 Welcome! What a great room full. Please to see you all here as Makers in the Hall. We're here at the main charitable mechanic association, one of the neatest buildings in Portland, built in 1857 and in the process as you can see of really good education. The Makers in the Hall series you probably already know since you found it and are here the last Wednesday of every month. Highlighting Makers doing interesting things in Maine. A chance for us to get together, hear what folk are doing, talk to them a little bit afterwards. So yeah, we, at its founding, the man charitable mechanic association was a an organization of Makers for Makers. People who made barrels and buggy whips and houses and boats. You name it, they were here and we are now an organization again of Makers after a sort of dip. But here we are and so there is information on membership in the back there. If you make anything come join us. Yeah, happy to have you. The deal, so I'll be done very shortly. We're gonna turn it over. We're so thrilled to have Brent and Carpenter and X Makers here. Mark and Gabriel and Steve, thank you for wearing shirts with your name. So helpful. My understanding is Mark, you're gonna kind of take it away. We'll share it around a little bit with colleagues. There will be time at the end for some questions and answers. There are some refreshments. So time to linger and chat afterwards. We brought beer if anybody wants one. Yeah, there's beer, there's fun, there's cheese. So, Mark, thank you. Okay, well thank you. We're really happy to be here and we appreciate where everything the mechanics hall has been doing here in the city over the last 150 years and glad to be a part of that. So what we want to talk to you tonight about is a little bit about what we're doing. So, Brent and Cochran, basically, who the heck are we, right? We formed in 2015. So just two years ago, we're brand new. And our idea was we wanted to bring back ax making domain. And we wanted to also educate people on the use and care of axes and also curate the history of, it's a real rich history of ax making in Maine here, as you can imagine. There's three people in our company, three principles in the company, myself, my brother Steve, Barry Worthing, who will be coming in from his other job racing in here probably in about 15 minutes, and Gabriel McNeil here, who's our blacksmith machinist and all around kind of sensei about what we're doing here. We work, we're over in South Portland, we work out about a 1500 square foot shop. We sell axes and restored axes and accessories and some apparel like these shirts. Anything to do with axes in Maine, we sell out of our shop, we sell out of places, different museums around, the logging museum in Bradley, logging museum in Patton. We've got some stuff in the Portland Trading Company, we've got stuff at Shelter Tool, and then we sell online too. One of the other things we do, which we just did one today, which was great, is we restore people's axes. So we have people bringing axes and say, hey, this is my grandpa's axe. It's been in our family for 100 years. Can you put a new handle on it? Can you fix it up? And we do that. Today's was, the guy found one in a river when he was fishing with his uncle, and he brought it to us. It was destroyed. I mean, it was pitted, it was horrible, but it was important to him because he was with his family when he found it. So we fixed it up, handled it, and he was happy as punch it about what? One o'clock today when he gave it to him. So that's an other thing we do. One of the main questions we get when we ask, people say, what do you guys do? And we say, well, we make axes. And they say, what did they say, Steve? You mean the chopping kind? And we're always saying, what other kind is that? It's a splitting kind. But they ask us, why did you guys get into axes? In April, we ran a crowd funding campaign to raise some money to buy some of this forging equipment. And so we had to make a short little video that basically said, really answer the question, why do you guys want to make axes? So I'm going to run this little short video for you guys. We start by removing the old handle, and then each axis weighed, measured, and cataloged. The next step is sandblasting. Then we re-profile and sharpen the head and use a diamond hone to make it razor sharp. We test the hardness of the bit so that we know it'll keep an edge. Once the head is restored, we give it a new handle. We also add a custom leather sheath at the time of shipping. At this point, we've got everything we need to do the restoration of old axes. What we don't have are the tools to make our own axes. These tools are gas forges to heat the steel, a hydraulic press and power hammer to shape the steel, and the necessary related tooling to finish the axe. We're working with local blacksmiths and machinists to develop a process to create an axe worthy of the main axes that once dominated the market. Help us bring axe-making back to main so you can tell your story. Okay, so you guys can all pass your money up to the front now. Anyways, that showed you a little bit. We just want to show that video really to show the inside of our shop, kind of what we're doing. We'll talk a little bit more about the restoration process later on. So what kind of our mantra at Brant and Cochrane is make, educate, and curate. So making axes, restoring axes, educating people about their care and use, and then curating the history of axe-making in main. That's kind of what we're doing. We're going to go about this talk tonight in the exact opposite order of that, because I figured it'll be more confusing. So that's what we're going to do. So my job at Brant and Cochrane is kind of history nerd. So I'm going to take the history of axe-making and touch on that a little bit tonight. The history is incredibly rich. Art Gaffer who's sitting here probably knows more about it than I do, but I'm going