Vintage tools

I love old tools and bringing them back to usefulness, thereby respecting the life work of their (usually) anonymous prior owners.
This old adze is 'native' to this property, however. Belonged to Andy, the original settler of this place early back in early '70s. Off grid meant off the edge of the map back then.
Made for Marshall Wells Hardware Co., went out of business in the late 50's. Had been used as a grub hoe, sadly. Superior quality steel though, tough enough to be put back to use with a lot of work sharpening.
Needed an arch cut into a 7x9 dovetailed floor timber for my skid shack.
This is how it was done back in the day. Boat timbers, arched braces, railway trestles.
Due for a nice new handle.

Super ultra cool. Glad to see that some elbow grease brought it back to life. What is your choice for a robust handle, Doug fir?

I found an old froe in my barn a while back, so your post is inspiring me to spend time restoring it. I agree with you about showing respect to the tools of old.  Back in the mists of time, my froe probably split hundreds of white oak shingles if not millions

Rico Loma wrote:Super ultra cool. Glad to see that some elbow grease brought it back to life. What is your choice for a robust handle, Doug fir?

Have none of that on my place. Have some birch. Not sure it would be tough enough to take repetitive shock like the current hickory, although I have a 14lb. fence post mallet one of the old timers rehung with a short, thick length of round birch. Milled some flats on it with a plane, easier to use, but still too short.
That slender oddly curved handle has a purpose. Easy to finesse, light. The recurve and lack of wedged mount/hang means you can flip the adze on the handle, square for shaving, curved up towards you for the inside of a curve. Needs to be really sharp.
All the old quality Appalachian/Tennessee hickory handle makers have disappeared into larger corporations or gone under. Adze handles are still out there, somehow. Finding a great one will be difficult. I'll try my birch first.

That is a beautiful adze, Tommy! The old adze that was my Great Grandpa's also has electrical tape on the handle. But it doesn't seem to be a repair. Seeing your made me wonder if the old timers put electrical tape on their handles as a kind of grip tape?

Thank you, I really like it. Have a few more of the O.G.'s tools back here, I'll post them as well. Rough brushed it, soaked it it phosphoric acid for a couple days.
Blended the back to the cutting edge, critical, won't cut other wise. Started the sharp edge with a file to shape it. Diamond and Arkansas oil/water stones.

Tape
Or preventative. Friction tape (if you could find it), maybe even better.
I had to put the tape on to be able to use it. The handle is cracked from abuse as a hoe.
I'll glue it, put a couple dowels through it. Have some more curve timbers to cut this year for some bents. Wanted to know it would cut before I spent time an a handle. Works well, so I'll replace it.

Tommy Bolin wrote:Have none of that on my place. Have some birch. Not sure it would be tough enough to take repetitive shock like the current hickory, although I have a 14lb. fence post mallet one of the old timers rehung with a short, thick length of round birch. Milled some flats on it with a plane, easier to use, but still too short.
That slender oddly curved handle has a purpose. Easy to finesse, light. The recurve and lack of wedged mount/hang means you can flip the adze on the handle, square for shaving, curved up towards you for the inside of a curve. Needs to be really sharp.
All the old quality Appalachian/Tennessee hickory handle makers have disappeared into larger corporations or gone under. Adze handles are still out there, somehow. Finding a great one will be difficult. I'll try my birch first.

Birch was pretty common for Finnish axe handles - about the only hardwood of any consequence locally available to them.  Birch isn't as strong, obviously, so you can't "muscle" them as much as you could a hickory handle, and they will need replacement more often, no matter what.  These axes usually had tapered sockets, but tapered the opposite way from the adze head's, sometimes held in with a "snake head" wedge, but sometimes not.

An example of a broad or hewing axe set up this way, which can be "flipped" on it's handle, on the fly, to convert from a right handed to left handed setup, and back again:

I can't imagine this method of hanging an axe would withstand hard use, but for the purpose shown, must be OK.

I have had good luck with handles from Beaver Tooth.
https://beaver-tooth.com/
I've ordered an adze handle, a broad axe handle and a cant hook handle from them.  Their prices are very competitive, and the quality is very good.  Even their "seconds" are pretty nice compared to the average offerings in my local hardware stores, which I always have to pick through (sometimes at multiple stores) to find a reasonably serviceable hammer or hatchet handle.  I did have to wait for a while (a couple of weeks extra, as I recall) for one or the other of these, because his mother was too ill to work, and she roughs out the handle blanks for him.  But, it did come, and was still a bargain, and of high quality.

I am not as far along in my tool restoration as are you, however.  But, anytime I see a good user-grade woodworking hand tool at a decent price, it seems to find its way home with me.

