Brief History of the Ax, continued
While the ax has gone through transformations from stone, copper, bronze, and iron to steel, its overall shape and function have remained consistent (Figure 3). The ax was the first real woodworking tool, one of only a few available for a long period. For centuries the ax was one of mankind's most useful tools.
Figure 3--Parts of the ax. (Courtesy of Gränsfors
Bruks AB, Sweden.)
The early iron and steel axes used in America had European roots. Henry J. Kauffman, in his introduction to American Axes (1994), wrote:
Part of the problem of focusing attention on the American axe arises from the fact that the earliest ones used here were made in Europe, and certainly the first ones made here were European in character. Thus, in the earliest colonial times a dividing line could not be drawn between the two categories. As a matter of fact, the object was really a European-American axe. Because iron, unlike wood, is similar regardless of the place it was made, the essential substance of an axe does not help to identify its origin. Short of some identifiable maker's mark, the manufacturers of most of our early axes must remain anonymous.
It seems certain that most of the first axes made in North America were made and used on the Atlantic seaboard, a few exceptions occurring when trading companies brought in blacksmiths to their centers of exchange to repair and resharpen axes. As settlers moved westward and southward, their needs were supplied by smiths who went with them and were responsive to individual needs. This procedure was the beginning of very high specialization in the forms of axes, a differentiation which was picked up by the big manufacturers in the nineteenth century. The axes were mostly of the felling variety, but there were other purposes for which an axe was needed.
The pace of specialization increased; as evidence of this trend, one manufacturer informed the writer that at one time the company manufactured about three hundred different types. The president of the Mann Edge Tool Company, in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, reported that in 1969 they were producing seventy different patterns; however, the bulk of their production involved only about twenty.
The ax became quite specialized in Europe during the Middle Ages and afterward. When European colonists dispersed throughout the New World, they brought their tools and their knowledge with them. It is not surprising to see the appearance of trade axes (Figure 4 and Figure 5) and Germanic goose-wing hewing axes. We also see examples of older European-style specialized axes (Figure 6, Figure 7, and Figure 8) in America.
Figure 4--A 17th-century trade ax, typically
made in northern Spain and traded by the
French with American Indians.
Figure 5--An early 20th-century Collins ax
manufactured for the South American market.
Note the similarity in design of the two axes.
Figure 6--An 18th-century mortising ax or
twibil gives an idea of the specialization
even in early axes. Length, 4 feet.
Figure 7--An 18th-century shingling hatchet
is another specialized ax. Ax head is 5½
inches long by 4 inches wide.
Figure 8--An 18th-century splitting ax,
with straight handle typical of early axes.
Americans modified European axes for two principal reasons (Kauffman 1994). First, the European axes were not as well suited to the virgin stands of huge trees found in America as they were for the smaller timber stands of Europe. The European axes were good tools for hewing, but less adequate for felling. The second reason, Kauffman suggests, is that many of the Europeans who left their homelands for an uncertain future in America were prepared to adapt to survive. Their pioneering spirit bred ingenuity.
The need for a better felling ax, the need to process huge amounts of timber during America's settlement, and American ingenuity made development of the American felling ax inevitable.