to take a shot at it anyways. And then if he shakes his head and gives me kind of this look, then I'll shut up. So the neat thing about main is there's lots of axe-makers here. I mean at one point there's probably 200 of them working at any one time. These could be big integrated shops. It's started and they put the handles on and they made them up in Oakland or places like that to just local blacksmiths. And Art's done a great job. He's put together this book that he's been curating for a long time now with the help from one of his friends. And it's just this list of all these people that made it. I mean there's tons of them. So obviously making axes in main was a big deal. And it was a big deal. The reason it was a big deal here, I'll let you in on a secret why there was a lot of axe-makers in main. There were tons of trees here and you got to cut them down, right? So that's why there were all these axe-makers here. The axe-makers were here because there was logging here. The logging went to the shipbuilding industry, lumber industry, paper-making industry. So that's one of the reasons that obviously there were a lot of axe-makers here. The thing that kind of fascinated us when we started getting into this was as an example of an area where there's a huge cluster of these axe-makers was up in Oakland, up by Waterville. And I'll pass this, and we take this to shows. I'll just pass this around. But in Waterville there were probably a dozen axe-makers working at one time on about a mile and a half of stream, staring at each other across the stream. They're right next door at each other. There were lots of them. What it was was that the stream itself, you've got a mile and a half from the pond to the falls here, and the falls down here, that's where central main power starts. That's where really the most of the fall is. There's a 90-foot falls there if anyone's been there. The rest of the other 20 feet is just kind of running. But between the falls, the railroad coming into town in the 1850s, and then a few edge tool makers show up in the 1850s. And it just kind of snowballs from there. This guy's brother-in-law and this guy's friend. This guy quits one business, goes to another one, and they start all these edge tool businesses all along this stream in Oakland. And you've got makers like Spiller, Dunedge Tool, King, Emerson Stevens, a lot of these makers that now if you go out and you're looking for a vintage axe or an antique axe, they're the ones that people are going to pay you money for. Or you're going to pay a lot of money for. And the thing about this, this is really not a boutique business. They're cranking this stuff out. So one factory in 1891, Dunedge Tool's cranking out 60,000, 70,000 axes a year. Emerson Stevens cranking out 40,000 a year. And those are two of about eight factories or six factories are going at that time. The population of Maine then is 600,000 or something. And you're probably cranking out 200,000 axes a year. So it's pretty amazing. And that's just in this one town. So as an example of one of these companies, we'll talk a little bit about Emerson and Stevens. And the way these, it's interesting, the way these companies collaborate, they're competitive, but they also collaborate. Emerson and Stevens, all of their company records are up at the University of Maine and the library up there. There are 88 bankers boxes full of stuff that none of its catalog. It's just literally thrown into a box. And I went up there last summer and said, just give me 12 boxes. And some were from the 1870s, some were from the 1940s. There were ledgers in it where you open the thing up and it crumbles in your hands and none of its really curated or taken care of. But it's amazing going through that stuff. So a couple of interesting things just to touch on. One was the way that the, these axe companies collaborated together. So in one way they did that was they shared employees. So if someone needed a temper, the temper was out sick, they'd get the temper from the other company to come over. If they wanted to buy steel, they would buy steel together, they'd buy entire carloads of steel, like from Youngstown Sheet and Tube. They would take that steel and they would split it up and they'd say, okay, here's your third of the car, here's your third, we'll pay for it, pay us back. So I'll pass these around because there's, those are kind of interesting. Those are I think from the 1940s. The other thing they did is transferred inventory back and forth. So one of the things we found when we were going through all their records is that there's invoices from these companies back and forth saying, hey, we need to buy, there's like 2,000 axe heads from you. And they would transfer these back and forth between each other when someone didn't have the inventory to get product out. The kind of craziest thing we found up there was in the 1879, all the axe companies got together and got involved in a price fixing scheme. And here's like all the doctors where they actually signed their names to the thing, okay? So they all agree, they get together January 1886 and it's all the companies in Oakland. It includes Collins, which was Collins Edge Tool, down in Collinsville, Connecticut was probably the largest Edge Tool company, maybe in the world at that point. They signed off on it. I mean, there's people from New York, everybody. So six bucks a dozen, that was the deal. So it's kind of crazy to see in that stuff. So the main point is that really Oakland and Maine was kind of the epicenter of axe making in the country. The only other place in the country that had this concentration of Edge Tool making was probably Collinsville, Connecticut. So it's an entire town that was one company. They made machetes, they made everything down there. But in any event, this is a very important place. Now, by the 1960s, all the axe making in Maine is starting to wind down for a