Type of wood for axe handle

[Robson Valley]

I've done quite a lot of carving in seasoned birch (70 spoons and 30 forks, a couple of dishes.)
The diffuse porous anatomy won't give the axe handle any useful elastic properties to resist shatter.
I use birch for the handles of both my elbow adze and D-adze where the shock of the strike force is minimal.

BTW, Balsa-wood is technically a hardwood, being a deciduous species.
I'm sure we all can understand how that anatomy is a fail for axe handles!

 

[spader]

Yup, I was thinking hardwood, although they appear to be hard and stiff, they can be more prone to shatter when received stress or shock, whereas well dried and hardened softwood do not tend to break, but rather they split due to their elasticity in the structure. I could be wrong, but I wanted to see the evidence and proof in real life. So birch could be good for axe handles. I can see it now.

 

[Robson Valley]

Much of the mechanical properties has to with the microscopic wood anatomy of individual fiber cell length and the degree to which they overlap.
Go ahead, try any wood that you like for axe handles. If/when it shatters because of short fiber length and short overlap (aka "brash"), have you also planned the trajectory
of the axe head?
Splitting in both hardwoods and softwoods begins in the one common cell wall layer between every pair of wood cells, the middle lamella.
Some argue that thicker is worse than thinner. Some argue the lack of binding Ca++ ions. I don't much care.

Have you considered the abnormal anatomy of reaction wood = compression wood (conifers) and tension wood (angiosperms)?
A branch issue consistently but this will happen even in main stems growing on sloping sites/hill sides.

 

[Stew]

I've done quite a lot of carving in seasoned birch (70 spoons and 30 forks, a couple of dishes.)
The diffuse porous anatomy won't give the axe handle any useful elastic properties to resist shatter.
I use birch for the handles of both my elbow adze and D-adze where the shock of the strike force is minimal.
!

Someone better tell Roselli that they've been doing it wrong then.

 

[Stew]

If you can get some green ash it's worth splitting it down as soon as the first cracks show and laying it down for use in a few years time. You still need to make the bits over large to allow for shrinkage but deliberately split wood will split considerably less than say whole limbs or branches. If you are splitting it into let's call them cake slices remove the core if there's going to be enough wood for the handle , I've found doing this reduces the number of pieces wasted by cracks extending from the middle out.

OK not a vast amount of use to you wanting to do it now but I wish I'd stocked up when I could have. I recently acquired a small amount of ash from some blokes clearing a brown field site in Manchester so in a few years ill have a decent supply of blanks for the middle sons throwing axe and things like hammers and the smaller sort of axe.

ATB

Tom

This is where procrastination works in my favour! I have plenty of bits of wood that I haven't got to yet, just because of nut getting to it - it's just helped season it all rather than worrying about how to deal with it green!

Silver linings!!

 

[petrochemicals]

I was actually reading that birch is the middleground in baseballbats between hickory and hornbeam. Hickory has lots of flex but is soft, so you do not get the distance with the ball. Hornbeam you can hit the ball lots further, as it's hard and does not have the flex, but the vibrations or something are a problem. Birch was touted as a middle ground compromise.

 

[santaman2000]

I was actually reading that birch is the middleground in baseballbats between hickory and hornbeam. Hickory has lots of flex but is soft, so you do not get the distance with the ball. Hornbeam you can hit the ball lots further, as it's hard and does not have the flex, but the vibrations or something are a problem. Birch was touted as a middle ground compromise.

The most common woods for baseball bats were hickory and ash then maple as a third (those are still the choices for wooden bats) Hickory is far from "soft." It was also the most widely used wood for nightsticks and batons back when they were made of wood.

 

[Robson Valley]

Never, ever heard of baseball bats made from Betula. The mechanical/elastic properties are all wrong. Carpinus is just as bad = diffuse porous like Betula.
If you need the performance of a leaf spring, don't expect a solid bar of steel to be a top performer.

However. I recall that cricket bats are made of Betula. Given the needed performance, Fraxinus and Carya might be too "bright."

As my day comes to a close, so does my use of useless common names for tree species.

 

[British Red]

Nope cricket bats are made from willow.

 

[Robson Valley]

Thanks BR. Salix sp. How right you are.

 

[tombear]

Since the 1880s the handles have usually been cane, laminated to get a solid piece big enough.

ATB

Tom

 

[British Red]

Salix Alba Caerulea is the cricket bat willow used for the body of the bat. Nice tree.

 

[leon-1]

Nope cricket bats are made from willow.

Although they use cane now I believe that the old spliced handles were either willow or ash.

 

[petrochemicals]

Well bearing in mind yellow birch in America is prized for tool use, it is a very high ranking wood in strength terms and elasticity. That is to say that European variates are different, you can't make a boat sized canoe from our variates either. hornbeam is harder than hickory by a margain so I am informed, and it may help you hit a touchdown.