Made a Handle

Wow, that turned out to be really hard! I was using a ryoba to rip the hickory and it felt like I was cutting a rock. Lots of effort for just a little progress, though crosscutting wasn’t nearly as bad. Once I had the blank for the handle, I gave myself quite a few cuts while shaping it with a sloyd knife. My hands are nowhere near as tough as hickory, unfortunately. I also messed up a bit when cutting and fitting the wedge, I split the wood a bit below the axehead.

I am happy with the results, though - a hatchet really is an excellent way to split things after you put a nice edge on it. Actually, if I’d had the hatchet then making another handle would have been pretty easy. It made me think that there’s something to Minecraft, where you have to use wood tools to make metal tools. It would have been a lot easier to make a handle from pine, and then use that to split blanks out of the hickory. I did make myself a new hickory blank so that I’ll have it down the road.

• 2022 4