lot of different reasons. We're lucky that in 1965, or was it 1964, this guy Peter Vogt made a film. And some of you guys may have seen this. I don't know if you've seen this online or not. But he made, he was a student at Colby College in the, he started in 1960. His freshman roommate is a member of the Woodsman's team at Colby. So he's got to get a new axe. He goes over to across the river, goes over to Oakland, goes into this factory, and Peter is just blown away by what he sees. You know, watching this old process going on. Graduates from Colby in 1963 or 1964, goes into the Air Force. He's in the film, the film corps of the Air Force. The film corps says, hey, we got all this almost expired Kodak film. Why don't you go practice and make a movie? So he remembers like, oh, that was crazy up at Emerson Stevens. I'm going to go use this almost expired film and make a movie. So he makes this film. It's 10 minutes long, but it is awesome. It shows you how axes were made, what these old factories look like inside. It's really cool. So we're going to play this. There was a time when Oakland, Maine was a center of thriving industry. The air was filled with the clanger of forges and the accurate smoke of furnaces. Its industry produced a variety of hardware and gained, perhaps, its greatest fame in the manufacture of axes. It was a craftsman-centered industry, and near the turn of the century, almost a dozen shops were manufacturing axes along the banks of Mesolonsky Stream. Today, only one shop has survived the ravages of mass production and foreign importation. The Emerson Stevens shop still stands and still, but just barely, produces its line of fine, handmade axes. Each axe starts as a sheared-off hunk of bar steel and will eventually end up a three pound axe. Earl Wood's been starting this process most of his working life, and he's 52. Elwood Manson at 47 is considered a youngster, but he's the master craftsman. Neither has an apprentice. In an oil-fired furnace, each bar or pattern reaches intense red heat, and the first step in forming a pole or head of the axe is begun. The ends of the pattern are plated or flattened under the uncompromising steel faces of the trip hammer. The pounding head is strapped by heavy steel bands to a huge beam of solid rock maple, which rises and falls by cam action. On the anvil, the pattern is doubled over to form the eye of the axe. Finally, the two ends are then welded together, using granulated borax as the flux. The basic pole is now ready for a blade. Welding a cutting edge of high carbon steel to the softer pole of the axe is the second step Manson must perform and is the first crucial step in the formation of a fine blade. A piece of high carbon steel is lightly attached coal and placed in the blast furnace. After intense firing, it is withdrawn, hammered at the anvil, and finally integrated as a blade with the pole of the axe. For this demanding and dangerous work, Manson makes only a dollar 25 an hour and soon he'll be heading down to Connecticut to work in a large mill, where he can make twice that, pushing a broom. Not only does the bit steel become a blade, but the axe begins to assume the final shape of the pattern desired, whether it be a half wedge, main, Connecticut, Michigan, or Jersey pattern. The roughly formed axe now receives the refinements of final hammering. Hammering the head with a steel pin inserted through the eye ensures a uniform socket for the handle, and slightly tapering sides are permanently set under the trip hammer and at the anvil. Head is at last squared off by the percussive strokes of the rapid hammer. Manson has completed forging an axe. The forged axe is now ready for grinding. His first grinding is called raising, and here wood further shapes the axe by grinding off the top of the head and the side, and then grinding the bit down to the proper edge for tempering. The tongue he sits on gives him greater pressure between axe and stone and a lot more steadiness, all of which help him grind each axe to near duplication. The grinding wheels wood uses are made of carborundum and have replaced the traditional sandstone wheel. An average sandstone wheel used to measure 78 inches in diameter and weigh nearly a ton and a half. Roy Barrett tempers the axes. Each axe, after reheating, is thrust into the ancient bubbling tank of cold brine, where the sudden temperature change locks into the steel bit, the hardness so essential to a fine axe. Barrett's skill and timing and eye for the look of a perfect temper are the key to this critical step. For if any portion of the bit is left soft, the edge will turn in use. If too hard, it is likely to break. These axes, the products of craftsmanship, forging, grinding, and tempering, now await only the refinements of final grinding, paint and label, and the application of a handle before they are ready for purchase. Wood removes all rough edges. The marks of earlier raising puts the final edge on the bit and polishes up the bit about three inches. The skill of his hand has been an important part of the creation of these axes from the raw steel bar to the glittering finished blade. When a blade bites into timber, the strength of the lumberman's shoulder becomes the force of the axe through the handle, and thus every good axe must have a handle of great strength and a head that fits true. This is Barrett's responsibility. His skill at handling an axe and his eye for alignment of blade and handle are unerring, and to a great degree unappreciated. So too are most of the other steps and methods of axe making used in this shop. Not once in the creation of these axes has a precision measuring device been used. Craftsmans eye and muscle has determined the size, shape, and the quality of a fine tool, a product of the hands of men. It's crazy, right? So we learned that, you know, you get paid a buck forty-five an hour. We learned how to light a pipe by putting