"Weak" handles, revisited

Here's a guest post from our friend and fellow "challenger of the status quo" Eric C. from Maine, followed by commentary from Peter.

Handle made by Eric C., described below.

Getting a grip -- handle overkill  
by Eric C.

I think the purism that people still cling to regarding traits of the ideal axe handle is probably contributing to the general supply of shite handles. Hickory is probably way overcut as a result, probably compromising its quality to some extent. I don't know anything about trees from a scientific standpoint, but I know that you don't need to use sawn and then lathe turned (or even riven and hand carved) hickory handles for every axe of every weight. The shrinking abundance will continue to decline until we figure out how to redefine abundance further down the line. 

I have heard that White Oak was once the preferred handle material (from an axe historian specializing in the late 1700s until around 1900).  It was cut for ships and tool handles, presumably, and this was when population and consumption was way lower. In the absence of oil-driven machines, which is an inevitability, the supply of hickory and ash will probably drop like a brick.  Not taken into account is the startling decrease in the quality of hickory handle stock.The handle pictured here was made out of a stave of Birch around 3 inches in diameter at the large end. There are two knots in it, and the piece wasn't large enough to completely fill the eye, with about a 6mm or 8mm gap on the poll side which I filled with a shim. I don't believe Birch to be as strong as maple or ash, but I still thinned this one down to 3/4 of an inch, and in one place down to 5/8 of an inch.

Since it wouldn't have given me enough material to work with by splitting it in half, I worked with it in the round as a single stave, to try and get one handle out of. The smaller end became the knob, and I just hewed the handle off to one side. Since I hewed the knob out of the small end with the circumferential grain, where there is way less stress and risk of breakage, I was able to get grain parallel to direction of force on the upper half or two thirds of the handle. How strong does a 24" handle need to be for an axe that weighs less than two pounds? I have no reservations about using this axe for jobs within its realistic limitations.

Material of this size is usually burned, left to rot in the woods, or maybe turned into spoons or something by the slightly less wasteful but still somewhat resourceful spoon-carving hippy. Not that there is anything wrong with those things, but when said man goes to fell a hickory to make a couple handles for 2.5 pound axes when he could have used a Birch branch and produced a handle more than durable enough to be used in context with the weight of the head and job at hand, the context changes.

The inspiration for that axe was the Vido's little Sandvik axe mentioned here (giving credit where it's due), with a Birch handle of the same grain pattern and size, and the same size head. They still use that axe extensively, and it's been through more than mine probably ever will. It also has 5 knots compared to the measly 2 knots in mine (wish it had more, was disappointed).

An abundance of material is still here, but not an abundance of prerequisite skills and the time to nurse them into a deeper sense of what will work and what won't.

Commentary from Peter Vido:

Thanks for sharing your status quo-challenging thoughts. You and I seem to be on the same page regarding ax handles -- their basic shape, thickness and what material they be made of. The notion that an ax needs a handle from the strongest/most break-resistant wood (regardless of distance it is obtained) I also consider to be both myth and a trap. For centuries axes have been swung on locally sourced handles, and many of the coldest regions (Siberia, a large part of Scandinavia and the Canadian 'North') have no species of adequately thick dimensions stronger than white birch.

To address the hickory obsession: It may well be the Northern Hemisphere's finest ax-handle wood; however, the pertinent question (at this shaky point in history) is: do we all need it? On several levels, a strong case can be made for a definite "NO".

Nevertheless, on the whole we've reached this stage (of our sleepy journey) where hickory can pose as the cat's meow of ax handle wood to the point that some of the prestigious European ax makers (Gransfors Bruks, for instance) now find it profitable to import hickory from USA, stick it into their fine ax heads and ship a portion back across the ocean for sale to American ax lovers.  Plus, the European populace is now also being trained to purchase axes outfitted with this famous wood. I consider that preposterous; instead of inspiring young people to appreciate the gifts of creation laying at their feet, and helping them learn how to best use them, we let the beast of Globalization pursue its insidious agenda…

What many folks today do not seem to understand is that in order to fully fulfill its function, an ax does not need to be wielded with brute force; what's actually required is a type of force that's different from what most inexperienced ax users perceive.

In brief, a moment before the bit hits the target, the direct force behind it is greatly reduced, and the weight of the head (along with the already generated velocity) is left to pursue the task. That is how the old-timers could "chop all day and love it". And their very slim handles (mostly sugar maple or white ash, along with some hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana, also called "ironwood") lasted for years.

