Sharpening an Axe with a Hardware Store Grind

Description

http://www.selfrelianceoutfitters.com

http://astore.amazon.com/davecante-20

Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

morning folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance outfitters in the pathline school what I have in my hand here is I have the council tool 24 inch boys axe and this is the stock axe that they have that's less than $40 without the mask and this axe is a great american-made axe and I think it's a very underrated action for what it costs the one thing you have to understand with an axe like this is when you buy it you're probably going to have to do some work to this axe to make it a good woodsman's type axe because it's not going to come razor-sharp out of the box like a custom axe or a more expensive axe and the reason for that is this is truly a hardware store type back and they can't have axes that are razor-sharp sitting on a hardware store floor where every kid that walks by it runs his finger across the blade and cut this finger wide so they don't come sharp like that but we can make it sharp like that with just a little bit of elbow grease and work we can also tweak this thing a little bit and coat the handle with linseed oil sand it down to coat linseed oil it doesn't soak in really well knock any lacquer that may be on the handle off although I don't think these come lacquered standard and I think that's a good thing because a lot of actions that come lacquer on the handle all they do is rub blisters on your hands so you don't want that on there but we do want to sand it down a little bit we do want to coat linseed oil and get this thing really nice and protected remove the label things like that and then maybe adjust the cheek just a little bit so it gets a better bite in the wood that we're cutting and then maybe we even want to put measured marks on the back of the axe handle to help us measure things that we're building in the woods help us to estimate the height of a tree that we're going to sell or to help us measure the circumference of a tree after we've cut it down all those types of things that you use measure markers for up to an including self navigation and self mapping so we're going to take this ox today and I'm going to show you how to make this axe a good woodsman Zacks that you paid less than 50 bucks for even if you added a mask to it you're still going to be pretty well right at that fifty dollar range and you can buy this council tool mask aftermarket for the sax and it's weaver leather so it's a really good masks and it's only about $15 retail I think something like that so let's get started on the Saks today and we're going to look at how to cut out of the box and then when we're finished with the blade we're going to look and see how it cuts after we sharpen it stay with okay so we've got this axe locked into a vise here and I'm just going to go up shoving this vise to protect the handle from the teeth on that vise now we're going to use three tools with this axe we're going to use an axe file that says axe right on the Nicholson file it's got a coarse side and a fine side on the top I've got a carborundum propeller type sharpening implement here and I also have one of the axe junkies cuffs here and a tuck is always a good carry in the woods but it's also good for putting a fine edge on your axe and honing your accent once you get it where you want sharpening wise so what we're going to do first is we're going to work on this axe up here on the cheek just a little bit so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a black marker here and I'm going to come up here right on this cheek just like this and you can see I'm not marking this area of the blade right now right now I'm just working on this cheek portion and I'm going down about a quarter of an inch so the actual fit and a little over a quarter of an inch back behind the bit what I really want to do is sweep up into that and I'll show you that here in just a second so here's a line we've made on our axe with our black marker and we're going to take our ash pile now we're going to start on the rougher side and when we put this axe on the bevel we only want to cut in one direction and that's this way so we're going to cut along that line just like this and you can see okay sweep it up into that and curve it into it just a little bit just like this

and what that's doing is that is thinning this cheek out a little bit right here to give me a little bit better bite with the axe now you're always cutting towards the bit with this you can put a leather protector on here if you want to just in case you were to bump into it but I'm pretty careful about the way I do this and I can feather my way up this direction and then turn around and go this direction to further my way into the lower end of that bit and what you're going to see once we get this flattened out if you've got an area kind of exposed here where you've got a flat here and now you kind of come in to this flat right here with a bit is so you're kind of removing a little bit of a hump right there to give you a little bit better bite with the ass

I'm not down here on the bed at all I'm up right here on the cheek working that and feathering that in on both ends from the center so I'm kind of feathering this way and feathering that way so I'm not removing as much material right here in the center as I am on the edges around the outer end and again I'm not trying to touch the bit part of this at all really

okay once we've done that on both sides now we can come back in here and you can see that line still on there that we drew on this other side we're using that for example side now we want to do is we want to come in here and address this portion you can see there's some really fine

cut lines in here or grind marks from the factory now we want to address this right here the bit itself and what we're really looking for here is a 30 degree grind on this axe and we can measure that with a protractor for scale of some kind just by just taking a general scale and putting up 30 degrees just like that and that mouth right there opening is going to be 30 degrees and right now we're at probably we're pretty close to that actually when you stick it right in there so that's good so we're maintaining an angle and that's a good thing now what we're going to do is we're going to take the finer side we're going to come in here and now we're going to remove this right at the best and again we're going from the center up and the center down we're going to get rid of all of those machining marks that are in that bit get that thing down to nice slick smooth edge you can see there's a few marks still looked at it you're talking probably a half an hour's worth of work or a little bit more to get to the point of having this thing ready to put a puss all right next thing that I will do is I'll take a carborundum stone when he propellers it starts polishing this very front edge of this Knight really really well right off a bit edge [Music]

and that's going to put a purr on the other side we will knock that off and get the second but we're always going from Center up and Center down so we're going up and then we'll turn around you'll sweep down this direction okay when I get to this point now I'm going to go to the top and I just you spit I don't like to use oil on stuff that I'm going to use in the field if I use this puck in the field I want to be able to lubricate it with water and not have to worry about over so now we're just maintain any angle going to circular motion just like that on both sides you'll get used to seeing where that thing is biting at and maintain the angle

I like to look down at the top of the blade weren't even a pot [Music]

you can see how when you get the right angle it kind of bleeds that stuff over the top that's when you know you're hitting at the right angle and knock off any burrs that you might have okay so the final thing we're going to do here is we're going to strop the bevel of this axe and I'm just using a leather strop that is dressed with tormek compound again I'm going away from the cutting edge with the strop where I went toward the cutting edge with the file of the puck that's something to think about as well and this will just give our edge a nice final polish clean any burrs off of it things like that give us a nice razor sharp axe and we'll stop it quite a few times on one side and then we'll switch it over stop a quite a few times on the other side flip it back and reduce the amount of straps as we go alright so in the end you should be able to see some growing lines from the factory there and those should all disappear on the front of the bit you can see them in the light right there you can see the grind lines and those should all disappear on the front of that bit where you have repro filings and polish things now you should have a really really sharp axe