Knife Thirty Eight - A Hatchet

Michael wanted a hatchet to use in the garden for his birthay present. so I decided to make one rather than buy a mass produced version.

Below you can see the raw materials, a hickory handle (preshaped), the mandrel I made a few years ago that is used to form the eye of the axe head and at the top a bow tie shaped piece of ¼” mild steel with a section of ¼” inch EN42 tool steel tack welded to it:

The first step is to bend the steel around so the ends are sandwiching the tool steel. Once it is in the right place, borax flux is applied and it is heated to forge welding temperature. Then the pieces are hammered together to form the weld. It isn’t possible to weld the whole area in one heat, so I work at the front of the eye and work forward each heat.

Here the forged head is being tried onto the handle. You can see how much the steel spreads as it is welded, care is taken to ensure it only spreads away from the handle and downwards as the blade would look odd spreading upwards above the rest of the head:

Here the wedge is being inserted into the slot in the handle. It is worth measuring the amount of space that needs to be filled so the wedge can be cut to the right thickness:

I was quite pleased with the way the handle fills the eye, and only one steel wedge was required to ensure it was secure:

Here is the finished hatchet. The blade is incredibly strong with the hardened and tempered EN42 sandwiched between layers of unhardened mild steel, it will be impossible to break this, at worst it might bend, but only with extreme force.

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