Who still brings axes?

[Guest]

I'm sure your 2 weeks vacation is well deserved Heikki. I hope you enjoy it. Do you go into the backcountry of Finland? Do you hunt, fish, camp? Do you ever paddle a canoe? It would be interesting to hear about your countryside, and what Finns do there.

 

[Guest]

Essential for what?

I've never owned an axe in my life. On my 11 acres of property at home I cut a lot of trees, branches and brush, but always with a chainsaw, pruning saw or machete.

In 60 years of canoeing, I have never taken anything on a canoe trip other than a compact folding pruning saw, and rarely use that. I go canoeing to engage in the physical, emotional and spiritual act of paddling. In between paddling days, I camp briefly and non-impactfully on the shores. I don't go on canoe trips to hack or chop anything. For me on a canoe trip, an axe not only is non-essential but is useless dead weight.

I've already made my enthusiasm for an axe on canoe trips known, but I see room for differing approaches for different people (and in different places). I also see many people (on some trips) with few axes or saws. I'm not sure why. I stop to say hello, but not do an inventory with them. I've seen the destruction overenthusiastic and undereducated campers can mete out on the landscape. Perhaps fewer tools in the hands of more people is a blessing in disguise? I don't know. If everyone who chose to take them, knew where, when, and how to use them, I wouldn't see the chippy choppy clear cuttings of girdled big trees and brush piles of green saplings on campsites. All these tools have their uses in the right places. I guess it's up to us to decide. (I love working with chainsaws. A woodlot/forest is a happy place for me. That's my yang, to my tree hugging yin.)

ps Where I go there's no shortage of wood, and I enthusiastically embrace the LNT principles. For one of our trips though, I'm pondering a paddling trip through a blissful route of semi-rural pastoral farm, field and meadow. I'm hoping for a "Wind in The Willows" experience. I'll leave my axe and saw at home, and rely on small twig fires where appropriate. We'll see how it goes.

 

[memaquay]

Up here in the boreal there are lots of ports, and trees are anchored pretty loosely. Most ports need some work every year. I could be like many canoeists and just try to hump my stuff over or under or around, but if people only do that, the ports eventually disappear. Axes and chainsaws are required tools in my style of tripping. We do a lot of cooking over fires too, so it's nice to be able to regulate your heat with a variety of wood sizes, which involves splitting. I have often done the same trip twice in one summer. The first trip involves clearing all the ports, packing heavy with saws, gas, tools etc, and then a month or so later, doing the same trip with lighter gear and fishing in mind. It's all situational.

 

[Rippy]

I wonder if this axe would be good for splitting wood. It has that offset thing going on.

Here's another that might work.

 

[Guest]

I wonder if this axe would be good for splitting wood. It has that offset thing going on.

Here's another that might work.

Those look like broad axes, used for squaring timber. I was reading that at one time, wide and narrow blades were valued for biting far into the cut for splitting. Having a wedge and second axe might be handy, just in case.

 

[oldie moldy]

Dave, Without ever actually using one, I believe those are two broad axes, designed to square off a timber. Those are to be used on your left side as you walk along the side of the log, chopping off the rounded side nearest your left knee and leaving a flat side. Rotate the log 90 degrees four times and you have a square timber.
Such axe heads are a good bit more valuable than regular heads, harder to make and less demand so fewer are made and are much more costly. Often a broad axe handle will have deflection to it that allows the flat side of the blade to be snug against the log and still leaves your hands enough room to make the chop with out touching the log (and scraping off skin).

If those axes were mine I believe I'd replace those handles. That metal wedge is way too big for it's axe, they should never touch the sides of the axe head eye. The effect can be to "spread" the eye apart and null what the wooden wedge was trying to do.

As far as splitting wood, I don't believe I'd use those two axes, that's not what they were designed to do.
My camping axes have a thin blades; they really cut in well and chop like a dream; that said, they also penetrate and if there's not a chip flying off to relieve the pressure, they tend to get stuck. Like everything in life, it's a compromise.
Now if I was lucky enough to have beautiful straight grained wood, shoot it wouldn't matter what I used, that stuff splits so willingly a Girl Scout with her little bitty hatchet will probably be successful. My lot in life seems to run to twisty grain wood that really doesn't come apart without a fight.
For the difficult blocks of wood I try to determine is there anyplace where there is a crack or can I start one? I either add to the crack or start one with a few blows of the axe. Then I make several wooden wedges from firewood and start opening up the crack. The axe made the wedge and the wedge splits the wood. Now, a regular axe isn't made to drive steel wedges; it will open up the eye and then the head is loose. But so far, none of my axes have had that happen using field made wooden wedges.

