Around The Shop RSS

The chainsaw became common in the 1960s. Before that, for roughly three hundred and fifty years of American settlement and expansion, every tree that came down in this country came down by hand. The axe was not one tool among many. It was the tool. The thing that cleared the land, built the cabins, heated the homes, and fed the fires that kept families alive through the winters. You cannot understand American history without understanding the axe, and you cannot understand the axe without understanding what America asked of it. The Tool That Arrived First European settlers brought axes to...

  Search for the best camping hatchet and you will get the same answer from nearly every site that ranks for it: Gransfors Bruks Wildlife Hatchet. Sometimes Hults Bruk. Occasionally a smaller Swedish or Finnish maker. The guides are thorough, the photography is excellent, and the affiliate commissions are presumably solid. What you will not find in those guides is a serious look at the best American-made option at a third of the price. Not because it does not exist, but because the outdoor gear media has a longstanding relationship with Scandinavian axe brands that predates most of the sites...

Axe throwing has gone from a niche logging camp pastime to a legitimate competitive sport with organized leagues, national championships, and venues in every major city. The World Axe Throwing League now counts over 20,000 competitors annually. There are certified judges, official rulebooks, and standardized target specifications. What has not changed is that throwing an axe accurately and consistently is a real skill with specific mechanics behind it. It is not a matter of raw power. In fact, the harder most beginners throw, the worse the results. This guide covers the technique that works, what beginners consistently get wrong, and...

Most people who buy a bad first axe do it the same way. They walk into a hardware store, grab whatever is on the peg hook, and end up with a $20 imported head on a thin lacquered handle that splits within a season. Or they go the other direction, spend three hours reading reviews, get overwhelmed by the options, and end up either buying nothing or spending money on a tool that does not fit what they actually need. Neither of those outcomes is necessary. Buying a first axe is a simple decision if you start with the right...

Most people who get hurt with an axe do not get hurt because they did something reckless. They get hurt because they were tired, because the hang was slightly loose and they ignored it, because they were in a hurry, because the ground was uneven and they did not think about it, or because they put a dull axe to hard wood and it glanced sideways instead of biting in. None of those are dramatic failures. They are small errors that compound into a bad outcome. The good news is that every one of them is preventable with habits that...