Axe Head Question?

[Majorjoel]

A friend of mine asked me a while back about the attachment of axe heads to shafts. He was most curious about when the use of a steel or iron wedge came into use as a means of safely securing things together. I told him I would inquire here. My curiousity leads me to ask how the heads of tomahawks and belt axes were secured to their shafts during the 18th century? Any help here is most appreciated........Joel

[RobertS]

Great question and should be an interesting discussion.  I have noticed that most of the tomahawks that I've seen have a tapered shaft, and the eye of the head is tapered larger at the top, so that the handle is slipped down through the top of the head, and the head is secured to the handle because the largest diameter of the handle is at the top.  I hope you get the idea, as my explanation is probably more complicated than necessary.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  Pick handles are still made this way today, I think.

[Black Hand]

Eyes were drifted with a tapered punch (fat on top, skinny-er on bottom).  This makes the handle a friction-fit....

[BrownBear]

I can still remember the first steel wedge I saw for an axe head back in the 1950's.  All I'd seen before were wood, and the steel seemed like a pretty good newfangled invention.     I have no idea when they showed up on the market, but I can say they weren't common in our world 50 years ago.

[Levy]

Capt.:

I worked on a tomahawk recovered from the Apalachicola River a few year back that had a piece of doubled over sheet metal driven in the wooden handle at the head for a wedge.  At the time, I estimated that it was from the English Period in Florida 1764-1784.  It was a very simple and ordinary looking piece.  Another similar one was found in the Chipola River, but lacking the metal wedge.  They both still had portions of the handles in them.

James Levy

[BrownBear]

Having nothing to do with tomahawks, I will say that we found the metal wedges wanting.  Heads are best secured with wedges that completely span the eye, and the metal wedges were way too narrow to last long.  Wood wedges whittled to the same width as the eye before installation lasted for generations.

That makes me wonder how wide the metal wedge was, relative to the diameter of the eye Levy.  Do you recall?

[dannybb55]

Don't forget to wedge across the direction of the blade so that you won't damage the weld.
 I use wooden wedges personally. Carpenters put handles on their tools after they bought then traditionally, what do you think they used for a wedge? FYI a tapered fit is called and adz eye.

[alsask]

Doing  archeological digs around some of the fur trade posts here they have turned up axe head wedges from the late 1700's to early 1800's.

[BrownBear]

Doing  archeological digs around some of the fur trade posts here they have turned up axe head wedges from the late 1700's to early 1800's.

To persist so long in the ground, I'm guessing they're metal and not wood.  Is that right?

[alsask]

 Sorry, I should have mentioned that they were metal.