Ax(e) making

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Mr Wolf

Full Member
Jun 30, 2013
707
169
Nottinghamshire
Never made anything,but i really want to make something useful.
Google foo failed me but i am curious what the best books and courses are,and how any of you started out.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,664
McBride, BC
Look at the ascendancy of human activity= stone age, copper age, bronze age, iron age.
Go to museums, study and draw the evidence of their passing.
Make those things. Use those things. Only then will your questions arise.
Do you have and use a stone adze?

Stand in my kitchen with a 'first strike' flint blade and carve the raw bison meat, potatoes and the onions for our supper.
You can peel off several thousand years in a minute. First time was a shock for me. Now, it is a pleasure.

Dave Budd will do you very well when you rise to the Iron Age.
By then you should know what the merits of iron over bronze could be.

We didn't have that. Our native people jumped from the stone age to the iron age almost literally overnight in the middle 1700's!!!
Much of their paleolithic activity is still all aroud us. It's been too valuable to throw away.
Despite what my arrogant ******* ancestors thought of the First Nations in that day and time.

Bucket list?
I need to spend 2 or 3x 7 day sessions in the bronze age. From scratch British tin ore to the finished tools.
 
Jul 24, 2017
1,163
444
somerset
I myself just started making knifes because I just wanted to make things too my taste, had some background with tool making for cars, and a hell of a lot of fixing everything! Play with plasticine it will give you an idea how metal moves when forging and how to strike it to get the form you want.
 
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Broch

Life Member
Jan 18, 2009
7,983
7,759
Mid Wales
www.mont-hmg.co.uk
Never made anything, but i really want to make something useful.
Google foo failed me but i am curious what the best books and courses are, and how any of you started out.

Jumping straight into forging may not be the best way - though a number of places run one-day courses that will get you to a finished product (usually a door knocker!).

If you've not made an edged tool before using steel blanks to make a knife can be a very satisfying process - look at https://www.gfsknifesupplies.com/Shop1 as an example. Of course, this doesn't get you an axe but as an interim process you could do what I do and restore or modify old axe heads first (see thread running a couple of weeks ago https://bushcraftuk.com/community/index.php?threads/new-carving-axe-from-old-chopper.150060)

Gransfors do forging courses and I know one guy who is very proud of the axe he made on one of those but personally I think I'd rather spend the time with Dave.
 

Janne

Sent off - Not allowed to play
Feb 10, 2016
12,330
2,293
Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
If Cornish pasties were a common food in SE England, I would have moved back to Sweden within a week.......
Beautiful coastline though.

Axe making? I started putting new handles in rattailed ready made blades. Then I went over to re shape existing blades.
To jump in straight into ax making might be a step to far!

What about restoring (+ maybe reshaping) and rehandling a few old axes first?
 

Broch

Life Member
Jan 18, 2009
7,983
7,759
Mid Wales
www.mont-hmg.co.uk
If Cornish pasties were a common food in SE England, I would have moved back to Sweden within a week.......
Beautiful coastline though.

Axe making? I started putting new handles in rattailed ready made blades. Then I went over to re shape existing blades.
To jump in straight into ax making might be a step to far!

What about restoring (+ maybe reshaping) and rehandling a few old axes first?

We think alike!
However, (off-topic a moment) I won't take food advice from someone that prefers pickled herring, boiled eggs and potatoes to Cornish Pasties - the Swedes cannot criticize any other culture's cuisine :)
 
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Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,664
McBride, BC
If my memory serves, it is in Cornwall that the biggest open pit tin ore mines are found.
Those drove the Roman Bronze Age like nothing else. Critical importance.

I want to see those. I want to make Roman bronze. I want to cast bronze.

I suppose that I could buy a "non-sparking" (bronze) chisel of some sort and bash that in a forge.
No, Bronze Age please.

I have made copper knife blades from 1/4" rod. Fairly useless in the kitchen.
I had a farrier bash out an adze blade for me from 2" x 6" x 1/4" copper bar.
Hafted as a D-adze, really a greenwood tool. Hopeless in dried woods.
The farrier's striking accuracy and shaping techniques were a sight to behold.
 

Janne

Sent off - Not allowed to play
Feb 10, 2016
12,330
2,293
Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
We think alike!
However, (off-topic a moment) I won't take food advice from someone that prefers pickled herring, boiled eggs and potatoes to Cornish Pasties - the Swedes cannot criticize any other culture's cuisine :)
Those are the starters only....

Fermented herring, thinly sliced ‘almond potatoes ( an arctic potato variety), sliced raw onion in a thin bread wrap.
Now we are talking food for Heroic Men and Long Suffering Women!
:)

Back to topic:
If anybody knows a Bronze smith ( correct name?) that can do a commisioned knife blade, then I would like to have his/her details.

Tin should be fairly easy to mine, it comes as tiny granules I think?
The Copper is more difficult I think.

In my treks in the Swedish wilderness, I have come upon granules of bog iron many times in the streams. Like blobs of very rusty rust. Rust red on the outside, black heavy rust (?) on the inside.

How they reduced to Iron it in the past I do not kmow.
Tin and Copper is much easier.
Important to get the alloy correct though.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,664
McBride, BC
That's the phrase = Drink Canada Dry. A "Canada Goose" is with an icicle. We grow snoticles.
I had some honey & spice noted Canadian Rye whiskey from the good people at "40 Creek."
Might need a 750 in the cupboard. Rather nice and so is the 40Creek Barrel Select.

We have copper nodules all over the northern part of the continent.
Knobs of it mostly in river gravel, pea-size and bigger. Kind of a black-ish oxide on the outside and not always round.
There's a piece of copper metal on Isle Royale which is bigger than a Grand Piano.
There's gold all over the place and lots of platinum nuggets down south.
Don't ever get caught claim jumping. Not good for your health.
A pan and a shovel to poke around and snipe a few big rocks is OK.

The various metal ore deposits are usually oxides of some sort.
Mixed with charcoal and heated, the carbon of the charcoal combines with the oxygen in the oxide ore
and flumes off as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
Look it up. I think you need 1000C to get this done.
How ever did paleo people bring this off? What sorts of crucible did they make?

Just a month(?) ago, somebody dug up a cache of several hundred bronze axe heads.
Like it was a factory production! Italy, I think. I infer that you cast bronze and then sharpen the edges.
 

Janne

Sent off - Not allowed to play
Feb 10, 2016
12,330
2,293
Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
Yes, we think those guys were primitive and stupid.
I tried years ago to melt copper using charcoal and skin bellows.
I am stupid and they are clever, as they could and I could not.
All I have managed to melt is lead and tin. Aluminium in tiny amounts.

Yes, you cast Bronze ( the old version) and then gently hammer out the edges which hardens them somewhat.
Then sharpen.
The Blacksmiths here can explain it professionally!
But, when I have looked on prehistoric Bronze items, I could not see any clear signs of sharpening.
And I am unsure if anybody has done any metallurgic analysis of the bronze structure if they did hammer, and sharpen on a stone.
Should be detectable, no?
 
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