First axe head

[cintisteve]

Found my first axe head and some clad and a 1940 wheat!! Anybody have any idea how old the axe head is ?
Steve

 

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[Ed-NH]

Hi Steve, great finds there. I love the axe head. I found one just like it this spring at a late 1700's house field. Here are the before and after restoration pics. I hope someone can identify the axe heads and the age for us!!!

 

[romeo-1]

It is a shingle hatchet! Probably mid 1800's! I found one this past spring.

 

[Hardy]

Darn! Romeo got here before I did , Yet he's rite!

 

[Snee]

Nice!

 

[TreasureTales]

Check out this website www.roseantiquetools.com for catalog pages that show axes like yours. Sometimes a SHINGLING AXE had a little notch cut into the blade so that roofing nails could be pulled. If you view some of the pages pertaining to axe heads on that site you will see axes that have the notch and some that don't. Either way, it's a cool find.

Here's a link to a page from the website I listed above.

http://roseantiquetools.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/kkaxes_21.jpg

 

[Daisy]

enhh --- Great job restoring the hatchet! what technique did you use? I found an old mining pick I'd like to clean but I don't want to destroy it. Thanks in advance, Daisy

 

[Southcacalaky]

Pretty Neat, WTG HH Art...

 

[mxtswinger]

I found one of those this year too. It's identical to yours and it came from an old hotel that ran from the mid 1800's to 1912. I'm trying to clean mine up also and start using it. THanks for the tool link!

 

[funkman]

i found one also at an 1800's site I detect at. I would like to know how to clean it also.

Thanks

Funkman

 

[chong2]

thats awesome!!!!!!!!!! crazy thing is i found one last week also, was gonna post it up here yesterday, the sad thing is mine is crumbling away, the blade will snap in half if i put enough pressure, nice axe heads to you all too!!!!!

 

[Leebo in SC]

Awesome finds. Love the hatchet heads.

 

[Ed-NH]

Hi all,

It seems like we all found "the axe". Now we know what it is thanks to everyone's great replies. Now we want to know how to clean and preserve them. I can show you how I did mine. I'm not sure that it is the best way but it seems to work for me. I used a very well known technique called electrolisys.

It involves:

1. a battery charger like the small ones that we charge our car batteries with 3-6 amp.
2. A small plastic container, I used a tupperware-like container (tub) for mine.
3. Some electrolite which could be either baking soda or LYE (sodium hydroxide which you can get from candle supply shops on line) and water. I used LYE and used safety glasses and rubber gloves when handling LYE since it is caustic.
4. A stainless steel spoon

I mixed about five tbl spoons of LYE into about 1/2 gallon of water. I put it in my tub.
I connected the positive lead from the battery charger to the spoon
I connected the negative lead from the battery charger to my axe head
I submersed these into the tub making sure that they were not touching each other
I plugged in the battery charger and ran it on the 6 amp setting

What you should start to see is small bubbles forming along the spoon and the axe head. If not, then you don't have a good connection on the axe head. You will need to clean up the spot where the lead connects to the axe head in order to get a good connection.

The bubbles are the electrolisys taking place. The rust will slowly dissolve and the spoon will slowly get eaten away (many hours though) I ran mine for about 15 minutes then took it out and brushed off the heavy rust and then repeated the process. When I was happy that I got most of the rust off here's what I did next.

I used my drill press with a wire wheel (or just a plain wire brush) and wire brushed it until I got as much rust off as I could. Then I decided if it needed to go into the tub again or not.

Next I took some scotch brite padding and scrubbed it to get off the rest of the small rust spots inside the pits. Then I took paper towels and rubbed it down real well till there was no residue coming off onto the paper towels. After this it is up to you if you want to spray a clear sealer on it or rub it with some sort of musuem wax or oil. I did not put anything on this axe head. I did use some wd-40 on the last one I did and it came out nice too.

Here are the pictures of the tub and entire setup as well as some bubbling action while the axe head was soaking. Sorry for the long post but hopefully it gives you and idea of how to do this. The entire project was super cheap to set up too

 

[Ed-NH]

The rest of the pics:

 

[Ed-NH]

And here is the results of the axe head that is shown in the tub from this explaination. Anyone know the age of this? It was found in an old cellar hole. Has a maker mark in a triangle that says 91 and another mark that says &G.W.A

 

[lostdutchman]

Great axe head!!

 

[Daisy]

Enhh thank you for explaining the process! The visuals are a great help.
Daisy

 

[TreasureTales]

enhh you did such a good job cleaning up your axehead that I'm just going to send mine to you for the electrolysis bath. Thanks in advance. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

 

[KenPa]

Great axe head - I found one that looks the same. I think I'm going to try that cleaning that ENHH described so beautifully (thanks enhh).
Ken

 

[dugupfinds]

enhh you did such a good job cleaning up your axehead that I'm just going to send mine to you for the electrolysis bath. Thanks in advance. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Don't forget the postage costs