Contacting with full force right through the stroke is one way to break handles -- even many of those made of the so-called 'perfectly aligned' hickory.  Besides, a hickory handle is in itself no guarantee against breakage, especially nowadays. For instance, here is a firsthand true story: 

Back in 1979, an old man gave me a 20-pound head for a fence post pounding maul. Being slightly more naive than I am now, I fitted it with a store-bought hickory handle. Shortly afterwards a friend asked to borrow it, and the next day he broke that handle. As a respectful borrower, before bringing it back he bought another new hickory handle and replaced the broken one. Not very many fence posts later the handle snapped again, right under the head -- which flew off and narrowly missed my wife Faye who was steadying the post for me. No, I did not overreach; those boughten hickory handles apparently could not take that 20 pounds of steel (with an admittedly small eye in the maul).

My brother Alex walked into the nearby woods, came back shortly with a hornbeam sapling and replaced the broken hickory with it.

That was the summer of 1980.  Now, 32 years and I don't know how many hundreds of posts later, that very same handle is still intact. It never took a season off work, and although I have meant to replace it long ago -- just as a precaution to not endanger Faye, who still steadies the posts -- it functions as it always did, driving posts until the ground freezes solid in late autumn. 

So there you have it:  One example of local wood versus imported hickory...

End grain of maul handle

The Devolution of Axe Handles

To cut across the grain of what appears to be popular, I choose to focus first on the blunt rather than the sharp end of the ax.

You see, in many cases a truly good (meaning well-designed and sized) handle can effectively elevate the efficiency of a tool’s working edge. Conversely, a fine tool’s potential can quickly be depreciated by fitting to it a poor handle.

These are facts most experienced tool users would agree with, period. Yet, the numbers of “top of the line” blades outfitted with what I’d refer to as “bottom of the line” handles is large indeed. In the case with axes, that number is growing steadily... or I should say, alarmingly. (The number I am talking about is a percentage of axes sold and/or used -- which today is many less than in the past, of course.)

Therefore, as a subset of ax-related discussion, I begin with the issue of handles. 

Reflecting on the devolution of ax handles – and how to refine (up to a point) the abominations many of you end up buying nowadays:

First, a true short story:

A few days ago I arrived from town with a parcel which contained, among other things, a couple of new axes we wanted to test. Faye and Ashley were already in bed so I quietly opened the box, took out a sample of each item to quickly look at, and left them laying on the kitchen table.

As I awoke the next morning I heard Ashley exclaim, “Oh my God!"

In spite of my “half-here and half still gone” stupor, I instantly knew that she was holding one of the axes, and also that her unspoken thought was “these are such clubs!” She was referring to the ax handles – and justifiably so. These were the bulkiest handles I’ve yet seen on axes sold in North America. For an 8 pound splitting maul some people (not me) might consider them “OK”. But these here were stuck into 1 ¾ and 2 ½ pound heads...

The photo below is meant to demonstrate the devolution. It is, in fact, a brief documentation of history, because what you see here are commercially-produced ax handles, purchased in Canada  between 1975 and 2011. All of them are hickory. (To further qualify, the third handle is a version possibly turned in Sweden -- and sold globally on what presumably is one of the “hand-forged” connoisseur axes today.)

Here (from left to right) are their respective dimensions and weights of the heads they came with:

1. (1975) – 18x32mm, 31 inch long, head 3 ½ lb (my very first ax)
2. (1995) – 23x37mm, 27 inch long, head 2 ¾ lb
3. (2010) – 26x 39mm, 26 inch long, head 2 lb
4. (2011) – 29x40mm, 27 inch long, head 2 ½ lb

















  

“What’s the problem?”, some people may exclaim, “if anything, we are getting progressively more wood (and presumably strength) for the money”. Well, yes, there is nearly twice the volume of wood in each foot of the 2011 as opposed to the 1975 handle. However, as I hope to explain below, this is clearly a case of “too much of a good thing”...

During the 35 years of living in New Brunswick, Canada, I’ve come to appreciate the local old timers’ love for slim and limber handles (examples to follow). These now 80-90 year olds, who did grow up with an ax in their hands so to speak, consider contemporary “boughten” handles way too clumsy and oversize, fit perhaps for a pickax but not a wood chopping ax.

In the photo below you see three locally made handles with the 2011 “white elephant” in-between. While measuring these three (for the purpose of this piece) I was surprised that their cross sections were exactly the same –16x33mm!

The respective lengths and weights of these axes are (from left to right):
32” (sugar maple) with single bit 3 ¼ lb head
27" (hickory) with single bit 2 ½ lb head
29” (ash) with double bit 2 ½ lb head
29” (ash) with single bit 2 ¼ lb head

A good ax handle needs some spring to it, the old-timers say, or a man gets “all beat up” in a day of chopping. To fully appreciate what they mean, one may have to get serious about ax work, and use the tool more extensively than most folks do nowadays.

Yet, I think that if most of you out there tried to chop for only 10 minutes with the exact same two ax heads, one fitted with that 1975 and the other with the 2011 handle, you would want to take home the older, and leave the modern version behind...

