Rusty Old Axe Restoration

One day i was walking through a friends shed and out of the corner of my eye i seen a Rusty Old Axe buried under some crud and i though to myself that would make a fantastic Restoration for my viewers so i dug it out and here is the video.

After digging it out from all the other rusty tools it was straight into the bay for an inspection and a light clean to remove all the cobwebs and dead spiders before moving on with the restoration.

Everything checked out ok there were no cracks in the blade or warping so onto the next stage which was blasting all the rust and scale off with the sand blaster. It came out way more pitted than i was expecting. We recon it has been lying around for at least 20 years and its condition certainly ties in with that assumption.

The next stage was to chop off the lips that had formed on the top of the axe from where someone has been hitting it with a hammer. They obviously were using it as some sort of wedge. After the lips were removed i moved over to the belt sander to re-dress the metal and remove all of the pitting.

I spent hours working my way through different grades of belt from coarse to fine but it was time well spent considering the finish i was left with.Most people would be happy with the finish that was left after the belt sanding but this is The Really Random Channel where we like to overdo everything ;) haha.

So onto an even finer sanding stage with the DA sander and a selection of fine sanding discs after this stage the axe head did have a polish to it and had a good shine but thats still not good enough! So onto the Pillar Drill ( This was kindly donated to the channel and will be undergoing a full restoration on the channel in the near future) For the next stage which was buffing the head with wool polishing pads and different grades of polishing compound until the axe head had a mirror finish which i think you'll agree looks epic! :)

Now not being a wood worker i decided against making my own handle so i bought a ready made one which is rather nice but i have plans to make it even more awesome. I clamped it in the vice and made a start shaping it to accept the head, I done this very crudely by chapping the head on and rough sanding with the grinder until i got the head to fit on nice and snug. After that i done a bit of shou sugi ban to give the handle a totally unique look and im delighted with the way it looks. After that it was simply a case of giving it a light sanding to bring out the final appearance of the wood grain.

Then it was back into the vice to knock on the axe head nice and snug and chap in the wood wedge as well as a steel locking wedge to ensure the head doesn't come flying off. Then it was a final grinding down and polish on the handle end and we are ready for the final finish on the handle. I chose danish oil for this job as it leaves a lovely finish on the wood and feels really nice on wooden tools its just sits in your hand nice unlike varnished tools that tend to stick to you and leave you with friction burns and blisters after prolonged use.

After that it was time for the obligatory slow motion wood splitting shots and before and afters.

This has been an extremely fun little axe restoration and i hope you have as much fun watching it as i did restoring it.

A new addition to my videos from now on will be a water mark and my channel name popping up in random places throught the video as im getting rather tired of people re-uploading my content as their own i hope you guys understand.

If you like what you see and have any ideas for the channel or would even like to donate something to restore to the channel please get in touch. :)

And as usual if you liked the video please like share and subscribe and help the channel grow.

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Rusty Old Axe Restoration