broad axe handles

[Jeff Bartley]

Howdy Folks,
Yesterday two single-bevel broad axe heads followed me home from an auction. Both need some attention, de-rusting, sharpening, etc, and both need handles. As they're single bevel they will need angled, or off-set, handles. So my options are to find a stump of the desired species and cut out the curved section that naturally curves to the ground. Or I use a chunk of straight grained wood of the desired species and steam bend it to give the curve of the off-set handle.
Can anyone lend first-hand experience in the durability of a steam-bent handle? Or perhaps an opinion on my options?
Thanks!

[Mike Holbrook]

I have tried cutting branches, trunks....from trees to make handles. I thought I had a great one once, until I fond a section of soft black wood just before I got to the desired thickness. Until I finish building my steam box I don't have another option though. For those reasons, I just went to the local Ace Hardware and bought a selection of hickory handles that I have modified as a temporary solution.

Two of the axe heads I bought recently will be used more as wedges for splitting. The handles will be mostly used to position and hold them in place so a curved handle would be of little value. I bought an old GB rafting pattern head too, at thee moment it also resides on a straight handle.

[Tom M King]

Mine came off ebay, and works great. I just looked, and here's the item number 380762452882 copy and paste that number, or just type broad axe handle in the search box there. I've bought adze handles from them too that work great.

Here's a link to me using it: http://historic-house-restoration.com/images/tombroadaxe.JPG

[Ian Moone]

http://www.doctorzaninovich.com/uploads/3/1/9/7/3197858/4553217_orig.jpg

Single bevel broad axes were originally used as i understand it for trimming hardwood railway ties (sleepers) to size.
They were mostly single bevel as you say.
But they were also left and right handed!
The curve on the handle was opposite for right and left hand!.
Logically you'd think that, "well if I am right handed I just use the right handed one and start at the opposite end of the sleeper and work back" - rather than try to learn to swing the broad axes "both handed" /ambidextrous (i.e. Left & Right handed)!.

But in hardwood ties - split out of hardwood logs with wedges and sledge hammers - if the grain runs one way - and you try and use the right hand broad axe to turn and come back down the sleeper the other way (I.e up grain) for the opposite side - then what happens is the axe bites into the grain and can split along and make the sleeper under-size (meaning you don't get paid the mere pennies they used to make/tie to do this by hand).

A "good" sleeper cutter could average 8 - 12 sleepers a day on average over the week - including falling the tree (axe and cross cut saw)

http://www.doctorzaninovich.com/uploads/3/1/9/7/3197858/434754_orig.jpg

, crowning it, docking (bucking) logs into to length (cross cut saw),

http://www.doctorzaninovich.com/uploads/3/1/9/7/3197858/6615813.jpg

then splitting the sleepers out with hammer and wedges

http://www.doctorzaninovich.com/uploads/3/1/9/7/3197858/2680653.jpg

and using the broad axes (note plural i.e. L & R) to size them!.

http://www.doctorzaninovich.com/uploads/3/1/9/7/3197858/4553217.jpg

&

http://www.doctorzaninovich.com/uploads/3/1/9/7/3197858/610174.jpg

There were 3 main types used back in the day.


This photo shows the three types of Broad Axe used. Dad used the top ones (Called the Legitimus “Bell Axe”. In the Centre of the
photo is the American "Plumb" and the Bottom one was the Swedish "Jarrahjack. The back of the axe head often had the fallers initials 'raised on it' and was used to brand the end of the sleeper, so that the right guy got paid for them when they were collected and taken to the rail head for loading.

Thought I'd add this from a former Forests Commissioner Bruce Beggs (who himself started out as an axeman - but long before my time) for anyone interested!



Axemen – The Forgotten Pioneers:
"Axemanship has always been the one which has sorted out the men from the boys. The work was physically demanding, dangerous, and required men to spend prolonged periods camped in the bush. High level of skills were
required. They were an elite bunch of men of exceptional skill, strength, stamina and mental resource. A tough resilient crowd who met the great Depression head-on and battled their way through in circumstances hard to comprehend these days."

With Razor-honed axe being no exaggeration as they always finished the edge of their axe on a razor strop. It had to pass the same test as their 'cutthroat' - slice a hair pulled from the head.
The handle had to be of American Hickory and the grain had to be running vertical to take the punishment. In a bush sodden by the overnight rains but fragrant with forest odours and freshness, spitting on their hands they fell to it.
The most imposing majesty of nature undisturbed except for the crack of the axe.
First the scarf or belly-cut; a gradually opened V-cut, into the side – at times half-way through the tree – which would direct its fall.
Most men worked on their own. Occasionally if there were a pair, one would be a right hander, the other a left hander or ambidextrous. After the axe work they would use the cross-cut saw.