Besides the inevitable jar that a thick handle gives to the user’s body when the steel head on its end contacts solid wood, there is another benefit of a slimmer design. By “slim” I am referring  primarily to handle’s thickness, not width -- the latter being the larger of the two numbers given in the dimension above. Because, if the overall wood volume in “a limber handle” was of a perfectly round shape, it could still be called  “slim” and indeed function well enough as a shock absorber. HOWEVER (beside being weaker than an oval) it wouldn’t help the chopper’s accuracy to the extent that a handle should.

The “flatness” of a good handle provides an effective reference between the hand and the ax’s edge – ( which is one reason why the handles of many other tools have an oval rather than round shape). A thicker (and usually more rounded) profile requires more squeezing to achieve equivalent effect... and when a body focuses on squeezing, it inevitably loses some of its potential to center. Centering leads to accuracy and accuracy is what effective wood chopping is about...

To sum up: 
AX HANDLES SHOULD BE FLATTER THAN MOST OF THEM ARE.

Now, there are two other features of ax design that significantly effect accuracy. One of them is related to the shape of the head, and it will be addressed later. The other will keep us on the issue of handle design a little longer.

The notoriously popular curvature in the bottom end of single-bitted ax handles is one of those insidious aspects of ax design in general that people have accepted without realizing that by using it they are (sort of) “working against themselves”, so to speak.

For quite some time before we came across Dudley Cook’s "Keeping Warm with an Ax" (the new edition’s title is “The Ax Book”), I had noticed that I could not do as well with axes the handles of which sported this curve. I could not put my finger on exactly where the problem laid – but Dudley explains it all very well. Hence I now turn to him for help:

“The most baneful defect of the modern single-bitted ax handle is its short bottom curve. The lower end is the grip where the chopper guides the ax. The grip portion bends from the adjoining shaft of the handle by about 10 degrees. Unfortunately, this pretty little curve magnifies the effect of wrist pivoting...

"The axis of pivot for a straight-handled ax lies in the center of the handle throughout its entire length from end knob to top side of the eye.

"But with the curved handle, any rotation is controlled by the chopper’s hands grasping the lower curve at the grip. Therefore the real axis of pivot does not pass through the ax head at all because the 10 degree bend of the lower handgrip is not pointed in that direction. The effective and real axis lies in an extension of the grip and passes somewhere to the rear of the entire axhead.

"The trouble-making grip with its 10 degree bend subtends an arc of 4½” at the handle's residual length of 25".  That means that the curved-handle axe already has a constructive "foresection" of 4½” behind what we have hitherto termed the “axis of pivot”. But there is also an additional 4½” waiting at that point. Remember, we stated that each ax has a fore-section distance of 4½” forward of the axis of pivot (by the string-suspension method). For  curved-handle ax then, the constructive fore-section length between the real axis of pivot and the bit is: 2x4½”, or 9”.

"So the ax with a curved handle will act as if it had an imposing bit 9” long. For a rotation of only 5 degrees, its bit will swing .78”, exactly twice what that same ax would deviate if hung on a straight handle. Greater rotation would bring greater deviation in the same proportion. This is the most damning case against the curved handle. It is substantially less accurate than a straight handle.

"However, the human body is a marvelous machine. It can adapt to nearly anything. If the handle of a golf club were shaped like a pretzel, some people would still play golf. A chopper soon adapts himself to a curved ax handle even though that handle is designed to frustrate accuracy. The chopper acts as if there were a straight axis throughout the entire length of the handle, even though there is not.

"But this unconscious adaptation has a price. Use of the curved handle requires more practice to cut well. And even with practice, the chopper cannot attain the results possible with a straight handle. In our history, this is at least partially confirmed by the woods professionals of the era when trees were felled with axes. These men graduated from single-bitted axes on straight handles to double-bitted axes, also on straight handles. Curved ax handles do not seem to have ever attained widespread professional acceptance."

(From "Keeping Warm with an Ax, A Woodcutter's Manual", by D. Cook, 1981, Universe Books, page 90)

(An excellent illustration from this book appears 
in the February 22 post titled "Straight versus Curved".)

There you have it – try a straighter (as well as slimmer) handle; you will likely enjoy the ax-work more and also be more efficient!

Refining commercial handle models:       

Commercial (that is, lathe-turned) handles do come in a variety of shapes. Most of them sport the curve near the grip. The handle supplied with the "Trail Boss" (far left in the photo below) is one of the few exceptions.

To slim down a thick handle is a relatively easy task. To straighten that devilish short curve near the knob is another matter. When the curve is as pronounced (and the overall amount of wood not excessive) – as in Example 4. – no alteration is realistically possible. On the other hand, the Example 2 can be made almost  completely straight (as we will show in a later post). Example 3 is somewhere in-between, while the lower handle curvature on #1 (the "Trail Boss" on the far left) is good as is.