"I have had good luck with handles from Beaver Tooth.
https://beaver-tooth.com/"
Excellent.
I remember they had a struggle with production after Covid and the 'we don't have a phone and may not answer email' gave me pause, but they have several things I need and I'm glad to hear someone with a really positive experience.
O.P Link Tool is no more. They had an octagonal pattern double bit axe handle in their old catalogue I really liked, long gone.

Second hand information from my dad, the old Finnish sawyers that lived on this land in the 40s-50s used birch for tool handles. I covered the roof, but the cabin they lived in is in pretty bad shape, sawmill long gone, woodstove stolen, sauna all caved in, but the chicken shack still viable.

Like that. My grandfather Arne, on my mom's side, was a game warden in MI. before the war. They lived in a cabin like that with a little salt box lean-to off the back in the late 30's early 40's.

Like the two man plane and the story pole they used to square the first set, the way they dadoed in the jambs. Nobody cowering in the face of the terror of sharp hand tools. Look at how fast that work got done.

I'll add a couple more.
The framing chisel is a late 1800's Witherby, the drawknife is a similar vintage L.I White. The 2 inch slick is a Civil War vintage Crosman. Hand laminated steel.
The 2 1/2 in. ship auger is old hand/factory made. Looking at the way it was forged, my bet is this might be the oldest type of fluted drill. It is centerless. The barstock was forged into a ribbon of the appropriate width, twisted and a loop forged for the simple wood T-handle. Really sharp, it is very fast, not much slower than my power Forstner type bits.
Starret stuff is WWI-early 20's  vintage. Chisels and Starret are EBay scores.
The Gambel's Artisan was salvaged by my brother from the scrap pile at Pacific Hide and Fur, a former Montana institution, given to me. 60-70's vintage and my splitting axe.
The Swedish HultsBruk is my felling axe. Disappeared from their catalogue, near as I can tell in the mid-50's. I modify the handles when I rehang them to mimic a long discontinued O.P Link octagonal pattern I favor.
The drawknife, felling axe, and auger are native to this place, along with the adze, either Andy's, or Fred's. Andy was a gringo, built this house with the help of Fred, early 70's.
Fred was a Berlin native and a cabinet makers apprentice. Lost an arm in a railway accident and emigrated to Canada when he lost his apprenticeship because of his disability, early during the Depression. He rode the rails out west to Alberta and worked the logging and mining camps, walking from Alberta through B.C. to the coast and back to this area. He told my dad some stories of very difficult times, walking and hungry, looking to trade work for a pair of boots he desperately needed or a warm roof and food.
He settled here in the early 50's. Did some logging, had a couple sawmills. Started cutting railroad ties when logging was done with draft horses during the winter, and milled timbers were bundled and skidded down the ice or floated down the big lake for transport.
He told my dad, that on a bragging, drunken dare, he said could cut more ties in a single winter than anyone in a bar full of sawyers. He said it nearly killed him, but by the end of following Spring he had shipped 2500 railroad ties. By himself.
He built or helped build a couple cabins back here, including the one my parents live in, built boats, and was an aspiring painter. My parents have a couple of his oils. I have his cement mixing wheelbarrow. Has a hole drilled in the left handle for the hook he was fitted with.
He walked everywhere back here, dropping in on folks he knew for coffee and stories, foraging when the season was right. Walked up to 15 miles for his mail at times, and across the big lake on the winter ice for small groceries. When someone observed that the Spring ice was getting pretty rotten, Fred showed up the next week with a long 2x4 strapped around his waist. Figured it would keep him above water long enough to figure something out. He was 94 when he passed away almost 30yrs. ago.

The skid shack this timber is for is inspired by the two remaining examples of his storage buildings I have seen. We owned one and carelessly destroyed it and it's contents in a gasoline generator fire. 30,000USD worth of tools, snowmobiles, pumps, power equipment. We replaced all of it.
Priceless legacy of Fred's, irreplaceable.
I was at work in Texas. My wife panicked and couldn't get the keys to the machine, then start the bulldozer, or have the presence of mind to try and smother the fire with snow. Our only real neighbor at the time came from the farm about 9 miles up the road and used my bulldozer to push the burning building away from the big spruce in our yard, our house and the woodshed and let it burn. Thank God for cell boosters and good neighbors.

I will soap box here a bit off topic. If you live remote, with no serious way to fight a fire, you are utterly and totally irresponsible. Had that fire happened in summer instead of Christmas Day, the outcome could have been far harder to control. We bank on the woods for our savings accounts and our work. The volunteer fire department is at least an hour away.
I have 500+gal. stored next to the house when weather allows. 200 ft. of firehose, with 25min. of battery/inverter power, on it's own microgrid, separate from the house battery bank to keep those cubes full. I can move my firepump down to the lake, use the same plumbing, and pump water until the lake is empty or I run out of fuel.
Anyhow.