your axe head in the forge and then holding it by your head. So that's good. We got that going for us tonight. That's a good takeaway. But it's just amazing, you know, watching that. I mean, it's interesting even for us watching, watching that as makers now, like when we went through, we're learning how to halft axes, right? Just started doing this a couple years ago. We were halfting axes, putting handles on them, and, you know, the first bunches are, you know, we're failing as you're supposed to, right? And so the handles are falling off the axes and we're like, remember that pioneer axe video? And that guy, he is just beating a heck out of that and like, maybe we should beat the heck out of it and get it on it. That was the secret. Basically watching that video. Like it was said in that video by 1965, it's over in Oakland. All of those, all those factories you saw that are the factory you see along the stream is gone. So right here, this is looking over the school street bridge and that big building where they were making the axes would have been right here. We did a craft fair. We went up to Oakland in November and we had all these like cool, like Oakland t-shirts and we're like, ah, we're going to sell all this stuff. You know, it's going to be great and sell axes. And most of the younger people had no idea that their town was the center of axe making, you know, in Maine and really in the country. It was really, it was interesting. But if you go up there today, we of course went, walked along the stream, found all these, talking about these giant grinding wheels. What they did with the ones they finished with the old sandstone wheels when they were done with them, what do you do with all your garbage? You throw it in the creek. So they threw it all in the stream. So all along the stream there are giant grinding wheels in the water. Yeah. Well, now they're going to hold something else back because the other thing is what's in here are the old foundations of the factory. And along the river, the foundation is brick cinder block. And they used old grinding wheels as part of the foundation. So they're just like chinked in with all the other stuff to make the wall along the river. It's pretty cool. So if you have an opportunity to go up to Oakland, it's fun to walk the river. So at this point, no one's making axes in Maine. All the high quality axes really at this point, they're made in Sweden, grandpa's brocks, or they're made in Germany. So that's where all that all of those good axes are being made now. So our, like we said in that video, our idea is we want to bring back axe making to Maine. And so Steve's going to talk about what we've been doing with that. So they talked in there the main, the half wedge. I'll pass a couple of these axes around, but all different regions have different patterns of axes. You know, Michigan had its own pattern. There's one called Jersey, which is pretty interesting. We have these posters back there. So before you leave, grab one out of the box and we'll give you a gum band to roll it up. But anyways, this is the main wedge and this is what we're trying to replicate. And it just had a very distinct, very angular profile with a very thick pole, very heavy pole. And you know, we don't know for sure, but every region had its own kind of axe design. There's one called Puget Sound, which is crazy. It's about this long. It's a double bit. And it's probably used, it was used out in, you know, Washington, Oregon to take down the big Douglas first. But anyways, I'll pass this around. We're going to make one that's about, you've seen that before probably. Oh, that's axes. So what we're going to do is make what's called a two pound or two and a half pound cruiser or boys axe. These are all three, three and a half pound axes. The other thing is we have a, back in the day, they made all the handles here in Maine, most of them out of ash. So we have a source of white ash that we're going to use because historically that's what would have been put on an axe. Or they would have used, you know, white oak. They would use maple. They use horn beam if you could find it. But instead of using hickory, we're going to use white ash. So what else am I missing here? And the name of our axe is going to be called the Allagash Cruiser. And all these old axe labels had, you know, little kind of interesting things written on it. So ours is Wicked Sharp. I'm not kidding. So, well, and that's the beginning of that, that part about the Emerson Caesar, the different axe labels. That's what these are. We'll make these t-shirts. But there were hundreds and hundreds of axe labels. They're beautiful. They're like the labels that would be on, you know, like vegetable crates. And they're gorgeous. And so we want to do that as kind of an homage to the old labels. Yeah, because one of our favorite labels is, what's it called? Our special axe. Our special axe. It says made good, not guaranteed. And that's in one of those paintings. I think it's in that one. It's the double bit version of a main wedge. And I've ground this down so this is totally safe. It's not going to be dangerous like scissors. And that's for snow kneeling. That's snow kneeling, which is the main major. Yeah. Okay. So I think we're going to have Gabriel now talk about how we're making these axe go through the materials that we're using, the equipment we're using, and kind of go through this process that we're starting to make this axe. Okay. So my name is Gabriel McNeil. I have been Blacksmithing for a little over 12 years or so. I got my start. I grew up in Unity, Maine, so not too far from Oakland. And I've probably been past that place not even knowing it existed thousands of times. So in that video, how they made axes with the cool trip hammer and all that old dangerous equipment, we're doing none of that, unfortunately. We're using new dangerous equipment. We're using brand new