Another tutorial on making and fitting a Cygnet handle, on my smallest bowl gouge, the Cygnet. This does not come with a ferule as the shorter length and handle means that extra reinforcement is not needed, it also means there is less chance of the tool bruising the wood you are working on.

My starting point was a gouge I forged as a demo at Bodgers Ball; not quite the same as my production ones ( on reflection this sounds rather grandiose to me, I still forge them all by hand and eye) however the principles are the same. I chose an oversized piece of dry cherry for the handle. I would recommend taping up the blade for safety and to protect the edge, but haven’t in this sequence for clarity.

I then  measured the length of the tang and diagonally across the corners. I  Drilled a hole in two stages ( diameters) that was fractionally longer than the tang and matched the taper on the tang; The tang dropped in this far:

Next the brutal bit; I held the gouge in the vice and hammered the tang flush to the shoulders. Padded vice jaws would have been preferable.

Then I marked the centre line of the gouge to be certain that the handle would line up with the gouge when it was finally fitted together.

The Cygnet handle was tapped off and roughed to size with an axe, using the cross as a reference for the butt of the handle.  When driving the tang in for the first time I leave a lot of excess wood around the hole to reduce the likelihood of spitting, but once the shoulders of the tang have been set in it is safe to take it down quite fine.

I tend to rough to octagonal with the axe but finish to 12 sides with a knife, this seems like a nice balance between facets that are crisp but not too sharp. The butt should be left pretty smooth though to reduce the onset of blisters, I then oil the handle trying not to get any inside the hole.

Here you can see how the mismatched shoulders have been driven into the wood, this was not a very good forging, current gouges have much more even shoulders, however when it is all glued up it won’t show. Note the tang has been roughened with coarse paper.

Epoxy is run into the tang hole, allowed to settle at the bottom then the tang is inserted. A small amount of glue should be driven out of the hole, the amount shown is about right when the tang is pushed home fully- this is quite easy as the glue lubricates everything , if it looks like to much is going to come out, take out the tang, wipe the glue of it and reinsert. Wipe of the excess glue from the handle and when the glue is set apply another coat of oil. Pre oiling the handle ensures that the epoxy won’t stain the wood.

Which is the best way to orient the grain?

In my last blog post I wrote about grain orientation in carving axe handles, making the assumption that having the rings running parallel to the bit of an axe (1) would be stronger, however speaking to Lee Stoffer about this in December sowed seeds of doubt in my mind. I found lots of research on the effect of sloping grain on timber ( when the grain is not parallel to the to the cut timber) . A figure that stuck with me was that a 10 deg slope reduces shock resistance by 50%. I measured the slope on some handles I had rejected and found a slope of 20 deg. The most applicable research related to baseball bats, this paper suggested that grain orientation makes no difference to strength in non sloping grain. However there was a statistically significant difference when slope of grain was added into the equation. Interestingly the stronger orientation in ash was different to that found in birch and maple. Unfortunately no figures were given. However this research suggests a 25 degree slope of grain would reduce strength by 60-80% ( I am fudging here, toughness, modulus, compression, shock resistance were all measured, giving for a very confusing graph)
The plan was to test some sections at 25deg slope, very much a worst case scenario. the sections would then be tested in both grain orientation. I cut slices 1cm thick from two pieces of ash from my woodpile one with approximately 12 rings per inch/ 25mm and a second with 6 rings per inch. The slices would then be cut to make 1cm x 1cm cross sections. Some 1cm square non sloping sections were also cut to give a baseline measurement.

The plan was to compare the strength of these different sections, I was going to support the sections a set distance apart on my digital scales, then slowly press down on the centre of the section and record the maximum weight recorded before the section broke.

Unfortunately the scales bottomed out at 30kg, and at this weight the sections all held. I put them on my belt sander and reduced the section to around 6mm. This thickness meant that most of the samples tested from the slower grown ash broke at around 15kg.
I have struggled how to describe this grain orientation, radially/ Tangentially, Vertical/ Horizontal? Edge and face loading was used in the baseball bat research. In terms of axe handles I think annual rings parallel to the bit of the axe – (1) or perpendicular (2) work well but again a  picture is clearer:

Results:

Put simply, taking 100% to be the non sloping baseline tests.

In slower grown ash: Orientation 1 gave 98% strength, and 2 gave 89%

In fast grown ash: Orientation 1 gave 41% , 2 gave 27%

However the fast grown was almost exactly twice as strong in the baseline tests. So the figures aren’t quite as far apart as at first sight.
The difference is significant though , also the sloping grain samples broke with virtually no warning in the fast grown ash, whereas there was noticeable bending and creaking in the slower grown samples. At 25 degrees slope a handle would have been stronger if made from  the slower grown ash, however as the angle decreases then the point will come that fast grown ash in orientation 1 will be stronger. In a straighter handle the fast grown ash will be stronger in either orientation.The increased strength in orientation 1 also ties in with the baseball bat research I came across.

These results ( see provisos at the end) are interesting, in a curved handle if I can’t use any natural curve in the grain to my advantage then I will be using fast grown ash with the annular rings parallel to the bit of the axe (1) If I wanted a really curved handle and had to make it out of straight grained ash I would choose slow grown ash over fast grown, a chain being only as strong as its weakest link.
Provisos–

This was only meant to be a light hearted test done over the Christmas break, my children helped break the sections . However my training was in similar sorts of research and I am very much aware that the sample size of this test (24) is too small. I hope to continue with the tests to see how repeatable these results are, in the meantime other related issues include:
1.  I have included odd spikes in the data to get averages, these should have been ironed out with a larger data set.
2. It is also very difficult to start with a grain aligned at 0 deg, the slower grown wood had definite twist in it. Again this error should be reduced with a larger sample size.
3. The fast grown ash actually bottomed out the 30kg limit on my scales on half of the aligned samples, I estimated breaking force in these cases.
4. I am not certain that the results from the small sections that I have been testing can be extrapolated to axe handle dimensions, instinctively I would say yes, but at any rate the sections used are not that far off spoon dimensions, which may well be of interest to a wider section of readers.
5 Lastly, is breaking weight/ force a good test to replicate failure in an axe handle? probably the Izod impact test would have been better but beyond me or my young assistants.

In the last post I explained my reasoning behind the various ways that the grain can be oriented in an axe handle. However if the handle is straight then it makes no difference and any of the methods I described would work, you could even steam some curved branch wood straight if you really fancied a challenge.