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Their was a time when wood axe handles were made by hand and you could always be guaranteed to get a good handle, but those days are gone.
I'm a wood carver, I've been working with wood for 31 years and know it's strengths and weaknesses.
I go into the average hardware store and I see axes and axe handles and I'm lucky if I see one out of 10 that I would buy.
Very often I see people that work with wood that don't even know the right axe handle to buy. Just the other day I was at my neighbors place, he makes furniture and even kitchen cabinets and he had some spare Axe handles up on the wall that I glanced at, seeing the grain of the wood, I was surprised he had choose them.
All of them had good potential for breaking or splitting, so not everyone that works in wood knows how to choose a good axe handle.
So here is what I hope will be a good pictorial representation of the right and wrong way to choose an axe/handle.
The right axe handle will last years of safe use, also at the end is a good site to show you how to make your own axe handle.
In the first picture we will look at how the grain should be.
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Holding the axe with the blade facing strait down. follow a grain line from the center of the axe head all the way to the bottom of the axe handle, if the grain veers off at any point you will have a week spot where the axe will split or crack and break.
Now lets look at some bad examples, I've put blue arrows to show you the week spots in the grain.
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The next one shows one good and one bad
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Now test what you've learned, in this next picture which axe handle would you buy?
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Follow this link to learn how to make your own axe handle.
http://northernwoodlands.org/knots_a...wn-axe-handle/
here is a site thats reviewing some axes and will back up what I'm saying
Look at his picture to see what I'm talking about (I'm fussier than him)
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