There I go rattling on again! Sorry, I just have a thing for axes, Probably was a woodcutter in another life.

Rob

 

[oldie moldy]

Hi Brad! We're neatly tripping over each other!

Rob

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I've already made my enthusiasm for an axe on canoe trips known, but I see room for differing approaches for different people (and in different places).

I understand and agree.

I surely understand that many people have a fondness and even love of axes, as they might for various different tools, toys and gadgets. To such people, carrying these gadgets can be sort of "psychologically necessary" because they're part of the entire experience and fun. Other love objects can include big knives, guns, fishing rods, cameras, iPods, flints, grills, beaver tail paddles, and wood-canvas canoes.

Let's focus on that last group. Like an axe, I'd consider a wood-canvas canoe to be not only non-essential for a canoe trip, but a ridiculously heavy burden to be avoided. I've heard rumors, however, that other canoeists feel psychologically otherwise and may even consider it "necessary" to trip in a wood-canvas canoe.

If you really need to clear trails or have split log fires on canoe trips, then an axe can make sense. I don't go on those kind of trips.

I actually have a negative opinion about axes. It was perhaps influenced when, as a boy in the Maine woods, I watched my uncle chop his shin bone in half with a glancing axe and almost bleed to death. My opinion of fishing is even worse, but I don't like to drift too far off a topic.

 

[sweeper]

We take an Ax for the kids to use and get used to using. Split wood is great for the evening campfire but smaller piece are better for cooking, especially with a reflector oven. That's why last we took a pair of pruning loppers with us and they worked great. They're faster and safer than an ax.

 

[HOOP]

I think the question in the title is phrased wrong. It should be "Who still does not bring axes?"

I live and travel by fire. It rains a lot where I paddle, and the wood gets soaking wet. The twigs turn to liquid wood. I use my axe to split out dry wood to cook with for my cooking fires and for water boiling.

I find it funny that a person would tell me that my tools are useless in my situation. Perhaps someone's "spiritual act of paddling" is more superior than mine, more worthy, more something. I am not spiritual, I am just an animal. Meanwhile I'll be using my axe, cutting and splitting wood and living by fire. I will be making a trace on the landscape too, as my ancestors did chasing the toe of the glaciers as they retreated back, carving out portage tails, blazing trees with my axe to show newcomers the way, carving and hacking out campsites, clearing tent and tarp areas, and leaving fire rock sets for me or other people to burn wood on when they stay at the campsite I or my ancestors made.

The fire that I live by is the energy of the sun, released from chemical bonds between carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the now dead woody plant that, in its life, converted solar light energy into chemical energy, splitting C02 in the process, fixing the sun's energy bonding carbon atoms together into cellulose and other stuff, and making oxygen for me to breath. As I tend my fire made from splits of dry wood that my axe and saw helped me collect and prepare, I am releasing the latent energy from the sun (often from within a soggy mantle of rain soaked wood), and bonding that oxygen back into CO2 for another plant to feed on.

I heat my home with boreal white birch packaged sunlight as well, splitting wood every weekend in my backyard with my useless non-spiritual axe. Its not spiritual for me, its just cutting and burning wood, and I like it. I mean, I really like it. I am going downstairs right now to add another piece of axe split birch into the woodstove.....

 

[oldie moldy]

Ah...HOOP! I'm so tickled to see you here! The site's knowledge base just increased 50%.

Spiritual and non-spiritual......hmm don't much 'bout that. There was an idea that took my breath away in it's scope that I heard in that series Cosmos. Turns out some scientific fellas were wondering: if the universe is made mostly of hydrogen and helium, then where did we get all these heavier elements? Among them Iron. Turns out that in the crushing gravity of a star, these lighter atoms get smushed into heavier elements and in turn those get released when the star explodes and goes nova.
So....as I sit by my campfire, the evening quiet wrapping around me and my dog, gently touching up the edge of my axe with the whet stone, I think "So, you came from the heart of a star, so long ago and so far away..." Now, I may be getting soft in the noodle, but that seems wondrous to me.

