Revival of a terrible Splitting Maul

[Aristotle]

I found this fairly terrible 7lb maul at our scout hut. It apparently originally came from HSS.

The head had potential, but the handle was extremely flexible. Striking a log resulted in the handle bending, with terrible transfer of energy and a lot of vibration. It was unusable!

The handle had a thin core of fibreglass with a plastic outer.

I took the head back to bare metal and tidied up the profile and edge. I blued it and gave it a couple of coats of Danish oil.

I fitted a new, straight, hardwood handle. I made a handle protector from a sleeve of inner tube, wrapped with paracord.

It turned out quite well and it works well at splitting too

 

[crosslandkelly]

I found this fairly terrible 7lb maul at our scout hut. It apparently originally came from HSS.

The head had potential, but the handle was extremely flexible. Striking a log resulted in the handle bending, with terrible transfer of energy and a lot of vibration. It was unusable!

The handle had a thin core of fibreglass with a plastic outer.

I took the head back to bare metal and tidied up the profile and edge. I blued it and gave it a couple of coats of Danish oil.

I fitted a new, straight, hardwood handle. I made a handle protector from a sleeve of inner tube, wrapped with paracord.

It turned out quite well and it works well at splitting too

Nicely done. I did the same with a cheap fibreglass handled splitting maul from Wickes, some years ago.

 

[Aristotle]

Nicely done. I did the same with a cheap fibreglass handled splitting maul from Wickes, some years ago.

What is odd is just *how* absolutely useless this maul was with the original handle. A thin rod of fibreglass coated in plastic may have been resilient, but, with a 7lb head, hopeless for the task so would have lasted almost forever.

People apparently rented them in the past. They can't have split much wood....

It is far more effective now. A well-fitted, and glued, paracord handle protector is always good.

 

[Pupers]

I gave up using a splitting maul about 5 years ago, a farmer friend of mine convinced me to go light and sharp and get a Fiskars axe. I now have three Fiskars in different sizes, and after 30 years or so of using a Maul, I simply cannot understand why anyone would use a 7lb maul.

Light, fast and sharp is, without any doubt, the way to go. If you have never used a Fiskars, give it a go, I was very sceptical, but would simply never use a maul again…….I split an awful lot of wood!

 

[Aristotle]

I would be interested to try a Fiskars X27(?)

A friend has a sharp Fiskars style axe.

We were splitting large sections of beech tree wood recently. I was using a friend's 6lb Roughneck maul that I had improved a bit, re-profiling, better bevel and sharpening from its original bludgeon like state. It was somewhere between a trad maul and a Fiskars. It worked very well.

(This is the 6lb Roughneck maul when I was part-way through improving it)

I was able to split more big stuff than the guy with the "Fiskars" type. I am fitter (and regularly swing kettlebells and Maces) , but his was getting stuck far more often.

The revived HSS traditional maul does need a bit more tuning.