Down at the ‘boatyard’ there are always distractions and with Flamingo’s new blocks all finished and nestled safely cheek by jowl… or perhaps cheek by sheave… their 1930’s pennies gleaming in oiled splendour, just waiting for their moment to shine, this old splitting axe, or maul that belonged to my mother caught my eye. There’s something about handling old tools that connects you to previous owners. I have an old smoothing plane given to me when I was 17 and just starting out, even now I seldom pick it up without thinking of Paddy and Topsy Margaret who gave me the bucket of old tools it came in. There was more than one Margaret in my life growing up, so this one took on the name of her scruffy little dog Topsy, as a differentiator between her and Fancy Margaret … I wonder if she minded… Anyway I digress. Restoring this old axe from something frankly rather lethal to a useful tool again kept mum popping in to my mind and I like to think she would have appreciated its resurrection.

A firm believer that nothing couldn’t be fixed with a bit of string and some glue, mother patched it up long after it should have been consigned to the repair box.

It didn’t take much to free the handle. I made the new one from an offcut of a paddle making project, (more on that in another post) ground a new edge and wire brushed it til it gleamed!

Tool handles.

The key thing with tool handles is straight grain and no knots. Hickory is often the go to choice for any tool that will be subject to high impact however, I really like the workability of Ash and its flexibility helps absorb the shock, plus I had some under the bench so decision made! I left the profile chamfered near the head keeping more material there as that is where any mishits (is that a word? It looks… wrong) will likely fall and shaving the handle down to the size of the eye in the axe head would have made it super skinny and, to my mind, a bit flimsy.

A couple of hardwood wedges driven into the top finished it off.

Chores

Sawing and splitting logs always reminds me of childhood chores. My weekly list was; feed the chickens and let them out, feed the geese and let them out, burn the rubbish (I know!) take out the compost, and saw up one wheelbarrow of wood to feed the venerable old Rayburn that sat, wheezing tepidly in the corner of the living room. “a man who saws his own wood, is twice warmed” mother used to reply, if I moaned about this labour. This graft earned me something like 50p (about a million in todays money I’m sure…)

Though they never had the same list of chores to help the smooth running of the house, apparently just clearing their own plate from the table is contribution enough, I did let my kids loose on the wood pile once they were old enough, if they can walk and talk, they can saw and split is my motto and they all have all their fingers and toes so it must be true.😀

So whilst it’s not exactly comparable to ‘Anduril, Flame of the West’ it is ready to be a serviceable tool for a few more years…