Best Wishes, Rob

 

[yellowcanoe]

I think the OP question is valid. We have a lot of people here who trip in other than the forest.

Sorry an axe will not be part of my spring canoeing on the upper Missouri (rangeland), Green River ( desert canyon with tamarisk) and Florida. Its not part of my camping experience at home on the Maine Island Trail either for the most part, as where fires are permitted, there is so much small down tinder that an axe isn't needed, or the entire island has no trees at all.

Not only do ecosystems influence canoe choice, they ought to influence tool choice.

 

[Rippy]

Not only do ecosystems influence canoe choice, they ought to influence tool choice.

Good thing to keep in mind as we debate each other's choices.

 

[scoutergriz]

I've been watching this thread with interest for quite a while, and after some soul searching, I've decided that my axe or hatchet, depending on the season, will continue to be part of my kit.
Most of my tripping is in either Ontario parks, or crown land, and I trip year- round. so in the summer it's my hatchet. In the winter, spring, and fall or on crown land it'll be my nice 3/4 axe, heck what's another 4 lbs. or so when I'm already carrying a couple of pounds of scotch, another pound or so in batteries and electronics (camera, gps, weather radio) and another couple of pounds in luxuries like my stool, coffee pot, etc.
There have been too many times when I've got to a site and had to clear last years growth from the tent pad, or some idiot has left massive half burned logs in the pit, or every suitable branch has been broke off of every deadfall (and sometimes live trees) within 2-3 miles!
With my axe and a couple of whacks, I can clear that site, cut up those charred eyesores, or chop off those foot long stubs that are too thick to break off.
So, next time you pull up at a site to find it cleaned up, a nice pile of split wood, and all those face ripping branches trimmed back. remember it was probably someone with an axe or hatchet.
I teach "leave no trace" to youth, but I also realize that Man is really full-on trace- we came out of the woods generations ago, but we are still part of them, and sad will be the day when we no longer consider ourselves part of the natural world.
An axe is only a tool used to harvest natures bounty, and used properly, can actually help to lessen our impact by removing those scars left by others, and to allow us to use one fallen tree completely, rather than removing the understory for miles around- which promotes the loss of diversity and, and turns forests into even aged, mature "plantations"

 

[oldie moldy]

Very well reasoned post Scoutergriz, we don't hear from you often but when you do put something up, it's well worth reading. I'll enjoy mulling that over as I go about the day.


Thanks for your insight, Rob

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I find it funny that a person would tell me that my tools are useless in my situation.

No one has told you that. No one knows your situation. We all only know our own situations and preferences.

Your entire essay is about fire. If you need a fire fired by split wood at home or while canoeing, then an axe is a reasonable tool to have. If you don't, it isn't.

That's the spirit of what others have said.

 

[memaquay]

Gosh, OM, your little essay on the axe coming from the remains of a star just blew my frontal lobes out! I certainly never thought about it that way before, and the next time I'm around a campfire, stroking my little oxhead (next week in the snow if all goes well) I'm going to look up at the stars and wonder where a bouts my axe started its journey.

 

[Rippy]

At least it didn't come from the ring around Uranus.

 

[memaquay]

Geeze, my little brain without its frontal lobes got a giggle out of Uranus. If I acted my age, I probably would have poo-pooed your joke.

Once, when the water was really low up here, we paddled around in the mud in front of an old Hudson's Bay post from the late 1700's. I found this axehead in the muck, don't now how old it is, but it was fairly corroded and stuff. I put it away somewhere, but can't remember now, so I'm going to go look for it tomorrow and see if I can clean it up and follow OM's instructions to put a new handle on it. I've always fancied using that axe on a canoe trip.

 

[Rippy]

"I certainly never thought about it that way before, and the next time I'm around a campfire, stroking my little oxhead"

Good thing you didn't poo-poo my joke. You're the one sitting around a fire stroking your little oxhead what ever the heck that is.