Hudson Bay axe?

[Mr Wolf]

So....i wanted a nice hb ax but i got worried about the heads loosening.
Its a common occurance when googled and the most common thing said is its not designed for heavy work,fit your own handle etc

I like to know the history of tools so tried to look into the history of this particular pattern.
The originals sent from europe had rounded eyes and probably designed for friction fit handles,made on the fly.
So is the modern interpretations where its a fixed,wedged handle the issue?
Did trying to improve one aspect of a tool put a flaw into the design?
Would rinaldi style friction fit handles and eye suit a hb pattern head better?
Thoughts?

 

[Janne]

Would a harder wood be better?

Was the HB axe, just like the tomahawk, not designed to use as little steel as possible ( increase the profit margin) which the customers, unused to quality tools, did not notice?
Steel was expensive in those days.

Also, modern wood is softer. Faster grown. Plus the drying is in kilns = faster.
In the old days people selected wood to be fit for purpose. Today - any piece of timber is used. I have an axe made pre ww2, and the handle is made using a piece if wood that had the same shape as the handle which means the fibers run all the way through.

 

[Robson Valley]

If you need to do heavy work, buy an axe meant for heavy work like splitting the rounds that you can see behind me in my avatar..
Break a Mickey Mouse handle, you fix it.
The eye is tapered, so is the fitted handle = you can't fling the head off the end of the handle.

Split wood will beat sawn handle woods as the grain will run further in the length of the handle.
In the eastern woodlands, the birch building FN societies need a small axe for canoe parts, pack frame parts and snow shoe parts.
They did not carve totem, story or mortuary pole like you see on the west coast.

The orientation of the growth rings is everything. Look at handles to see this.
Hickory and Ash have elastic mechanical properties like a multi-leaf spring.

The Hudson's Bay Company was pulling steel out of the Sheffield district in England.
Trying to cheap it out as best they could.
As an example, compare their Sheffield version of a Mocotaugan crooked draw knife from 1760
with the wicked tools that the First Nations forged from 6" mill files in that day and time.

I have another Pacific Northwest elbow adze blade on the bench. Have the birch wood and the pattern.
If I get it done before Hell freezes over, I'll document hafting an elbow adze.

 

[santaman2000]

Would a harder wood be better?.....


......Also, modern wood is softer. Faster grown. Plus the drying is in kilns = faster.
In the old days people selected wood to be fit for purpose. Today - any piece of timber is used.......

Axe handles (and indeed most tool handles) are still made of hickory (in North America) and as (in most of the UK) Neither grows any faster today than it did back in the day.

 

[Janne]

In Europe, planted trees grow much faster than ’old growth’ trees. Spacing, fertilisation, selective breeding.

I asume hickory trees are farmed today too?
Arboriculture is important .

They used other woods in Europe for handles in the past. In Western Europe I do not know, but in Eastern Europe until the 1990’s.
You could buy a bare axe head in Sweden still in the late 70’s and make a hsndle of your own liking. From local wood. Ash, rowan, birch.

Everybody uses Hickory today. Only one manufacturer in Sweden does not, as far as I know. They use birch.

Those factory made hickory handles can be very good, or very bad. I bought a Hultafors axe for my son this summer, and it was difficult to find one with a handle where the fibers did not go diagonally. Where the end exited the handle, the surface was nasty, rough and almost splintery. Bad QC imo.

 

[Robson Valley]

I would expect Hickory plantations in the USA. I would also imagine that they won't thin and fertilize for rapid growth.
They are not so stupid as to ignore the required mechanical properties of woods needed for tool handles.
You plant a wood lot of hickory for your grand children as an inheritance project, OK?

 

[santaman2000]

In Europe, planted trees grow much faster than ’old growth’ trees. Spacing, fertilisation, selective breeding.

I asume hickory trees are farmed today too?
Arboriculture is important ......

No

I would expect Hickory plantations in the USA.....

Nope. The closest thing would be pecan orchards and (pecan wood CAN be legally sold as hickory but pecan's actually more valuable so it rarely is) speedy growth is NOT an asset for them.

 

[sunndog]

Hickory is not farmed?

Really?

 

[Robson Valley]

How you manage the block depends upon exactly what you want the wood for.
We can manipulate ring width and fiber cell length = no big deal at all.

We plant millions of seedlings with the sole intention of producing a fiber crop.
That's all it is = mow it down and start over. Taiga conifer forest.


It's naive to suppose that we are trying to restore the forest.
There's lots of low grade forest for us to leap around in for hundreds of years to come.
Actually, second growth forest is a lot more interesting to visit for species niche opportunities than closed canopy, climax forest.

HBC axes were designed for regional applications. What they ordered and then where it was sold is in their records.

 

[santaman2000]

Hickory is not farmed?

Really?

Nope. It's kinda unappealing to people to plant a crop their grandkids or great grandkids (depending on your age when you plant it) will harvest. At least in North America.

 

[santaman2000]

How you manage the block depends upon exactly what you want the wood for.....

