Most blog readers will know I enjoy using a well balanced axe, probably not many know I am also a keen juggler and have lots of friends who were profesional performers. I once rode my unicycle around the top of the world trade centre. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw a show advertised bringing together my loves of woodworking…
Now I have been working with bronze axes and adzes every day for 2 months and have answered many questions about how to set up the edges and haft them efficiently. There are lots more questions I would love to explore but shall not have the time about the metallurgy of bronze. We did get into this a little when…
These thoughts are based in 5 weeks working with bronze adzes and axes, I have learned a lot but feel there is still much more to learn and improve. At the moment we are all spending quite a bit of time fiddling with tools but as time goes on my time is spent experimenting and some of the tools that…
I am currently involved with a very exciting woodworking project which I will post lots about in due course but there is a press embargo until March the 6th. For now I can tell you that I have been having fun experimenting with bronze tools. I have used bronze tools a little in the past but only felled an odd…
Nothing to see here unless you like pictures of nice Japanese axes. These gorgeous woodworking tools came from my Japanese friend Tomio Imaru. Imarusan and his woodworking friends have very kindly scoured Japanese auctions for me to collect these beautiful tools. I hope to share some of them with the European carpenters that came to Japan with me and also…
This blog post shows how to fit a new axe handle, it could be a new store bought handle or one you made yourself following the instructions in the previous blog post on how to make an axe handle. This is the old head and new roughed out handle I made in the previous post. The handle should be thoroughly…
I wrote this article a few years ago before I was blogging and thought it might be of interest to have here. Fitting an axe handle in this blog post. First wood selection. The perfect wood is nice straight grain ash fairly fast grown, if it gets more than 6-8 rings per inch it is much more brittle, 4-6 rings…
Whilst building the tea house in Japan we used a many axes and adzes. The axe that got most use was the carpenters ono, a bearded laminated axe that comes in various sizes from small one handed hatchets used for removing the waney edge of boards to large heavy versions used for squaring beams. This is Tak at work and…
I get asked which is the best axe for carving a lot so thought it would be good to make a blog post which I can refer folk back to. In the world of Bushcraft most folk go for the Gransfors Bruks small forest axe, it is recommended by Ray Mears which no doubt helps it’s popularity. It is like…
Gränsfors Bruks are a small company who forge rather nice axes in Sweden. They started forging axes in 1902 but the advent of chainsaws and the move to mass produced drop forged axes meant that the company was strugging by the 1980’s. In 1989 they took the bold move of choosing to market themselves on their traditional workmanship. Where all…