dangerous equipment. Actually, we're in safety glasses. Yes. Yes. Keep your eyes intact. So the other thing that they did in that video is used a mild steel or soft steel base with a high carbon bit. So the reason why they did that was the high carbon tool steel was hardly to come by back then. It was pretty expensive to come by. So fast forward to now high carbon steel. We make it by the tons, thousands of tons every day. So it's easy just to take a whole block. This is about a three pound block of 10 to 45 high carbon steel. We take it from this round section. So we take it from that three pound round section right there, put it in the forge, which is very similar to the forages that they were using back then, but instead we're using propane gas. And heat it up to about 2,200 degrees approximately, hopefully a little hotter. And then we forge it out so that that round puck turns into a square block. So after the square block is all formed up, we heat it back up, get it up to as high as we can possibly get it to go. And then in the hydraulic press that we have, it's a C-frame press like this. It's got a big cylinder mounted on the top. And in the bottom of this, we can mount these dies. We can interchange all these different dies into duty different applications for forging anything. This particular die here is used to punch the eye through the straight through in one heat, right through that big block of material. So we'll be able to set that metal in there, drive it right through, take it out, flip the metal over, drive it right through again, and we'll end up with the hole in the eyes. So once that process is done, we wind up with a squished up block very similar to what this one is right here. And we also end up with what's called a bisquette. And this little bisquette is the material that is punched out of the middle of that right there. That's it. That's the bisquette. Rest of it just squished. So after you get that punched out, it has to go back into the fire, heat it up back up to back up to temperature. And then we gradually open the eye up so that it will end up being in the shape of an axe eye for the handle. So we have a very specific size that we're trying to achieve. So after the eye gets shaped up the rest of the way with the different dies, then we're able to pull all that material out to start the shape of the axe. And then finally, after we've got the rough shape pretty well down to where we want it, we're able to finish it all out and make it look real pretty with a nice axe-looking piece of coconut. And this will go through, get another round of grinding, get it closer to the final shape. Then we'll go through and heat it up again, crunch it, heat treat it, make it so that it holds a good edge. And half it and we're ready to rock and roll. Which number is that, Dave? This one is number two. That's the second one made. So the trick for all this for us has been, and Gabriel has been getting the eye made because the rest is just moving material. And so that's what we're really focusing our effort on in the next month or two, next day, you know when we get it figured out tomorrow. But it's really that that's the trick is making the eye. And I think that's what, when Gabriel and I were at the shop last night, that's what we're focusing on. The rest of it, the shape of it, how long it is, all that's the, I mean it's not like it's simple, but that's the easy part. It's making the eye, getting the both the walls of the eye equal, making sure that it's consistent so we can make these in a kind of a production environment. There's a lot of people that are making really nice axes right now, but they're blacksmiths and they're making them one at a time and or they're making them to order for people and they're awesome. But our idea is to bring axe making back and to have some kind of a production facility where we can crank out, we're certainly not going to crank out, you know, 60,000 a year, like like Dunn Edge Tool was doing in the 1890s, but to get to some kind of a process and that's working through it. That shape head, is there a name for that shape head? It kind of looks like a Hudson Bay axe, but not really. We're basing everything off of patterns. That'll be more for like just a fast-moving axe for women after you've taken tree all the way down. You run down again to that tree, you just take off all the limbs and get that stuff out of the way. Right, because the axe we're going to make, you know, there is a single bit bigger felling and chopping axes, three, four pounds, there's double bit axes, they can be small, big, and then these camp axes, boys axes, we figure we're going to start with making this camp axe. And so it's a traditionalist main wedge pattern, no one's making that right now, no one's made it for years. And that's the pattern we're going to make. And then eventually we'll figure out if we want to make a different pattern, but you know, we're very focused on trying to do one thing right and take our time and get this done. And then we can branch out the other stuff. We've learned that. So what we're going to take you through right now is Barry's going to talk about what we're doing when we're restoring axes. And one of the big tricks I kind of alluded to is halting or handling an axe, which seems pretty easy, right, because there's a hole, you put the thing in it and it's done, right? That's what we thought. That's what we thought, right. We were wrong. Yeah, we're really wrong about that. So my name's Barry, I'm one of the other partners here in this dog and pony show. The, Steve alluded to the fact of handles in the woods and the variety of stuff that is and can be used. I mean, you can use anything, really. I mean, if you want it to last, you want something that's going to be stronger and resilient so that it holds up to the striking force and everything. But regardless of what you're using, there is kind of an art to