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Permalink Reply by Jeff Cameron on February 22, 2012 at 9:30

In my opinion, yes.

How much work do you do with it? If it's use only occasionally you could do a repair. I had one like this that lasted a couple of years.

I drilled a small hole through at a right angle to the grain and filled it with gorrila glue and a wooden dowel. Then fibreglassed around the handle to form a collar.

If it's going to get a lot of use, change it.

I was talking to a champion wood chopper at an A&P show once and looked at his axe. It had a roll pin through the head from one side to the other which holds the head to the handle, stops them flying off into the crowd.

He said he looks at a heap of handles before he buys one so the above doesn't happen.

 

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Permalink Reply by Te Hopo on February 22, 2012 at 19:43

For that I'd lever the crack open, fill it with a good glue, such as epoxy and then clamp it shut until dry.

You can also whip the length of the crack with some cord and cover it with more glue, this will also protect the wood if you miss and hit the splitting block.

It's still gonna crack again but that will hold for a fair while until you get a new handle.

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Permalink Reply by Rob Mac on February 26, 2012 at 8:26

My theory about axe handles is that a good one should have the grain(growth rings) runing the length of the board.a similar principle in bow making. Where there is grain run off there is a weak spot, that crack has opened up on a early growth ring although that looks like a good handle it mite have got brittle with age. A Lot of the handles I see in the hard ware shops have grain run off. If you can't lever the crack open another way is to heat the wood up with a heat gun or over a fire then apply glue this should melt the glue and alloy it to penetrate into the crack flexing the handle should help push the air out.

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