Forging a Bearded Axe: A Step-by-Step Guide

In this video I'm going to show you how we made this bearded axe completely by hand. That means no power hammer, no press, no grinder. Let's go. We're also giving it away. I start by making a mark roughly 30 millimeters from the end of the billet. This is where I am going to punch the eye of the axe. When the billet is hot it's time to start punching the eye. The tool you see me using is made for this purpose only and it's called an eye punch. I am very careful in the beginning making sure that everything is fairly in line and straight before I apply more force. You might have noticed that I am turning the billet every now and then and the reason for this is to prevent my inaccuracy of holding the tool straight to make a crooked eye. By doing this my inaccuracy evens itself out and leaves a fairly straight hole. When I'm about three quarters of the way through it's time to flip the billet and start working from the other side. Since this billet is not rectangular I use another piece of steel to compensate for the lack of height. What we're basically doing is that we're pushing material from one side and when we flip the billet and start pushing it back in the other direction the idea is that the material will loosen and fall off leaving us with a hole straight through the billet. It's time to start drifting the eye. This allows us to shape and make the eye larger. When the drift is inside the eye it's time to start working on the bottom lugs of the axe. I use the peen side of my cross peen hammer to move the material. It's important to start working from the middle and towards the thicker part of the drift otherwise you might risk distorting the eye and locking the drift inside. In this particular case I want the lugs to have a pointier shape so every other heat I take the time to shape them. When I am happy with the bottom lugs I flip the billet and start working from the other side. It's a little bit trickier to shape the top lugs however by holding the axe at an angle to the edge of the anvil we manage to get support without distorting the bottom lugs. When I'm happy with the eye section I start thinning out the transition point from the eye to the blade. It's now time to start drawing out the blade of the axe and since I want to make the beard longer I use the peen section of my cross peen hammer. The horn of the anvil is very useful when shaping the beard of the axe. Not only does it allow me to shape the profile of the edge but also the section between the eye and the beard of the axe. I move back and forth between drawing out the blade and making sure that it's true to my design. By doing this I always keep track of what I'm doing and where I need to focus my attention. It's now time to start working on what later will become the edge of the axe. The idea is that I want it to have the shape of a long wedge so I start by bending it so that I can thin out the inside of the bend. I then hot rasp it to its final shape. To make space for the edge material I use a chisel to open up the blade of the axe. I call this the taco method. By closing the taco and thinning it out it will leave more room for the edge bit and also make it slightly easier to forge weld. After the edge steel is inserted I use the jaws of my vise to close the taco preventing the edge steel to fall out. I then apply some flux and heat the blade to a white-yellow color before I forge weld the pieces together. After the blade is welded I use my chisel to cut off the excess material. I then hot rasp to clean everything up. After I'm done forging the blade I go back once again to the eye section to make sure that everything is straight and even. All right so we're done with the forging process. It's now time to refine the profile and establish the edge. And since we're doing this completely without power tools we're going to use a file. When filing the edge I try to establish a narrow rough edge first and from that I work my way back until I have a nice apple seed edge. I stamp the pole of the axe with my maker's mark so that the future owner knows who made it. I then normalize the axe by heating it up and letting it cool down slowly. After that it's time to make the blade hard and I do that by quenching it in water. To temper the blade I first clean off the edge so that I can see the steel. I then stick it back into the fire carefully watching the temper colors. Before I do the final filing on the edge I test the hardness with my Rockwell testers. So we're at the stage now where if I run my fingers along the edge I can feel that there is a burr established. And the goal with this is to establish the burr all along all of the edge. And what this indicates to me is that it's time now to move over to sandpaper. It's now time to strop the edge and I simply do that by first applying some polishing compound on a piece of leather. If everything went well the axe should be pretty sharp. All right so we completed the head and it's now time to start working on the handle. And just like the previous two videos in this series we're using a store-bought handle until we get to the video where I show you how I make a handle from scratch. So the first order of business is to first get the head seated on the handle and then we will start removing material until we are down to the position of our liking. After the head has been test fitted you can see on the wood where you had contact. The idea is to remove the contacted material until you're at the point where you have contact all around the handle. When everything is straight and there's contact all around the handle I cut a slot for the wedge and then I wedge it to lock it in place. Thank you so much for watching the video. So in today's video we made this bearded axe and I'm also giving it away. So make sure that you're subscribed and leave a comment and I'll pick one out at random that will receive this axe. The focus of this video was to introduce two new elements of forging axes and these are the double lugs and the beard of the axe. And I hope that it was somewhat educational. At least it was for me. I also want to take a moment to thank the people who decided to support this YouTube channel either via YouTube membership or becoming a Patreon. Thank you so much it means a lot and if you want to help out check the links in the description to see how to proceed. Thank you so much for watching the video. I'll see you in the next one. Goodbye.