At the end, after a few more pulls of the saw, the tree " began to talk' indicating it had been cut to the point
of balance. For a moment it stood swaying. Goliath like, then it pitched forward, in its death throes wrenching apart the last of the sinews holding its mighty trunk.
The accompanying roar disturbed the forest solitude for miles around as the felled giant crashed through other trees of almost equal girth.

An axe would cost ten shillings and sixpence . one was the American "Black Plumb" and the other the Australian-made "Kelly" so the euphemism "swinging a Kelly". Dad used a 6lb Black Plumb.

Toughest and most skillful job was falling. Each tree was an individual and a personal challenge, and was referred to as him. The faller was very seldom allowed more than one mistake in directing the fall of a tree, as a sudden, perverse wind, perhaps not felt on the ground, could test the branches hundreds of feet above the ground, resulting in collapsing trestles, falling branches and whip backs from trees or branches in the path of the fall. Sometimes the tree might fall one side or other of the stump or, on occasions, might spring backward over the stump. Despite expert judgment and long experience there was always the unexpected to be expected.
When the tree started to talk, that is, to make the noises that indicate its imminent crash, the faller would take off, putting the greatest possible distance between himself and the stump. There were no second chances.

Sleeper cutters, if they valued life and limb had to become proficient fallers.
The trap to avoid was a "bridger" a tree brought down over a hollow in the ground. This would cause the cross-cut saw to get locked when cutting without underneath support.

Before March 1906, the millar combine paid two shillings and fourpence for each sleeper, nine feet by ten inches by five inches ( export trade) at the stump.
After March 1906, the price was reduced to two shillings at the siding. This precipitated a long and bitter
strike.
Consistent market was for the West Australian Government Railway sleepers seven feet by nine inches by four and a half inches at two shillings for every accepted sleeper, "at the stump", each sleeper being marked with the Cutter's registered hammer brand.
A cutter was lucky to average five pounds a week over the year. (Again, exactly what Dad would tell me)

Splitting the billets for later trimming to size with axe and broad-axe was an art. One endeavoured to split as near to
size as possible, to avoid waste timber or unnecessary trimming.
Working conditions were primitive, indeed shocking, by today's standards. Home was a tent near a creek or water-hole. Men toiled in dripping-wet scrub for half the year. There was the loneliness, the dreadful tiredness and the aching body and then, after each toil-weary day, the chore of cooking with the most primitive facilities. Perishables such as fresh meat and butter were kept in hessian chaff-bag safe – an ordinary chaff bag, having at the bottom an inch thick board about two feet by two feet, on which shelf all food was placed. Its top tied tightly, the contraption was pulled high above the ground by means of a rope over the nearest convenient bough. Even then the bush chef often had to cope with fly-blown and semi-putrid meat as well as brackish or highly mineralised water.

Blisters and barked knuckles were the new chum's lot until his hands developed the typical axeman's tough, calloused skin. The constant bending involved in the lifting and downward swing of a broad-axe weighing
anything from six to nine pounds was par for the course. As was cross-cut sawing the huge logs into sleeper lengths then splitting out the billets for final trimming into sleepers with wedges, using a wooden
maul or a ten to twelve pound sledge-hammer. It resulted each morning in sore and aching muscles and back as stiff as a poker.

Most broad-axe work was left for late in the morning or afternoon, when the stiffened muscles had warmed up and the broad-axe would be swung with precision to split along the chalk line previously marked in squaring the sleeper or beam.`
There were difficulties using single—handed cross-cut saws. After cutting the scarp, the bark would be removed from the other side for the saw, at waist height. Then the axe would be buried into the tree to steady the saw at the beginning of the cut. Wedges had to follow into the cut to prevent the saw from jamming. Once this happened you were in big trouble.

" I had just finished my first sleeper and stood back to admire it when another cutter came past, had one look and said "Sonny, you've left enough feathers on that for it to fly into the siding under its own bloody power".
Feathers are axe marks on both sides and top and rough edges. By the time I'd set to and refaced it, it was bloody-well under size, a reject. The same happened with my next two attempts, but never again.

The sleeper cutter seldom worked with a mate.
Set up camp included a conveniently sized stump' two vertical cuts were sawn and gradually split out with an axe to accommodate the grindstone. For the axe sharpener a slab seat was rigged up with a can of water for wetting the stone. For sharpening saws, a stunted jarrah with twin forked trunks would be cut chest high with an aligned saw cut in each trunk. It made a great saw sharpening vise in which the blade was held tightly with small wooden wedges.

Expert hewers gained nothing from working in pairs

1929


“Then the Depression came. It was hardest for us newcomers in the country when there was Depression. Because nobody anted you. At the siding I worked shoveling wheat in big silos. Plenty to eat. Lot of sheep no worry for food."

