An Ax to Grind: A Practical Ax Manual

Brief History of the Ax, continued

American broad ax patterns had geographic names. The most popular were the Pennsylvania, Western, Canadian, and, the New Orleans pattern, my favorite (Figure 18a, Figure 18b, Figure 18c, Figure 18d, and Figure 18e). Until the 1930's the Western and Canadian patterns were used to hack railroad ties. The slang expression for a person who made railroad ties was a "tie hacker."

Photo of a Beatty Pennsylvania broad ax.
Figure 18a--Beatty Pennsylvania broad ax.

Photo of a Douglas, New Orleans broad ax.
Figure 18b--Early 20th-century Douglas, New
Orleans broad ax--my favorite.

PHoto of a Beatty knife-edge tie hacker's broad ax.
Figure 18c--Early 20th-century Beatty knife-edge
tie hacker's broad ax.

Photo of a Canadian broad ax.
Figure 18b--Kelly 20th-century Canadian broad ax.

Photo of a shipwright's mast broad ax.
Figure 18e--A 19th-century shipwright's
mast broad ax.

The hewing ax is the preferred tool for flattening the surface of round logs. In past centuries, wood beams were often made by splitting the logs with some type of mallet and wedge, or glut. Then they were surfaced with an adz or a hewing ax. When iron axes became available, the hewing ax almost replaced the adz. Hewing axes were frequently used to roughly square the logs before they were sawn into boards with a pit saw.

Even after the sawmill became common, the hewing ax was still used for hewing beams and planks in the Northwest. It was often easier to ell the tree, hew it square into cants, and skid the cants to the building site rather than to load and transport round logs to the sawmill where they would be sawn before being brought back to the building site. The hewing ax has been used in the same manner for about 2,000 years.

Other Axes and Hatchets

Axes have other uses besides felling timber and building houses. Splitting axes are used for splitting firewood or rails. Hatchets, with their short heads and handles, are used in the building trades, and for camping and hunting (Figure 19). Some axes and hatchets are used specifically for mortising (Figure 20), wood carving, flooring, shingling, and carpentry (Figures 21a and Figure 21b). Special competition axes are also used in logging contests where people chop while racing the clock and each other (Figure 22).

Photo of a Plumb 2½-lb boy's ax.
Figure 19--Plumb 2½-lb boy's ax with
19-inch handle--my favorite for log cabin work.

Photo of a mortising ax.
Figure 20--An 18th-century mortising ax.

Image of Plumb hatchets and hand axes.
Figure 21a--Some 20th-century Plumb hatchets
and hand axes.