Old Tool, New Life

I have posted several times about tools that were my grandpa's or great grandpa's, but here is another. My favorite hatchet to carve with belonged to my grandpa. It had a handle on it that he had made himself.

Here is Grandpa's hatchet with the handle grandpa had made

I wasn't knowledgeable enough about axes/hatchets to know how to correctly fix the fact that the head was loose on the hatchet. I would typical bang the bottom of the handle on a stump to try and tighten it up while working, One day mid winter while splitting some kindling to get the stove going the head broke off the handle. I was sad that I had broken something my grandpa had made. I then did some research on the correct way to fasten (hang) a head on an ax or hatchet.

Hickory is the wood of choice for ax and hatchet handles. After digging in the wood rack I found some Hickory. I rough cut the overall shape on the bandsaw and then did all the shaping with rasp and files.

While making the handle and studying the hatchet head I realized that one side of the head was flat and the other side was beveled. After looking online and talking to some friends I decided that originally the hatchet head had a single bevel and would have been for hewing timbers, and that some point someone sharpened it putting a bevel on both side. I decided to reshape the head and sharpen it back having a single bevel. I didn't want to remove all the pitting and patina on the blade so I didn't grind the sides, and focused my work near the cutting edge. I did the majority of the reshaping using the old stationary belt sander that I had gotten from grandma. With a 60 grit belt I established the single bevel cutting edge and with a little filing it was sharp enough to shave. I plan to polish the cutting edge more soon.

The flat side of the hatchet 

The curved/beveled side

I hung the head on my hickory handle and then finished it with boiled linseed oil. The hickory really came alive when I applied the oil. I shaped the handle where it had a nice place to grip right under the head for detailed work and made a nice palm swell on the bottom of the handle to give a good grip when taking a full swing. What I have learned while doing this has made me want to restore some other axes and make some more tools.  I am very  glad to have grandpa's hatchet back to usable condition. I really enjoy using these old tools, thinking about what was built using them. I hope that someday someone in my family will be using these tools and some of mine also and thinking back about me.

Rocket man

Fall is here which should mean more shop time is coming. I've been trying to squeeze shop time during the week. I will post soon about a bigger project I am working on but wanted to post about some of the smaller things I've been working on.

Half Steps
There are two tall steps at my parents house so to make it easier on mom to be able and get up and down them I built two half steps which cut the height in half.  I built them with a 2x6 frame (riped to the height of the step) and then wrapped the frame with oak plywood. The stair tread is made from oak plywood and edged with solid oak. I then stained the oak to match the kitchen cabinets as close as I could using off the shelf stain colors. Seeing how much easier it is for mom to get around now makes me very happy about this project.

step frame work

Ready to install

Step into the bathroom

• Step into living room

Toy Rocket
I wanted to build a simple toy for my son, I came up with the idea of a simple toy rocket. It's built from scrap 2x4's and some cherry I had in the scrap pile. He was so happy with it, I want to build him more toys.

Wooden Spoons
I follow Paul Sellers on his blog and YouTube and he recently had a series on making wooden spoons. One of the post and videos was on carving them from firewood with a hatchet. This really interested me and I had to give it try.  I was amazed how fast I could rough out a spoon blank with just a hatchet.  I have finished carving one spoon and have several other in different stages.

That is a update on some of the smaller things I've been working on lately. I hope to get my lathe set up soon and start turning some pens and gifts when I have limited shop time.