.  The corner could still retain the classical 'Michigan' shape, of course.

In addition, perhaps I ought to explain what exactly was the edge geometry I imposed on this Barco Cruiser -- the one it could not gracefully tolerate (but many of our other axes can…). 

A little background:
During the early stages of my ax sharpening search, the local old timers were rather vague with advice. They plainly did not think of head/edge shaping in terms of specific angles; if I showed them one of my axes, they felt the bit between their thumb and first finger and (usually) declared it too thick here or there… Only one of them, Arnold Hanscomb, was explicit: he laid a file between the edge and the centre of the ax's eye and said but one word: "FLAT! " He fixed my gaze and repeated "Flat… then you will have an ax that cuts." ALL our axes back then failed that parameter, most of them miserably. Though I later tried to meet his specs, I too failed, mostly because it took a lot of time along with many good files to properly convert the worn and abused old axes we had collected, which had the cheeks too thick to allow for the file (or other straight edge) to lay 'flat' -- that is to contact at once the eye and (almost) the edge. 

Some years later I came across Dudley Cook's Keeping Warm with an Ax (now published as The Ax Book) and grasped a few additional details which the old Arnold did not mention, but understood himself, I believe.
Cook, by the way, was far more explicit with regard to ax sharpening than anyone else whose written advice I've come across to date. The angles he offered for the respective parts of the head geometry are, I believe, very sound.  Arnold's suggestion of a 'flat' line between the edge and eye more or less corresponds to Cook's 10 degrees. BUT, that holds true to within 1/16" (for felling ax) to 1/8 " (for swamping/limbing) of the very edge -- where the combined angle is gradually increased to approximately 30 degrees in order to provide the needed crumble resistance. Well, 30 degrees or so means lifting the file (or stone) so that it aims about finger thickness above the face. This applies, more or less to majority of North American axes, the thickness of which at the centre of the eye ranges from 1" to 1-1/8". 

However, there is a seemingly tiny difference over exactly what distance that increase in angles takes place. Tiny in measure but significant in performance. Cook's 1/16" is pushing many axes' limits, I think, and I did not thin the Barco 'cruiser' quite that much. But close. If one is to test an ax, I reckon the thing better be tested…unless "cool" looks is more important than hot work. In this case I conclude that if the cruising men wish to look cool, Barco may serve them well. But to make an honest living actually chopping trees..?

You see, after that initial edge failure, my dressing it to a far more 'safe' (but rather useless) profile and then making it somewhat more useful again (albeit with a more forgiving angle), it failed second time. By then the micro bevel was at least 35 degrees and arrived to that increase over a strong 1/4" -- and that ain't good, period.



11 comments:

  1. Barco has been moving much of their production out of the country. Their Kelly Perfect axes were being made in the US, but I don't think any of the other ones are anymore (they were before). The last thing I know is that they were planning on stopping the US made Kelly Perfect axes.

    However, a strange thing I noticed (or maybe I am misreading the article) is that you got the axes with some grinding already done to the bits. Barco ships their axes (or at least did) with virtually nothing done to the bits. No grinding at all. Maybe a middle man in this situation took it upon themselves to do something about it, or perhaps they are doing more edge work on the newer axes they make.

    As far as edge retention, I don't know if it is an issue of Barco making their axes too soft, or if this one was poorly tempered.

    Sad to see about the handle. A good quality handle is very important on a working axe. A weak handle will work a lot of the time, but then there will be that one instance where the head ends up somewhere else when you swing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 12, 2013

    Regarding that broken haft, it seems like some type of fungus (e.g., dry rot) is indeed the culprit:

    "With Hickory wood, which is often used for axe hafts, it can happen that the wood has been infected by a kind of fungus that destroys the cell structure of the wood. This problem is unfortunately impossible to detect from the wood’s surface. So pay extra attention when using a hickory haft for the first time! The haft can break immediately! This kind of fungus damage can be easily diagnosed by the spongy structure of the break, very sharp and abrupt, that doesn’t travel up and down the grain structure."

    Quoted from Dieter Schmid - Fine Tools
    http://www.fine-tools.com/axt-einstielen.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I gather most woods can get a fungal infection. Sometimes it can look pretty and is sought after by craft workers - it's called spalting.

