I spent the whole day yesterday splitting fire wood for the winter, I would have loved to give this a work out. I have the estwing campers axe that is also one piece of steel. They do have a weird kick back from the metal handle specially when choking up, I wonder how this one compares. Either way I would not mind giving it a really good try out over a year and use it as my only axe and see how it goes. Mind you prepping a years supply of fire wood for the raybrun and splitting and prepping bow staves usually means using 5 different axes. But hey I'm still looking for that one tool to rule them all so I am interested.