Rock Hammer to Adze 1of 3

Re: Rock Hammer to Adze 2of 3 

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native, Presently Away

>

Re: Rock Hammer to Adze 3of 3 

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native, Presently Away

>

Adze

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret

>Now what are you going to make with your fine new tool?

Stephen

Re: Adze

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native, Presently Away

>Stephen,

Why do want to go and make complications? ;~)

Well, truth be told, I have no direct need for it, other then that I've always wanted a "hollowing" adze. Thought I'd try my hand at perhaps a few bowls, but of coarse my biggest desire is to hollow out a log into a canoe. Why? 'Cause. ;~)

"Primitive" work has always been my biggest interests, even before I knew there was a name for it, but somehow I got sidetracked into gloosy smooth wood. I could really care less if my skivvies are stowed in super smooth, highly polished tiger striped, 17th century highboy, or a common cardboard box, and nor do I think do the skivvies. Besides, the carboard box is much more conducive to moving about, where as that highboy is going to keep you planted if you want to keep it.

Coarse, along with getting sidetracked, I also got caught up in the madness of tool accumulating, and I've got muliples of common planes that are tending to keeping me planted, and thus I am giving them the stink eye. I think I can get by for the most part quite nicely with just 3 or 4 common planes, a few of the specialties, a few saws, drawknives, hatchets, spokeshaves, rasps, a few chisels,hole boring bits and a few other bits and pieces such as clamps just nicely.

I really should just sell off 90% of my accumulations and be done with the foolishness and just buy the odd speciality tool from time to time as needed.

Todd

Getting back to his right track more and more everyday.

Let's see now...

Dan Donaldson

>If you have a 45 or a 55 that you decide is surplus........ ;-)

Re: Adze

Ernie Miller

>Todd? you been sitting in the sun to long today? Go sit on the portico and have a coo mint julip it will all pass. Swinging that thing must of starved you brain cells of oxygen. breath deep! are you OK yet? sell tools? Man that was close! Todd I have the chunk of 2 inch wide spring steel I can drop a chunk of it in the mail with your first month cleen tool if you want. you will have to build a small forge to make it into a adze but I bet you can do it weld on an eye of some sort and you will have a killer one that will hold an edge. It's hot in the sun don't be actin stupid! how is the job thing!

Re: Time to fire up the forge!

Dave Mount

>Hey Todd--

I'm glad this didn't start a thread about the ethics of modifying tools. . .

From my vast adze-making experience (read: sample size = 1), I found that the curvature of the adze head has a big impact on what you can do with it. If bowls are your target, I'd suggest firing up your forge (I think I remember you saying you had one) and put just a little curvature at the very end (I'm talking in the poll to cutting edge dimension). That curvature is what allows you to more easily shape the bottom of the bowl, by letting you make a shearing cut tangential to the bottom of the bowl, rather than having to just chop straight down and break out chips as with an axe. It's a fine line though -- too much curvature and you can't cut more vertically at the sides of the bowl because the handle interferes (that was my mistake).

Now that I think about it, run back to that flea, pick up those other hammers, leave this one as it is, and make yourself a graduated set with different curvatures. Re-hardening and tempering is no big deal because you only have to get it right on the business end, which is thinner and more easily heated/cooled.

Best,

Dave, anxiously waiting to see Cronkadze V 2.0 (or even 1.01)

Really Interesting

David Miller from Iowa

>What a great idea.

Just one comment - you started with a brick hammer, rock hammers are pointed. Splitting hairs, I know, but I am a geologist during the day and have a very nice collection of "rock picks" as we say in the trade.

Re: Really Interesting

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native, Presently Away

>Hey Dave, long time no see 'em, where you been? It's funny, but I was thinking of you the other day while filing. Thanks for the add'l info, and it supports my thinking. Tes, I have a forge, have yet to fire it up tho due to lack of a shack to set up in, and with the recent dry conditions we've had this year I've been real reluctant to even thinking about setting up a forgery. Actually, dry or not, I'm leery of setting one up as I'm afraid of inadvertainly setting the neigborhood on fire.

I have one more head left, which is narrower and shorter than my previous one that is going to get transformed into an adze as well. I had an old broken hatchet handle kicking around that I fitted to the head this a.m. and later on I'll be filing on it. Just this a.m. I transformed an old auto body hammer into one as well. I'll post pics of it later. It's light weight, but it chops well, and is intened for cleanup/detail work.

David, thanks for the correction on nomenclature of these hammers. Now I can more easily talk a seller down as it is "just a common brick hammer" and not a specialized hammer. A seller had a nice Estwing brick hammer this past weekend, but, since I didn't know if it would work as an adze or not I didn't bother to ask him how much it was. I was going but as soon as he saw me pick it up he said, "That's and Estwing", and I knew he'd want more for it than I'd care to pay.

T.O.

Re: Hey Todd

Dave Mount

>I've been lurking pretty faithfully, just not posting much. When your summer is as short as ours is, summer is not shop time, it's time for everything else that requires thawed soil and ice-free lakes -- much of it work, some of it recreation. We're putting in an arena this summer (as in horse riding arena) which as been a lot of work. I've got the perimeter posts in line within 1/4" over 40 meters -- never ask a cabinetmaker to build a fence. . .

Posted below is a piece of the recreation part -- fly roddin' for smallmouth in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in June. Pardon the hairdo, that's a special "three days in camp" style. And yes I let her go.

Have fun filing. . .

Dave

My son builds fences like that

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>He also tends to do carpentry to the nearest 1/64". Let me tell you, his fences are pretty things. One, that I pass when I do my extended walk, has waves cut into the top; he didn't just cut them with a jigsaw and walk away, but smoothed the wave and then rounded the edges with his 4-1/2" grinder.