Proper Way to Sharpen Axe Without Buck Rogers Equipment?

[Ron Kellison]

I have an Iltis "Oxhead" felling axe fitted with a great oiled hickory handle. I think for a winter project I'll take it up to a shaving edge just to see how much difference there is in use as compared to a regular file sharpening.

[William Fretwell]

,Hopefully the people making the handles know how to pick the right grain but some are always better. It usually won’t matter until you miss hit and the handle is the first thing to make contact, after a few of those you will find out.
The Swedish axes are very good steel by the way, I can shave with mine.

[Jim Koepke]

,Hopefully the people making the handles know how to pick the right grain but some are always better.

In my experience they don't seem to bother aligning the grain. That is for the person buying a new tool or a replacement handle.

Every time a new shovel, other wooden handled tool or a replacement handle is purchased my first point of inspection is how the grain is aligned.

It is so rare for one of my shovel's handles to break, my memory of the last one to break is of someone else breaking a handle.

One of my shovels broke in the metal. The handle was salvaged and used on a different shovel head. When my neighbor moved he had three or four good shovel heads with no handles. He likely broke the handles and replaced the whole shovel instead. A couple of these were of good heavy gauge steel.

A good handle will often cost more than a cheap shovel.

jtk

[Ryan Mooney]

Surprised no one has brought up "An Axe to Grind" from the forest service yet. This is probably one of the better intro's to axes out there.

www fs fed us/t-d/pubs/pdfpubs/pdf99232823/pdf99232823Pdpi72pt04.pdf

Replace the spaces with dots to get the link (I can't ever keep track of what links are /are not allowed here so just assume none are).

The grain running sideways makes the handle more likely to split in use (some handles will split, some won't depending on the use and wood). I tend not to inspect pretty closely and only get the ones with mostly decent grain because they do tend to fail at just the wrong time.

For removing the old handle, cut it off right below the head, then drill out as much as you can, then use a punch to knock the rest out. Watch out for metal wedges when you're drilling. Even with a hand drill it only takes maybe 5 minutes to get it pretty clean that way.

I have two axes that you cannot sharpen with a file (even a NOS really good file). I don't use those for heavy chopping as they tend to be a bit chippy, but they do take an awesome edge for shaving and fine hewing, luckily the one I mostly use in that category is a hewing hatchet. Both also required significant refurbing before they were useful, some combination of an angle grinder judiciously applied and a belt sander got them within sharpening stone distance. All of my felling an limbing axes sharpen reasonably well with a file and a medium stone, the one felling axe does eat files a bit bit but unless I'm do something bad with it (no knots!) it doesn't usually have to go back that far.

[Steve H Graham]

Surprised no one has brought up "An Axe to Grind" from the forest service yet. This is probably one of the better intro's to axes out there.

See this, above:

I have a nice present for the board.

https://www.pcta.org/wp-content/uplo...x_to_grind.pdf

There is also a Youtube video that goes with it.

[Ryan Mooney]

See this, above:

Well there you go at least someone was paying attention I was looking for the fs fed us url..