[AT] 'farmer' Francis Robinson

[Len Rugen]

We used wedges when I was a kid, often split logs before sawing on the cut-off saw.  Some of them had pretty good "mushroom" heads.  I remeber that chips of the spalls would sometimes break off and ocasionally hit my shin.    
A pole axe (single bit) looks like it could be used to hammer, but Dad said to never drive a wedge with one, always use the sledge hammer.  I suspect it would quickly work harden an axe.  We did have a small single bit "camp axe" we used trapping and drove stakes into the ground.  I still have it and the striking side of the head somewhat deformed, but not bad.   

Len Rugen

rugenl at yahoo.com


 

    On Monday, January 30, 2017 9:43 PM, John Hall <jtchall at nc.rr.com> wrote:
 

 Dad is 86, I asked him had ever heard of warming an ax. He said no but 
did say if its cold enough and you were splitting hard wood it was 
possible to break a plug out of the ax. He seemed to think there was one 
around here that had a chunk missing. Given the quantity of wood they 
used to split for firing tobacco barns, not to mention cooking and 
heating, he should know. I've heard him mention several times about 
leaving tough wood standing on end so it would rain in it and freeze 
during the winter, seems it helped to split it at a later and warmer date.

John Hall


On 1/30/2017 2:10 PM, charlie hill wrote:
> That gets back around to a discussion I believe we had many
> years back about cold  embrittlement.
>
> Very interesting phenomenon.
>
> Charlie
>

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