New Craftsman Hatchet

[Smith357]

The Mrs. and I stopped by Sears today so she could get some girlie stuff, I headed on over to to tool section as usual to drool a bit. While browsing the hammer section I came upon a nice looking 1 & 1/2 lb. Craftsman hatchet for $18.00, it looked very nice for a cheap hatchet. It has a slight convex to the head and hickory handle and being made in the USA with Craftsman's lifetime guarantee how could I go wrong? ( I believe they are made by Vaughn for Sears) the salesperson mention he thought they were being discontinued. I picked the one with the straightest handle grain and brought it home and proceeded remove the thick clear coat from the blade and like most axes it comes pretty dull so the end user can profile the blade to his liking, so I had to file my preferred edge geometry and then sharpened it. That took all of 15 minutes. Then I got to looking at it closely and being the tinker that I am, I removed some of the light forging marks with my belt grinder, polished up the head a bit, heat hardened the handle, melted bee's wax into the wood, buffed it with 0000 steel wool, and drilled a lanyard hole. The thickness of the cheeks means this hatchet will be a better splitter than a chopper, which is fine as I use an old Plumb Michigan pattern axe for chopping and felling. You can see in the picture the line where the high carbon steel blade insert has been forge welded into the head, pretty cool for an 18 dollar axe. I will head out tomorrow morning and see how it performs.

Edit:
This what it looks like when new.

Photo credit
Wood Trekker

 

[Texas Star]

Actually, that looks pretty danged good, especially for the money. You appear to be a talented "Craftsman" yourself.

Let us know how it chops. I can almost smell the campfire that it cuts kindling for.

 

[shouldazagged]

That's a damn fine hatchet for eighteen bucks--especially since you've improved it. Should be a real workhorse.

 

[Smith357]

I took out the new hatchet this morning to give it a test drive, I really had nothing in its size range to compare it to, all my small axes are Tomahawks.

I grabbed my Beaver Bill Premium Thrower as it has the largest cutting edge of all my hawks. It has much longer handle and lighter head than the Craftsman so it's really not a fair test but it's all I've got

A nice big hunk of dead oak to hack on with my test subjects. The thin tomahawk blade worked as designed sinking in deeper then the hatchet blade when going with the grain, it took two swings to stick the hatchet, axe heads are designed not to stick.

I decided on a dozen swings each

First up was the Beaver Bill, although it is not balanced for chopping, there was some twist in the head when swinging, it did surprisingly well at heavy chopping for a Tomahawk.

Next up the Craftsman Hatchet, it really surprised me, the heavy head dug very deep and was throwing out big chunks of wood, the thick blade profile did not seem to hinder its penetration. It's hard to see in the picture but the Craftsman dug a hole almost two inches deeper into the log.

For $18 and a little bit of file time on the edge I can say it's a keeper as a belt or bag axe.

 

[Jebus35745]

Hey Guy, I'd like to AX you something!!! Cool post, Larry