Nice little axe and a couple of knives
- Thread starter Tomme boy
- Start date
Dang, Tommy!
You really hit the nail on the head for the most versatile and useful of outdoor tools! That Collins axe is like an exemplar of useful outdoor tools.
I have a couple 2.25 and 2.5# heads of other manufacture, but one has a Collins haft on an unidentified head, and the other a generic "Craftsman" pm a stick almost as slender and refined as a Collins replacement, both in the 28" range and my most-used axes.
Those knives are sweet too. FUNCTIONAL and handy.
Beautiful tools, Sir!
EDIT: Nice leatherwork too!
You really hit the nail on the head for the most versatile and useful of outdoor tools! That Collins axe is like an exemplar of useful outdoor tools.
I have a couple 2.25 and 2.5# heads of other manufacture, but one has a Collins haft on an unidentified head, and the other a generic "Craftsman" pm a stick almost as slender and refined as a Collins replacement, both in the 28" range and my most-used axes.
Those knives are sweet too. FUNCTIONAL and handy.
Beautiful tools, Sir!
EDIT: Nice leatherwork too!
Bret4207
At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
I have the same Collins Boys axe Tom! Collins was always the preferred brand of axe where I grew up. I have quite a collection of all sorts of brands of axes started now. I tend to lean more towards double bit axes, I don't know why. I guess since I've always used them they just seem more natural to me. Thing is I always forget I can't (well, shouldn't!) try to drive a felling wedge with a double bit even if the wedge is plastic! That's where the single bit works better.
My two "Boy's Axes," which get used for the vast majority of my axe-work:
The "red" one was a flea-market find, some twenty or more years ago, rehafted correctly and with a good stick of hickory. The other, I've had for over 50 years - a childhood acquisition through "horse-trading" and "wheelin'-dealin'" when I was a kid, hafted with a Collins Boy's Axe replacement handle, which is very slender. Both are limber svelte and lively and do most of my axe-work. Since I heat with firewood and detest using a chainsaw, these get a fair bit of use in limbing, clearing, marking and testing. I do not like wlkaing in the woods without one of these little dolls in hand. Leatherwork is my own crude, but serviceable work.
The "red" one was a flea-market find, some twenty or more years ago, rehafted correctly and with a good stick of hickory. The other, I've had for over 50 years - a childhood acquisition through "horse-trading" and "wheelin'-dealin'" when I was a kid, hafted with a Collins Boy's Axe replacement handle, which is very slender. Both are limber svelte and lively and do most of my axe-work. Since I heat with firewood and detest using a chainsaw, these get a fair bit of use in limbing, clearing, marking and testing. I do not like wlkaing in the woods without one of these little dolls in hand. Leatherwork is my own crude, but serviceable work.
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Tomme boy
Well-Known Member
I had a GRÄNSFORS Small forest axe before I found this one. Once I put a new handle on it I sold the GSFA. I got the Collins head at a garage sale for $2.50. Then I ordered a handle from Beaver Tooth handles. I have about $20 in the axe and i will never get rid of it. The axe head still had the sticker on it when I got it. It did not have much use. It still looked like the factory edge. now it is sharp enough to shav with.
The Swedish axes are nice, but t he cult following which drives their prices to insane levels is misguided. I've owned several Swedish axes, which I considered "good," but no better (OK, not AS good) than the American patterns I've come to love and find for bargain prices at flea-markets and garage sales.
NOT knocking the Swedish axes, but really?? I've used them. I st ill have ONE. They're fine axes, but not the Holy Grail of axes the cult-followers believe. I'm OK with that. Go buy your $200+ axes and leave the good stuff at the flea-market for ME - for twenty bucks or so. Never cared for the hafts on the Swedes at all either.
"Beaver Tooth Handles?" I'll have to look them up. After decades of browsing handles at local emporiums, I've given up. None are worth what they are marked any more. I used to check out the handles selection wherever they sold them and took one out of ten or twenty inspections home as a "spare." I'm about out of spares.
RicinYakima
High Steppes of Eastern Washington
You guys are real experts! I have two WW1 GI issue axes/hatchet by Plumb.
Tomme boy
Well-Known Member
I have a bunch of other ones. i sold off my two best ones about 15 years ago. A Black Raven double bit and a Abe Lincoln single bit. I sold the Abe axe for $500 and the Raven for $350. This was at the beginning of the fad of lumbersexuals. Worth way more than that now but at the time I was not working and cash is king as they say. I only had about $50 in both. And they came from the same farm auction i was at.
Rick H
Well-Known Member
Snow & Nealley cruiser axe that rides behind the seat of my Pickup truck. Mostly used for making hunting blinds and cutting my way through two tracks in the back country. A small assortment of working knives, the two on the right I made from Helle Scandinavian blades with maple handles. The two on the left were locally made semi-customs. ( JT Wright and Rapid River Knives) I made the leather for all of them.
