I sure like the Norlund axes!
Norlund was a sporting goods company which sold everything from axes and knives to non slip boot accessories - with a few things like special fish gaffs and spear heads in between. They went out of business decades ago, though the label has now been taken over and axes are again being produced with the same labels etc. So they never made any axe heads but rather had them made by the Mann Edge Tool co in Penn.
The axe heads were made to a high standard with excellent heat treat - as a person soon finds out when they decide to file one and get below the surface... Whether the current ones are any good, I don't know - but the prices on ebay show that people have a lot of regard for the old ones. The axes were expensive for their time and so it's not surprising that handle wood is good with vertical grain on every example I've bought. All of the head designs are good, and were pretty radical for their time. The 1 1/4lb head boy scout hatchet was considered "the" hatchet, and was produced in vast numbers and even for the military - so the light Norlund was quite a departure. Then there were the double bladed hatchets which now go for incredible prices, right up to 7lb monster axes.
Back in the 70's before the company went out of business, I was pretty sceptical of stuff that sold neatly packaged in sporting goods stores, when great Swedish axes were available for less at hardware stores. Now though, I've come to see that the designs weren't just dreamed up to attract campers, and that they were made to high standards.
That's the good news for people with a Norlund.
The bad news is that all of old Norlunds are a few decades old and that the "Hudson Bay" style heads on axes and hatchets often loosened. So people would soak them to tighten up the heads. That set dry rot going.
No matter how good the handle looks, never trust it without removing the head.
It takes a fair bit of work to put a head into condition. Really old heads were forged with grooving in the eye to make a secure fit. That was dropped. It really pays to spend time opening out the eye at the front slightly for better wedging (front 1/4 to 1/3). Not many people who bought stuff from hardware stores knew how to sharpen so lots of careful work is needed in that regard. The idea is get the widest cutting bevels possible and have them as even and polished as possible. Same for the ramps to the eye. Lots of hand work, even after careful grinding!
So the question comes up as to whether it's worth all that work and time - well other than for far-gone axe fanatics. I've done quite a bit of chopping with most hatchets in the weight range, and nothing of equal weight comes close to a proper profiled Norlund, despite a lot of careful finishing on the other stuff. Controversial, I'm sure. Gear craziness and the quest for the ultimate generally goes nowhere in enjoyment of the outdoors, though. Usually it's counter-productive - for me at least - and so a fascination with making axes and hatchets more efficient takes some explaining. Here most of the well known tricks don't work well or at all due to wet conditions. From cutting half way through long branches and levering to split, to burning unsplit logs in half, results are pretty sad. So a person learns other ways of getting stuff split up for fires. It gets very easy to tell yourself that just getting stuff split and a fire going is good enough, if you don't use a hatchet. Seeing how fast and easy things go with a properly set up hatchet, leads a person to start thinking of methods which will approach that level of efficiency, though. I guess a long way of saying that fixing up tools to where they make difficult jobs simple is great -as long as they don't then get to make one feel dependent on them.