      Delete
  3. I've found myself greatly disappointed by the quality of almost all modern hand tools. It feels like we hit a high point of quality almost a hundred years ago and everything has been a slide downwards since. I do a lot of my gardening with vintage tools from the antique stores... it's too darn frustrating dealing with the modern junk. Thanks for the good work you're doing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I came across this recently while I was sprucing up an axe I got as a kid (late 70's, early 80's). By the fragment of sticker left in the middle of the head, it is a "[Woods]lasher 35m2k", probably the slightly bigger brother (3.5# head, 36" handle) to this one, possibly made by Kelly, or possibly Ames(?). Incidentally, mine isn't stamped anywhere, although I'm 99.9% or more certain it was made in USA -- that was pretty much assumed in those days for hardware; seems like ancient history now.

    They look similar, pretty much identical, but the quality appears to have declined drastically. First, filing that much edge at once on the one I have would take two or three days of work :). Just cleaning up the edges of mine with large, aggressive files took longer than I would like to admit, and it was not in bad shape at all.

    Second, the handle is still on the old one, a little beaten up, but still solid, very straight, tight grain, except for some minor shrinkage and surface checking. I paid particular attention to it because I was considering replacing the 30 something year old handle, but when I saw what was available locally, I decided to take my chances with the old one -- the new handles are very noticeably lighter and display wall paneling grain. Your broken handle looks very much like some of the handles I saw for sell, in terms of coarsness of grain and "air pockets"...

    Anyway, I had to go to store for something, and I looked at the axes. From a distance of about 30 feet, the new ones look about the same as the old ones. Up close, however, I'm not sure I would take one for free. So, I'm glad I kept this old one! It wasn't top of the line axe in its day, and "True Temper" was likely declining then, but it is pretty usable. Sorry that you didn't get one at least as good as this old one.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Been using one often for the last two years. No problems whatsoever. My bit is shaving sharp and does not chip on seasoned locust, hard maple and oak. Sorry about your luck

    ReplyDelete
  6. I have only recently come upon your post but I would like to add that decreasing the cross-section of the material but keeping the force the same (depending on your arm strength) will increase the stress in the metal significantly. The 45 degree turn-out on your test ax blade is a classic example of stress failure in shear looking for a place to happen.
    To this I would add that it is very likely the case that modern hand tools are manufactured from material such as 1045 steel (medium steel) rather than 5160 or S7 (spring steel and "stress-proof" steel respectively).

    Since you appear to be very serious about your tools, I would recommend getting in touch with a local blacksmith to have a custom ax or two made for you. A 36 hour heat treatment using bluing salts at the correct martenizing temperature for the chosen steel will produce an ax of adequate toughness for your use.

    Keep up the impressive work you are doing and best of luck.

    Eugene Katsman

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousJune 16, 2014

    Thank-you or an honest review. I just bought this axe (35M2K) with original handle.

    I also see that you also believe axe handles today are too bulky for efficient use. This is a nicer thinner handle - much better suited to real world use than the heavy one offered as replacements.

    ReplyDelete
  8. It's too bad that so many previously reputable manufacturers are moving their production overseas or bringing in forged steel bits from China. Lately I am finding that reconditioned older axes I find at garage sales are far superior to many of the new axes.
    Sure, you can spend a fortune and get a great axe, but it seems the mid-range axes are suffering the most in quality issues.
    Great review and write up, thanks

    ReplyDelete
  9. I can't believe the amount of chips on that axe head and how porous the handle. I'm shocked that they can sell such poor quality.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Just stumbled upon this article while searching for info on Kelly Works Flint Edge. Great article.

    I have been looking at new handles available in hardware stores and they all seem to be of the lighter, porous wood that does not even look or feel like Hickory, even though it is labeled as such. Not sure what to make of that. Maybe they are using a different type of hickory tree.

    According to this article, there are almost 20 species of Hickory. I have never heard anyone mention which species of hickory should be used for axe handles.

    https://sites.google.com/site/handtoolswa/articles/ashandhickory



    ReplyDelete