This beautiful little camp ax was made with my guidance by my neighbor, who rents space next to my work space. It was his first time forging. It's made from a car axle, forged with a hydraulic forging press for the heavy work and by hand for the rest, quenched in vegetable oil, tempered by eye with tempering tongs, cleaned up and made purty with an angle grinder and my KMG belt grinder. He made the hickory handle on his own, and unfortunately split it as he was putting the edges in. He'll cut it down and re-use it on an adze head he made from the same piece of axle.
It works excellently. I've never had a Granfors Bruks ax in hand to be able to make a comparison, but it'd be hard to imagine it cutting much better. That's a big hunk of mesquite there, and the ax made big ol' chips fly off of it. Mesqite's not the hardest wood, but it sure isn't soft. Absolutely no affect to the cutting edge.
Sure beats the pants off of anything he could get from Home Despot or any of the other big box "hardware" stores.
Awesome little axe!
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