During the depression, jobs were very scarce. He would consider himself lucky to work all day clearing land for the farmers just for meals and a place to sleep. The work involved ring-barking the
trees. The way they cleared the land before the days of bull dozers was to ring bark all the trees, wait for them to die, then burn the forest. To this day, if you drive down South you will see the old stumps still left in the farm ground.
http://www.doctorzaninovich.com/uploads/3/1/9/7/3197858/1193170.jpg?350
They used to fall some darn big trees.

Thankfully they left a few of the old forest giants.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a70/troutylow/Timber%20work/KingJarrah.jpg

This was estimated around 700 years old... and within about a mile of an old steam powered sawmill, but the ground it was on was too steep for the bullock teams to be able to haul the logs back up the hill to get them to the mill so they left it & another just like it right next to it, still standing to this day!

Back to your broad axes!

The broad axe heads SHOULD have a slight sideways curve, front to back (they also have a slight up and down curve as well obviously like all axes) so they tend to adze (scallop) the wood rather than bite in and split along the grain direction... that's why you need two broad axes (in matched pairs L & R) so you can run down the grain on both sides without biting in, and the slight curvature was to tend to make it scallop out again and not just bite in/split along grain.

Again you'd think - "well I might just use the right handed one across my body" but that's dangerous because then your behind the axe head if / when it misses and cuts your leg / foot.
So you need left and right curved heads and left and right curved handles to match!. Why not just mount the same axe heads opposite way on l & R curved handles? Well the head where it takes the handle is "shaped" to wedge onto the handle so if you did that you'd have one head on backwards and likely it wouldn't stay wedged on properly - always tapering the wrong way to wedge on when the speader wedges were inserted into the head end of the hickory handle.

Many years later.... it was discovered that a local hardwood timber "Mallet" was great for tool handles!


"AGK Quality Woodware

This is the only industry of its kind in Western Australia, which is located within the Cuballing Shire and is a prominent tourist attraction. People from within Australia and many other countries have visited to see how tool handles are made.

The industry turns 400 tonnes of brown mallet logs into a range of handles for tools in each year. Some goods are exported but the main part are sold within Australia. The wood used for manufacturing is grown locally in the Dryandra mallet forest plantations and surrounding areas. Manufacturing the wood into tool handles began in July 1967 by the Hunter family and steady progress has been made up to the present time. Workers at the factory total eight people - four of them being members of the direct family."

Brown mallet. Eucalyptus astringens.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQl8iv6atj1EzXwWOGBtpfOIeef5merQ IZhMO90fAsO4wvNrha7bg
Brown Mallet

And obviously the left & right heads are beveled on the one appropriate side for use.
Sorry if you know all this already.
Just trying to help out.

Was a forester for a decade or so and also worked a decade in railways track & bridge culverts engineering - with more than 250 years railways service in my family going back to WW1 The great depression of the 1920's/30's & steam trains etc. Had a Father in law (Railway Civil Engineer) who was in the railways "Hysterical" (historical) society so this stuff runs in the veins.

Plus it's our history that would be a shame to lose....

Hopefully it might enthuse you to restore your two for posterity's sake!.

Ohh and a lot of those hardwood sleepers in the photo were exported to the UK in sailing ships and used to sleeper the London Underground railway (tube).

Cheers

[Jeff Bartley]

Thanks for the replies, that's really cool history Ian! Tom-that pic of you hewing looks just like the setup we use, even down to making the initial juggling cuts with a chainsaw (sorry neanders!), like you we're doing this in the restoration of old log buildings and thus need all the speed we can muster to get the job done quickly. We are careful to keep the chainsaw off the line and finish the juggling with a felling axe so as to keep the finished timber historically correct.
Mike-have you used the steam box to bend a handle?
I can't imagine hewing jarrah! We hew white oak most commonly and when green it's not bad, green pine is like butter, jarrah--whoa!

[Tom M King]

Jeff, that was an afternoon of rigging up something that would work for a couple of beams we needed. You can see the chainsaw jig, and read about it, on the upper part of the "structural" page on my website: HistoricHousePreservation.com That was almost dry Maple.

[David Eisenhauer]

Thanks Ian. I love the history of how things were made or accomplished back when. Good info and photos.

[Bill Rhodus]

Jeff, install a handle, I make my own from green hickory, wrap handle with rags and pour boiling water on the rags. refresh the boiling water for 10 min or so. place a 1" thick board on your bench and lay the ax handle across the block. clamp the head of the ax to the bench and as you do so, you will offset the handle. the placement of the block will depend on the offset you want. also, you can place a clamp on the end of the handle to bend the linear axis of the handle parallel to the cut line of the head creating a clearance offset for your knuckles. the bend geometry is a personal choice, experiment with it.

[Mike Holbrook]

Nice post Ian, I will return to it many times I am sure. Maybe a moderator could archive it, move it to an achieve thread or something?