applying this and putting this on, putting a head on here. Probably is within the respect of the hand. We'll talk a little bit about the anatomy of it, the parts. But the shoulder of it is this kind of this at the, what we call it your thumb side, if you want to call it your thumb side, is that little bump out there. That is the shoulder. Then we have the back of the, and the belly. Kind of makes sense, right? And then the toe of it, and then this is sometimes referred to as a fawn's foot, depending on how it's shaped. Some of these are shaped very angular and what's more severe looking than others and some are very more rounded. Some of the ones that we have taken in are a little too severe. So we've made some modifications to kind of make that a little bit smoother and make it feel a little bit better in hand. But regardless, that's not necessary for using the axe, but it can make it feel a little better in hand. So these are the fawn's foot, the scroll end, the swell end where some of the double bits, let me double it for this stuff. The double bits where they're a straight handle, they just kind of uniformly have a little bit of a swell out at the bottom end. Again, it gives you something like a baseball bat, not quite a knob, but to hang on to so you don't let it slide out of your hands. And then the shapes, for the most part, are oval, or some oval shape, the handles themselves, but you'll see sometimes old ones that are octagonal. So you'll see that it's really kind of pretty steeped in a kind of reproduction of an octagonal handle for one of our double bits that we know. Do we customer answer or is it still one? Yeah. But it's really kind of neat. It doesn't feel bad in hand either. There's not a lot of angle to it that it's not really harsh in hand. As far as shaping and fitting it, the handles that you can buy commercially, first things that we have to be concerned with are the orientation of the grain. So commercial handles is totally just close your eyes and pull a handle out and look at it. You'll have just as much luck in getting a good one with your eyes open or closed. It doesn't matter. It's just what's there. And even when we go to our supplier and pick up stuff by hand, look at it. We get stuff home and we go, well, we missed that one. That one was three degrees. We weren't hurt. But there are two ways you can look. You can look at the font's foot end here or on this end. And really what we're looking for is as close to vertical as possible. The grain orientation, think about that, is running in parallel with the blade with a bit of it. And the theory behind that is it allows those fibers of the wood to flex and go with force as opposed to being struck and splitting. So we used to have an example of a handle that was clearly cross-grained. It was 90 degrees and you could see all of it like this and it had delaminated itself. It was just in layers. You could just see it. It was an older handle by a few, but still it was very clear how it delaminated itself. It just kind of split in layers. So the orientation of the grain is very important. And there is some variation to that. 20, 25 degrees, something like this is acceptable. And then the handles that you can purchase, they are all sized by the type of axe. So boys axe. Single bit, double bit cruiser. So the cruiser bits are a little bit smaller. As an example like this, this is an unusual shaped handle, but this is a little bit smaller because the cruiser double bit is a smaller head like the small single bit axe is. And what we start with is really just finding the shape close to it. We start removing some material. We use these pictures here with a spoke shave. We have a little shave for us and we just start taking some material off and get it to just get started. Once it started, we'll take it off. We'll see where it's taken up material. We'll remove material. We'll start it back on again and we'll continue down. And what we're trying to do is achieve that nice as customized fit as possible. With the restorations we're doing right now, they're all different. Every single axe is different. They've been damaged. The eye might be distorted a little bit. Not so much that it can't be used again. And every manufacturer, they're just a little bit of variation. So we are really custom fitting these axes to these handles. Or vice versa. And then finally, once we get there, and most of the ones that we're getting now, there is no little kerf or slot cut in them. And we cut that ourselves, which we prefer actually, because the depth of it can vary depending on the axe. So you want about a two-thirds of the depth of the eye for that wedge slot to go. And some of these commercially ones that they're already cut can't control how deep that goes. So we will cut those ourselves once we get about 90% done or so. We'll cut them and then we can finish the process. Yeah, when we get bored with this. And then for us, very simple, we just put a hardwood wedge in as tight as possible, down as far as possible. And again, ensuring if you look at any of these going around, some of these older ones, but we're looking for as close a fit around the top and the bottom, so we're filling as much of that eye with wood. So there's wood to metal contact, friction. And in some cases, if you look at these when they're done, you'll see just the tight little bit of a flare at the top of the axe. And that just creates that little bit of almost like a wedge of the handle itself. And we tend to leave these a little bit proud so that there's a little bit of room there. So if you had to make an adjustment because something loosened up, you have a little room to pound that back on and maybe put a little something on that wedge and jam that wedge down a little bit more to get you through the rest of the afternoon until you have to replace the handle. No metal wedges. No metal wedges. You know, oh, sorry. And we don't use metal