Recent content by Aristotle

OK.i use mine at least once a day. If you do not need or use one, don't carry one.

Worn on the outside?

I made this from a piece that I found in a wood pile at our scout hut

It need not be a contentious issue. Use the right tools for the job given the environment, locale, task(s), portability requirement etc. Nailing one's colours to the mast or digging into entrenched positions for or against the use of an axe seems wholly unnecessary.

I wouldn't fancy splitting firewood with a saw

Same here. I have worn them in the desert, in the mountains and in the UK. Excellent.

My Dad and I would do that when I was a lad. I have sometimes hit the heavy bag with a stick

It will have been partly as a result of the military origins of Scouting

I have had a pair of aluminium Leki poles since the late 90s. With a heavy pack they can be helpful on the correct terrain, but they do often get in the way. I have a pair of collapsible carbon Leki poles for mountian running too. They are good for assisting going steep uphill fast. I took the...

I bought a USAF surplus Propper ABU shirt. It has a good, pixelated, tiger stripe pattern, but was far too light grey. I over-dyed it Olive Green. It came out quite well, and it looks good, although there is a clearly defined wide stripe on each arm that didn't take the dye well. It must have...

I have used fence posts and signposts

The Scouts used a selection of axes to split hardwood (beech and chestnut) rounds and to make kindling yesterday. The boy's/forest type axes were a very useful and effective size for splitting, even for the smaller scouts. A few of them made good use of the 16" 1.25/1.5lb axes for a bit of...

The 40cm handle gives a much more useful swinging ability than a 30cm handle.

As I posted, earlier, I agree with Hillbill on the usefulness of smaller axes. These get used by our scouts and leaders for a range of tasks. The nicer (HB) one on the left is 1.25lb (560g), the one in the right is 1.5lb (680g). They both have 16" (40cm) handles.