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Cutting blanks from logs with axe or hatchet?

I have a feeling the videos that might help will be from a foreign country. There have been a number of them shared on this forum in which the turner used remarkably different methods and tools to produce their results. All of them very adept, as they were professional turners. In any case, try some YouTube searches and I bet you will find some where an axe was the tool used.

Otherwise, my thinker suggests you will need to be very mindful of grain orientation, and always cut 'with the grain' on supported fibers. Staying safe strikes me as markedly harder than if you were prepping a spindle type blank, where it would be macro whittling. Let us know how it comes out.

(BTW, don't forget the Norwegian rule for woodcutting: "If you have 8 hours to cut down a tree, spend 7 hours sharpening your axe.")
 
Haha I will remember the Norwegian rule! We have woods around us and much of the chain saw use it clearing up old tree and constantly sharpening the teeth. I’d like to be able as an option to meander in the woods and slice some blanks myself. Also helps not fighting over chainsaw usage:)
 
I think I would buy another chainsaw. A lot less work, and IMO safer vs axe. Its one thing if one wants to use “old manual methods” for the experience/knowledge, quite a different thing to use them as a replacement for a modern tool.
 
Rachel Aberle said:
Haha I will remember the Norwegian rule! We have woods around us and much of the chain saw use it clearing up old tree and constantly sharpening the teeth. I’d like to be able as an option to meander in the woods and slice some blanks myself. Also helps not fighting over chainsaw usage:)
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Can I recommend a nice, sharp bow saw, too. Much easier to carry on a meander in the woods than a chain saw.
 
If you are going to use an axe, it needs to be sharp enough to shave with. For me, shaving is an unnatural act..... I have a spoon carving friend, his tools are as sharp as scalpels....

robo hippy
 
Based on working on non-turning volunteer projects, if you are wanting to cross cut wood while roaming the woods, a 13" Japanese-style pull saw ("Samurai" saw) commonly used by arborists is an excellent tool. They're incredibly sharp out of the box, easy to carry, typically come with a sheath that attaches to your belt so they're easy to carry, and can quickly cut branches up to 4", 6" if you're determined. They're not easy to sharpen as they have long, tightly spaced, triangular teeth, but there's a special triangular stone available to do the job when needed. Silky is probably the most well known brand, but there are many very similar saws. New users have to work at remembering they cut on the pull and not on the push. On the other hand, you can buy 3 bow saws for the price of one of these babies.
iu
 
a Pole saw- gas, electric, manual is another option.

unless you are exceptionally skilled in using an axe - there will be at least a couple inches of damaged wood on the ends of your harvested wood as well as a considerable pile of chips compared to a saw which cleanly cut the ends while leaving a relatively small ammount of sawdust.
 
Sarah S Elkind said:
Many of the pole lathe instructional videos include some information on shaping blanks with a hatchet. Of all of them, I think Sharif Adams is the most systematic. The video is here:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKU-2ZUE8lA
. Adams' demonstration of cutting out the blanks starts about 7 minutes in.
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I realize this is an old post but many years ago we used to spend a week in the summers near Kentucky Lake and explored quite a bit of the area called the Land Between the Lakes. One of the attractions in this 700 acre national park is a place called 1850s Working Farm. You park and enter through a building built in a earthen berm, which houses a museum and the entrance to the farm. When you enter into the farm from the other side of the berm you are in a different world. Workers are dressed as they would in 1850, every part of farm life is being enacted by these workers. All of the structures were relocated to this farm and are from that era, including houses, barns, blacksmith shop and a wood working shop that includes a wood lathe. I hated that none of the workers turned on the lathe the day we were there, but the lathe, best that I can remember was built very similar to Adam's except there was a long willowy branch that bowed down and sprang back with each step on the pedal, a rope from the pedal around the lathe spindle and up to the branch caused the turning action. Someone asked why would you want to do it like that and I was skeptical myself until I watched Adam's methodical trimming of the blank and the speed that he actually produced a bowl. Amazing because he could have made the bowl in one third of the time it took him as he would stop to explain how it was done. Thanks again for that video, what skills are being lost because of technology.......
 
The OP might have been thinking of a froe (pictured below and sort of resembles an ax) that is used for riving (splitting) a log? Froes and wedges are driven into a log with a big wooden mallet to create spindle stock that is stronger than sawn spindle stock.

640px-Schindelmesser-1900.jpg
 
I've broken out bowl blanks with a maul and wedges from bolts crosscut with a chainsaw. It's a good workout, and with straight-grained easily split wood like ash can be fairly accurate, but hard to get a wide, flat split surface. On pieces with grain runout it's harder to control the split direction and blank sizes and interlocked grain is difficult. If you want to crosscut by hand an ax is slow and wasteful on pieces of any real size - a bowsaw or crosscut saw is the tool. Froes are for small pieces like spindles and shingles - you just can't develop enough leverage to bust out blanks much bigger than a soup bowl without using wedges as well.
 
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Bill Boehme said:
The OP might have been thinking of a froe (pictured below and sort of resembles an ax) that is used for riving (splitting) a log? Froes and wedges are driven into a log with a big wooden mallet to create spindle stock that is stronger than sawn spindle stock.

640px-Schindelmesser-1900.jpg
Click to expand...
Woof, that's one poor abused froe.
 
Richard Coers said:
Woof, that's one poor abused froe.
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Woof is right. It won't win any beauty contest. I found the picture on an ancient Viking tools website. They showed it being used along with wedges to split a log that was about 12" diameter and 4' long. If you want to try riving a log, make sure that it isn't a species with interlocking grain. :rolleyes:
 
Would have been interesting to see the whole process he used to obtain the piece he shaped with the axe or hatchet. He probably didn't turn many gum bowls...
 
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