Leveraxe Review (by Wranglerstar)

[OldJimbo]

Blocks of wood split with the grain when you open a crack with an axe. The more suddenly the crack opens and the wider it opens affects just what size of wood can be split. Nothing is new in the world and the technique of twisting the axe slightly just after it bites into the wood to open the crack more suddenly and wider is well known. It works very well, but the effect on your wrists won't be known for a few years when it will become very evident.
I use a different route in that I highly finish the bevels and ramps on hatchets and axes so that they sink in very easily and open a crack. I'm confident that I could split that small wood with a 10 oz hatchet and baton in the same time with far less effort. The key is to finish the tool so that it totally sinks into the wood with little force applied. Larger hatchets need to be hit with a larger heavier baton due to the need to overcome the inertia due to their heavier weight and because they are wider at the eye. A properly finished boy's axe is about the limit for one hit blows working with a heavy baton, but it does work well enough where there are no chopping blocks. The strange fact is that while a tiny hatchet will split large and twisty grained wood easily with one baton blow, a regular axe tapped in more slowly will leave wood attached at the base, even though a wider crack is opened: so everything depends on the suddenness of opening a crack.
Properly finishing bevels and ramps is a time consuming task with a large sanding pad. I would sit on the beach etc. by a poor fire and smoke the blade before batoning it into a big round. Then you can see the high spots where the black rubs off and work on them. Things come together very suddenly and I have a scar to show for that when I was paying more attention to my grand-daughter than the task at hand. A Norlund hatchet went from sinking in 1" with a light baton hit to splitting the block easily and swinging free.
I've had good experience with properly finishing mauls and 8lb wedges, too. It's pretty clear that the maul in the video has had no work.. I look back on a lot of splitting and wished that I had thought of work on the maul a few decades ago! For the wood shown in the video, a properly finished light axe would have split the wood with far less work than swinging a maul.

 

[Robson Valley]

OldJimbo: Few like us have to contend with logs 3' - 10' diameter. Smoke on the blade = my Grandpa was a boat-builder in Vancouver, 1950's.
He taught me that! My mother taught me how to use a 3.5lb splitting axe in -30C frozen birch.

 

[OldJimbo]

Yep we have some trees exceeding that 10' diameter!

Smoking the blade of the axe to refine to perfect bevels is really important with hewing tools such as broad hatchets, and adzes in order to get smooth perfect cuts. I'm just a newbie with using a single sided or hewing hatchet, but what a gorgeous tool! They are used flat side to smooth/flatten planks/posts/beams and bevel side for shaping. One can whittle a leg thickness or more piece of wood as easily as whittling a stick with a knife, and with equal precision. It's pretty unbelievable just how precise some hewn logs in old buildings/boats are. I wish I had that level of skill!

In the original superaxe video notice how the wood splits straight across the round in the tire. Most of our wood is twisted grain or knotty so not so easily split. When I was testing the tiny hatchet I tried it against large straight blades, and it beat them all handily because the short cutting edge opened the split which then went however it wanted to go. Longer cutting edges used with baton soon met the twisty grain and everything came to an abrupt stop.

 

[Robson Valley]

The best way to sharpen & hone wood carving tools is to paint the bevel with black felt marker as the tell-tale.
Changes in the metal surface are commonly so subtle that the pigment is the only way to see what's happening.
That also proved to me that one of my 1k grit waterstones has a belly like a rainbow.

 

[OldJimbo]

For some reason I always forget to include the marker when I'm out and honing stuff - but I can work with carbon black.. I use an Iwamoto lens to check - which I got from the mining and forestry supplies store in Prince George. I got both the 10X and 20X versions after I looked through them and was amazed. Gradually all my cheaper $30 Rupers had gone to grand-kids, and I was a bit skeptical about the $100 Iwamoto's until I looked through one. I haven't been able to locate any stores which stock the Iwamoto in /Edmonton or I'd lay in some spares before they become unavailable. The lack of Prov sales tax in Alberta helps....

I had picked up some broad hatchet heads as part of deals or models made in Canada,and they sat around until I was building a bridge on a trail and needed to shape some logs. Then of course I realized that the apparently simple tool really was far more complex than I had imagined, and wasn't used with the simple 90 degree chopping stroke I had imagined. What I have found is that all vintage axes far exceed expectations if finished and used for their specific purpose. I'm pretty convinced that if there was a wood splitting axe which worked better than a conventional axe or maul then it would have been designed and made long ago.

Waterstones need constant work with a diamond plate or diamond powder on a glass plate to keep them flat which is my complaint against them, despite how well they work.

 

[dewi]

Blimey, you two talk about stuff that the majority of us will never see, likely never experience. Probably due to the fact that us Brits along with the French and the Dutch cut down all our trees to build ships and 'discover' the lands you're talking about. The Germans showed intelligence and guile by turning up late for the party and bringing their expertise to a corner... and for the most part, staying put.

Blunt of it is (excuse the pun) that splitting wood with an axe is about the same, given technique, as the new axes shown by Wranglestar.

The axe hasn't been reinvented, use an axe and learn the technique to split wood. Wood burn on fire, fire give warmth, job done.

Personally I'm going to toss a coin between the splitting wedge and the log buster... saves me swinging an axe in the first place

 

[OldJimbo]

I'm sure seeing and experiencing new stuff too - Alberta is a lot different to the coast. Here one day a person is sweating outside and the next it's snowing. It's hard to get over just how heavy rainfalls are - yet a bit of sun and the bottomless Alberta mud dries out and is fine. Otherwise that mud will humble even a jacked up 1 ton on huge mud tires since it really does seem to be bottomless. In BC we some great regional guides to local plants, but I haven't found one for W Alberta, yet, so lots of stuff is new to me and yet to identified. Some moose hunters encountered a cougar right by where I was glassing country with my grandson, and apparently troublesome griz are being relocated north of Edson. The sheer amount of white-tail and mule deer is remarkable as is the number of elk which have long been hunted out near the coast.
The thing with axes is to imagine the scale of work done with them. Not just in felling big trees but in wood cut and split for winter. I'll have to look up the record but it was mind boggling to me.