wedges. I mean, there are metal wedges out there and you see them. Typically what you'll find is a wooden wedge, full length of the slot of the handle, filling the eye just parallel with the wood of the handle. And then you see this little metal wedge that's kind of put in across the ice. What is that? Does it make people feel better? I think that's part of what it is. The metal ones, you know, the stepped kind of metal ones that really look like a little arrowhead almost, they can tend to split these panels. If you think about it, you just might put a little bit of a chisel through there and it can split that. Some of the ones that are out there you see as well are just a round circular one. They're probably maybe a half inch in diameter at the most and they have kind of a taper to them. I know Grandpa Brooks uses that. Again, not being a physicist or an engineer, but it's, I can't imagine it's exuding all that force in addition to the wooden wedge. Again, it's this modern day feeling comfortable. Oh, it's metal, so it's going to hold up better. I mean, we've pulled, we've pulled heads off old axes for restoration. They're taking quite a bit of time and there's been no metal wedge. It was just drilling it out and pounding this thing off. So it really proves that it's really the friction, it's that physical force of friction that keeps that place in the tight fit. Restoration-wise, if you're ever looking around and want to keep about and see if you want to get an old axe and you want to fix it up yourself, which there are loads of people that do that on their own without all this fancy high tech gear that we have for things. They don't have a flag or anything. There are some key things you want to look at. First of all, how damaged is it? So you'll find something somewhere and you'll see all along the cheeks and the surface here, these very prominent divots and pitting, right? It's very severe. You could see, like the difference between surface rust and body rust in the car, right? You know, there is a difference when you can push your finger through, versus just pulling a little paint off your breast spot but it still feels solid. And that's really kind of the thing. Some of these you'll see on one side are all pitted because it's been sitting up or down, depending on the environment it's been in. That's cosmetic in some respects. You can clean that off and it looks okay, so long as the bit end is not so pitted. But we've had some where the bit is so pitted that every time we take a pass on the grinder to kind of get that edge screwed back up, you guys don't have a little chip because you just keep cutting through all these divots. So those are things to look at. The pole end, so that's that pole end that we, we'll get right out of access here. So the pole end, this is not a hammer. As Gabriel pointed out, the older axis, the mild steel was very soft. It was not meant to tolerate that striking. Maybe it wouldn't wedge if you pound it in a wedge and you're bringing a tree down, okay, or it wouldn't tend to be safe or something very mild. But people use these as hammers. Some of the ones that have taken in are just horrible. They've been brutalized. But the problem with that is to some degree that can be removed cosmetically by filing it or grinding it as we do and making it look cosmetically better. It's really not a functional thing. It's just a cosmetic thing. However, if that's been damaged enough, the eye can then be distorted not evenly, and then you are on the risk of being able to fit a handle on there properly to have a sail on sailor. So looking at that, and that's only, you can really only do that once you get the old handle out. What are the ways that people remove all the handles? Correct. And is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's a bad thing. What we've done in the manufacturing of the axe by heat treating it, we've created a temper that will hold an edge by repeat treating it, i.e. putting in a fire to burn out the old wooden handle, you have now changed that temper probably to a lesser degree and ruined it because it's not done in a controlled way. So that is an old way. I mean, I remember hearing that. You know, as a kid, oh yeah, just throw the fire, burn it up. You know, take it out. So really the best way, what we end up doing even without a drill press, you can just drill some holes, knock it out, put it in a vise, soft vise, some soft brick vise, and just kind of knock it out with a piece of wood and a hammer, just kind of knock away it. Really like playing, don't break the ice. You just kind of get the holes in it, and if you get it going, kind of one piece falls out, and once you get the pressure taken off, you can get that handle out. And then you can look at the eye and see is it really distorted, is it not. We're also looking for cracks. And then cleaning this up, you can use Scotch-Brite pads, there isn't a whole vinegar soak, you've got to get that off, or other things to remove surface rust. Any of those things that are fine, the Scotch-Brite pads are great because they're fairly easy to use, and you can just kind of rub them down. And then you can also, once you get it cleaned off, again look for any obvious cracks. There are people that will say, well, you can weld that crack and fix it, but then, yeah, you can, if you really want to go through all that trouble. We don't take that trouble. If it's cracked, it's beyond use. We don't. We make a trailer that's covered for it. We're out of it, is what we do. And really, you know, if you're restoring, you find something, is it valuable to you? It's up to you, right? Is it something that's a collector's item? Again, that's up to the collector and the person that's there. But if you're choosing an axe because you like it, and it looks cool and you want to use it again, or something, then that's the right axe. I mean, really, it doesn't matter, aren't