Found this beauty emerging from the dirt in our barnyard after a very heavy rain. Location Iowa, barn is circa 1880s. I am a newbie to axe heads but I know enough not to ask you to tell me how old it is 
(unless of course you want to hazard a guess and then I'd be interested to hear it!)
It was of course totally encrusted with rust, and the weld at the eye is broken, likely from wood handle and/or soil freezing/thawing. It's still quite pitted and ugly, but after several rounds of naval jelly and a wire cup brush, I think this is about as good as I can get it with the tools I have. I took a metal file to the tip of the bit, just out of curiosity, and it got pretty sharp with just a couple passes.
Anyway my reading here and elsewhere tells me that a solid wrought iron axe head would be very unusual, as folks have been using steel bits for a very long time. But for the life of me I can not see any evidence of a separate material between the bit and the main body. It really looks to me like a single bar of iron bent around some kind of "blank" (not sure the right term) to form the eye.
Can I ask for some more educated eyes to take a gander and see what I'm missing?
(unless of course you want to hazard a guess and then I'd be interested to hear it!)It was of course totally encrusted with rust, and the weld at the eye is broken, likely from wood handle and/or soil freezing/thawing. It's still quite pitted and ugly, but after several rounds of naval jelly and a wire cup brush, I think this is about as good as I can get it with the tools I have. I took a metal file to the tip of the bit, just out of curiosity, and it got pretty sharp with just a couple passes.
Anyway my reading here and elsewhere tells me that a solid wrought iron axe head would be very unusual, as folks have been using steel bits for a very long time. But for the life of me I can not see any evidence of a separate material between the bit and the main body. It really looks to me like a single bar of iron bent around some kind of "blank" (not sure the right term) to form the eye.
Can I ask for some more educated eyes to take a gander and see what I'm missing?
