Axe Refurbishing WIP: Round Two

Hi all,

Haven't had as much time to work on projects as I'd like - but I did find a few breaks to get another axe restoration done! This time around it's a Walter Black Diamond. Doing a little homework I found out that these were among some of the finest axes made in  their time, and made in Canada! In it's original condition it looked like the owner knew what they were doing as far as taking care of tools went - edge geometry was well maintained , pitting was not too deep and the head didn't have a trillion nails for wedges stuck in it.

The handle also seemed ot be in fairly decent condition - I'll have to admit I felt bad for destroying something that was likely over twice my age, but I didn't want to take any chances with cracks of any decay which may have been occurring inside.

Great grain orientation - I can't imagine how long it took for all that linseed oil to build up that deep into the wood

 After some light filing on the poll to remove some minor mushrooming. I used electrolysis to remove the bulk of the rust.

Clean up and sharpening were more or less the same as the previous axe restoration on the True Temper, and it was onto the fitting. I fitted the head with a shorter house axe handle (~19") so that I would be able to take it on long hikes and have it be too bulky. For the size of the head, the handle was a bit short, but I figured it would do. The only thing different I did this time from the previous axe was in the finishing, leaving it at 220 grit and applying a 50/50 mix of  paraffin melted into paraffin for waterproofing. I find this method is certainly faster than applying X number of layers of linseed oil, since it takes very little time to polymerize and is fairly robust.

The axe sheath was also done similar to the previous, with the exception being that I used double cap rivets instead of chicago bolts on the areas subject to the most stress and saturated the welt with acrylic resolene to increase its cut resistance. The final finishing was also tweaked from the previous, which only used paraffin.

My original plan in finishing of the areas subject to movement was to use something called Obenauf's Leather preservative, but  being a Canuck in Canada, specialty items are tougher to get unfortunately.  After doing some research on the product, it appeared to be a mix of beeswax, propolis (bee derived resin), and some mix of oils.  To make the next best thing, I improvised and melted up some mink oil, wax, and cleaned spruce resin collected from the front yard to make a balm like concoction. The mink oil was to act as  lubrication for the leather fibers, resin as a preservative and waterproofing agent (hopefully), and the wax was for waterproofing and to tie it all together. So far results have been promising, providing decent waterproofing and buffing to a high shine, but only time will tell. Gotta love the forest-y smell though!

about 3 oz of cleaned spruce resin - the original volume in raw form was about four to five times as much due to a large proportion of air in the sap - do not melt this stuff indoors!! 

final leather finish product after mixing resin with wax and mink oil- it looks solid but is still very soft at room temperature, think lip balm in terms of consistency