What you want the wood for? Profit. As soon as possible. In a commercial forest (I include government owned forests in that category) that means pine, pine, and more pine.

 

[Janne]

That is exactlywhy forests are replanted with selrcted strains and managed. Quick growing, straight trees.
Double grownth rate compared to unmanaged, wild trees.

We buy timber from Florida here. Some has year rings that are close to a cm thick, wood is soft as balsa.
I spend a long time selecting my timber at the yard. Straight, thin rings.
To keep the helper happy, I give him a tip beforehand!

 

[santaman2000]

....We buy timber from Florida here. Some has year rings that are close to a cm thick, wood is soft as balsa.....

Strange. Florida's commercial timber is a small undertaking. The real plantations of thre South are in Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama.

 

[Janne]

Well, it could be, but I assume it is from there as we ship it in from Florida. The packaging it comes in is removed before they stack it up in the warehouse.
It is of a horrible quality though. Soft. Weak so it sags. Maybe they buy a 'C" grade, I do not know.

But, a KYD 5$ or 10$ bill ensures I get top quality!

 

[Billy-o]

Not sure about a Hudson's Bay axe. There is a mountain of postage here on axes, obviously, and it is all worth delving into.

I don't really use an axe much now. I found it a fleeting thing really. Too heavy. for camping with. But the one I did like best as a hikable piece was the Roselli ... quite the chainsaw on a stick. My bigger one is a Plumb, which some condescending clown trying to do me a big favour, ground a big bevel on to. It did have the most perfectly-judged convex. Thin at top and bottom for cutting. Thicker in the middle for splitting. I have been so annoyed with the cocksure, know-it-all, A-type numbskull that did it that I haven't really taken a look at it to see if it is salvageable.

I sold the several GBs I had bought to try out. I liked a lot of them. There was one relatively light one I rather liked, but they aren't much use for riving/splitting, or deadwood, they being so slim in section. Great for slicing into green wood, but gets stuck in deadwood. The Roselli won't stick in anything, you can try your best

I am in no place to pontificate on the matter here, but I had thought riven ash was meant to be the best stuff for a handle. I had the head loosen on a birch handled ax once. Soaked it in linseed oil and spirit for a week, which helped a bit in the short term by swelling the wood. You could see how it had travelled up the phloem. I wasn't totally happy with it at the time, but I found that going back to use the axe about a year later that it had cured the problem entirely. I guess the oil solidifies or something.

 

[Robson Valley]

If there's any phloem, secondary phloem = inner bark, I'd be the first to throw the handle away and make another.
It is a measurable fact that different species have different mechanical properties and one of those is shrinkage.
The radial, tangential and transverse dimensional changes are different.
Do a ring count. Number of rings per inch so nobody can sell you crap wood.

Ash is ring porous, set up like leaf springs. Split ash follows the fiber so there's little or no run-out.
I do all my wood carving in split woods for that reason ( and others).
Birch is diffuse porous, quite uniform and no outstanding properties of any kind.
It's a very multipurpose tree as thousands of years of use in eastern North American has shown us.

Planting an inheritance? Good for nothing else land is a perfect gift.
How about reciting the specifications for wooden power and line service poles?
Those are not some hobby projects on a big lathe.
You grow those and you are not allowed to hurry that.
You can't sell what is inferior specs.

I know some really rich kids, now in their 60's. Set for life. Dripping with money.
Grandpa bought two sections of terrible silt and sand and clay That's a square mile, each.
Willed the land to his grandkids in the face of a very rapidly growing city.
That crap land is now a huge recycling yard and city garbage dump = they pay to use it!

 

[Billy-o]

phloem

Oops ... knew I should have paid more attention in O-level biol

 

[Robson Valley]

Not to worry! I have been able to make wood science and wood anatomy in particular, a part of my education and career.
I thought that the past decade of retirement would have allowed me to defrag my hard drive but if anything, I make more practical
use of the dendrology in wood carving than I ever did (even expert witness in court).

 

[Mr Wolf]

Not to worry! I have been able to make wood science and wood anatomy in particular, a part of my education and career.
I thought that the past decade of retirement would have allowed me to defrag my hard drive but if anything, I make more practical
use of the dendrology in wood carving than I ever did (even expert witness in court).

Interesting forte Sir

 

[santaman2000]

[QUOTE="Robson Valley, post: 1869862, ......How about reciting the specifications for wooden power and line service poles?
Those are not some hobby projects on a big lathe.
You grow those and you are not allowed to hurry that.
You can't sell what is inferior specs.....[/QUOTE]


Back when I was still logging with my family (before i enlisted in 1976) poles were the single best timber cash crop. You could grow them in about 15 years. We were lucky enough to know an old farmer that had a few hundred acres of old growth Longleaf (Yellow) Pine though. he never clear cut and always had huge examples of trees 2 or more centuries old. We'd get a sawlog (16 foot minimum) out of the butt and then a 50 foot pole from the tops.

Nowadays the number one cash timber is particle board (still grown on a 10 - 20 year rotational cycle)

I miss logging.