Axe Head

Brief: Take all the techniques and lessons ( in Metalworking ) and make something.

My professor introduced our final to our class on the first day, so we could see the lessons and know what was possible to make. I knew that I wanted to make some kind of axe, but I didn’t want it to be impractical and heavy. I settled on an axe similar in size to a tomahawk. I consulted with some military vets in my major, and they told me it should be no longer than my forearm, otherwise it would be cumbersome. I thought about it as an extension of the body.

I started with a piece of steel that was about and inch thick and about six inches by six inches. After tracing my shape onto it, I cut off the excess. Because I was forging the piece, I had to weld a make-shift handle to it along with the diagonal supports. Once I cleaned up the beads, I would start forging it.

I started forging my axe head by establishing a center line first. This would make sure I could keep track of how symmetrically I was compressing the metal. I took a couple very hot classes, but the piece that was once and inch thick, was now about half an inch thick. I could now start grinding to form the cutting edge of the axe.

After grinding off the slag from forging, I started shaping the cutting edge of the axe head. I used a disk grinder to make sure that it was sharp enough to cut through paper. From there, I smoothed and evened out the area between the start of the edge and the end of the head gradually.

Next, I had to remove the handle I used to forge and grind the head. I did this with a cold saw, and finished with a couple touch-ups from a hand grinder.

From the beginning, my professor and I knew this would be slightly tricky because axe heads are usually caste so that they can fit a handle with a pre-determined dimension. In our shop, this simply wasn’t possible. She posited that it could be done, but with a few tweaks. The head of the axe is the most important part, but I was missing an eye for the shoulder of the handle, as well as a butt. To achieve this, I would take some 1/4 inch steel and grind the edges so that they could be welded onto the head. From there, I would forge the two sheets over a metal insert to represent the handle. Once they were in place, I would weld a butt to the end and clean everything with a grinder or finger sander.