it? So, with our process, because we're choosing axes of a variety of vintages, a variety of manufacturers, some with no labels, as we've already illustrated, with paper labels you don't know who they were made by or where they might have been made. We do test the hardness of the bit. So there's something called the Rockwell hardness scale. And formally, there's a huge machine in technology to test the hardness of things. But they do make these hardness chisels. And the chisels are calibrated in two-point increments on this scale. And we have a set that starts at 50 and goes to 62. And really, that's that optimal. That mid-50 range, upper-50 range is that optimal. Hardness of the bit so that it keeps the edge, but doesn't break because it's too hard. And so we'll test all of these. And there have been some that, boy, this is a beautiful looking axe. We had a nice old Snow Neely double bit. Oh, my goodness. This is like spark. It was just literally below 50, which we can't measure below that. We said, well, it's not going to be any good. So that's not something you're going to say you can do on your own, but it is something that we consider because we know the quality of the bit and it's still going to hold an edge. Well, one of the big modules that we learned early on is you don't sharpen an axe. You can axe sharp. One of the things we do when we sell the axes that we restore is we put a sheet on it. When we restore it for you, we'll ask you if you want a sheet, but we'll hand it to you like this. Without the sheet on it. But essentially, one of the things we've learned is keeping tools in working order requires that you take care of them. This is one that was a refurb for a friend of ours. We put chamele oil on the bit, early axe head, which is a plant-based oil from Japan. That's what the Samurais used on their swords. So you know it's bad. It also doesn't congeal like other oils. And then the other thing is, I think Barry found this one out, but for the axe handle, we use linseed oil. And the mantra is, you know, once a day for a week, once a week for a month, once a month for a year is the idea. So when we give these axes to people, or sell them, we don't give them away, what am I talking about? We remind them that this thing is going to require some linseed oil so that the handle will stay protected. You know, when you go to the hardware store, the handles all have lacquer on them. And the lacquer is not because they think that's a better way to kind of protect an axe. Think of it as plastic packaging for whatever you buy in the store. They just put lacquer on it because that's what protects it and seals it completely. So if you do buy a, you know, a store-bought hardware store handle, you can find some that have good, you know, grain orientation. Just take and, you know, sand off all that lacquer and then get some linseed oil and then apply linseed oil. Because the lacquer just kind of locks in, you know, all that moisture and then, you know, it's likely, you know, over years to become brittle. So really, that's our kind of care tips for axes. And then the... So we have like a tool roll that we sell to take care of your axe in the field. So one of the things people will do, heck, we used to do it when we were kids, was you'd take your axe and you'd sharpen it. You'd put it on a grinding wheel, right? Dad's got a grinding wheel in the garage. You just put it on the grinding wheel? That's right. The problem with that is, it's going to heat the axe up and then you're going to lose your temper. So that was one of the things we learned. I thought it was a temper. Right, and then, yeah, well, he would always lose his temper. But, and so, what we always suggest is, I mean, the grinder we have at the shop is a 2x72-inch grinder. So, and it flies. So you never really... You're never really heating the axe up that much. But, you know, just for home use, file if you need it. And then once you get the axe sharp, like Steve said, just keep it sharp. And the way to keep it sharp is really just getting a little honing puck. Okay, this is a landscape puck. You can find them online. They're 15, 20 bucks. That's a good one. We have just worked with this honing guy down in Massachusetts. Don't groan. And he's worked with us on this. This is a Belgian Blue Cotical 4000 grit garnet side on here. This is a diamond hone on the other side. This is 120 bucks. This thing will last for generations. But the thing about this is it's nice and soft. You can really, once it sharpens the axe, it takes about two runs at it. It's going to get back to sharp. But use a stone. You don't have to use this one. But I mean, use a stone to do that. But you'll see an adventurer if you're using it, and you get that bluing of the bit. That's like, dude, it's over-eated now. So that's not good. The last thing we should pass around, which was funky, we already picked these up before, but these are Adirondack handles. These were a double bit axe, but it's a curved handle. It's not straight. Everywhere we go, we ask people about why we should have a curved handle on one side, which is good. And then the other side's kind of funky. It's like, what's up with that? And the only thing we've gotten so far is that you use the side that had the best kind of physics to cut a tree down with. But a lot of these farmers and guys in the woods would use the other side for ground work with roots and stuff where you'd hit the roots and dirt and stuff. And you'd just have a sharp side for felling. And you'd have another one for... The other side would be for ground work. But if you have any ideas, we welcome them. We've contacted the museum and the Adirondacks that has one of those hanging on their wall. They can't even tell us what it was for. So if you can actually make up a bit of a story, it'll probably work. Or maybe a t-shirt in it for you. Yeah. Okay. I think that's about it. That's it. Thank you so much.