My last trip to The Tool Barn in Bar Harbor ended with me going home with a new Axe that looked to be very rough but potentially a nice bit. I have always wanted a small axe for rough carving purposes or just to take with me on camping trips around the area but just couldn't cough up the $ for a nice one from Gransfors or someone similar. So I got the axe home and did a little research on getting it re-handled (the original handle was in real bad shape and unrecognizable) and came across a whole community of Bushcrafter's (not sure if that term is proper). Well I made myself a handle, this was just by seeing examples online so my shape may be way off, and sharpened the edge. I planned on cleaning the whole axe bit but have not wanted to take the time to do so yet, it works wonderfully as is. I also did a lot of work on the edge, there was some really nasty chips and this took more time than I expected. The edge is a lot harder than any other axe I've used and the file really struggled with removing any material. I take this as a decent sign but I have no basis for what the hardness of a good axe is supposed to be. Finally I got the edge sharp enough to shave my arm with and went searching through the firewood pile for some fresh cut hardwoods.
My best resource I came across was Ben Orford. If you haven't heard of him I highly recommend checking him out. His site along with other bushcrafter's/spoon carvers really gave me some inspiration to give this stuff a go. I got to chopping and haven't been able to put the axe and knife down.
Bear with my work, these are truly my first stab at this sort of thing and they are really rough.
Axe head.jpg Axe.jpg Knife.jpg Tools and spoons.jpg
And the knife is something I picked up at a local knife shop. They had this one Helle knife blank that I figured I could make a handle for. I've had the blank for over a year and just never really needed it until this spoon carving itch came along. So far the knife has been wonderful, really holds an edge forever. Although most of the work is in green wood so that really helps with cutting these down so quickly. And 90% of the work is done with the axe.
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Originally Posted by Chris Griggs
