Hey Luke here at the outdoor boys YouTube channel and I'm restoring one of the coolest axes I've ever restored want a sneak peak yeah  I was working in my driveway postman pulls up and drops off this lovely package all the way from Bulgaria and my Cyrillic snot very good but if I'm not.

Mistaken that says Lord God's key pushy yad which probably means Bulgarian post office or something like that well guys let's see what's inside this thing oh-ho the thing smells like cigars and unfiltered tobacco this sees some old Bulgarian guy sitting smoking in his workshop well this is a bearded hatchet.

Or a goose wing hatchet it's got an awesome shape to the blade it's got a little bit of an offset like a hewing axe yeah check it out it's really hard to see but it looks like somebody crudely etched their initials in the blade in Cyrillic it's all dented in right here looks like someone's been beating on the back of it with a hammer.

It's asymmetrical it's you know kind of flat on this side and it's got this step right there and the handle is not exactly in very deeply a little bit of pitting from rust but guys this is our cool little hatchet and frankly I love how beat-up it is I'm not sure what the handles made out of but it looks like some piece of scrap wood that somebody.

Just whittled down to a handle it's probably just been used as a splitting maul just put it down whack on the end and that's why they never bothered to put a wedge in there well guys this is gonna be a pretty cool little project so I gotta put some thought into what I want to do with this and I want to do something pretty.

Special with this I think well first things first I'm gonna try to get this dent out of the back of the axe head and for that I'm gonna he of the forge  yo  putting an axe head like this in the.

Fire is a great way to take the rust off however there's a big downside when an axe maker or a blacksmith creates this steel he heat treats it he heats it up to a very specific temperature he cools it down in a very specific way and he may even do what's called tempering which is a process of lessening the hardness of the steel to avoid.

Brittleness now each type of steel and there's many many different types of steel is heated and cooled and tempered in a different way and I have no clue what type of steel this is and depending on what type of steel is I may have messed it up a whole bunch or maybe I didn't I it's really hard to tell so one of the things I'm gonna do to try to.

Gauge the condition of this steel is I'm gonna test it with the file I'm gonna take my file I'm gonna rub it along the edge and see how much material it takes off does it skate across the edge of the blade or does it dig in and take pieces off then I'm gonna go ahead and heat treat this by heating it up and dipping it in some peanut oil and I'm gonna test.

It again with the file to try to gauge the condition if it comes off too hard I then might do a tempering process so we're gonna see what happens well even after being through the Forge a couple times this steel is maintaining its hardness pretty well it is coming off with the file but we're gonna go ahead and work the edge with the belt grinder.

Get it all shaped up the way we want and then I'm gonna heat treat the blade when you use fire to remove rust from steel you get this red oxidization that pops up all over the steel it's kind of cool-looking actually  look at that big old crack right there in the blade looks like it's a.

Delamination so the crack goes this way instead of down so odds are it won't cause us any trouble seen a lot of blades with cracks in them never had one break into yet this could be the first but I'm not terribly worried about this thing  right.

  when I tested the blade after quenching it it really hadn't changed its hardness which led me to believe that this was probably mild steel which isn't affected or hardened by quenching but that's pretty common with these old European axes all right dad's looking pretty good.

I'm just gonna go and knock off this scale with Swire brush here see what happens all right that's not looking too bad at all now let's get working on the handle I've got here a piece of exotic hardwood called Cadillac it's one of the hardest hardwoods in the world I think it's like the thirteenth hardest in the world or something like that it's a dark.

Beautiful beautiful wood this piece is meant for turning and it's covered in paraffin but this thing is gonna look gorgeous when you get it all shaved up  fitting the ax handle to the eye is the most difficult part of this whole process these hand forged axes are not symmetrical they're not a consistent.

Shape so you just got to kind of carve the the ax handle as best you can and really slowly and carefully through trial and error try to get the tightest bit possible you slip it on as best you can jam it on until it's stick and then pull it off and see where the marks are at and that'll tell you where you need to.

Take off material after you've hit the head on you'll get these little marks where it's tightening up and that's where you need to remove material so right there right down here right down here right down here well there we go that's that's looking pretty good you like it you think it looks good I like what I've got so far but I need to.

Stop and take a little break for dinner so we're gonna go do that and I'll pick this up in a little bit well it's another beautiful day and we are working on this bearded axe project again I'm gonna start shaping the handle getting all smooth and nice for those of you who haven't been following our channel you might be noticing my shiny new silver.

Play button belt buckle celebrating 100,000 subscribers so you guys want to check that video out click the link all right let's get started on this handle  well that's not too bad looking nice that is a pretty piece of wood right there.

  all right why did something cool with this sheath so I've got this whetstone here and I want to make a little pouch on the side of the sheath for the whetstone so that you can take it out sharpen your blade up put it back in and to do that I've got this wet piece of.

Tool leather and I'm going to wet form this around the whetstone to make the pouch I can't make it too snug otherwise I'll never be able to get the whetstone out I am going to make a little spacer here there's a piece of cardboard around the top all right I got the little pocket formed I just need to let it dry and then we'll keep going on the sheath.

Well it's another beautiful day I'm home from work and we're gonna finish this sheet all right let's check it out yeah that looks good.

 alright that cheese looks pretty good but let's put a finer edge on our racks generally just get it razor sharp not the sharpest I've ever gotten ax but it'll do look at well guys I think that turned out beautifully look at that that is good-looking yeah I really like how this turned out.

Now technically speaking this is a huge ax it's flat on one side and slightly offset and the purpose of that is so that you can go and shave down the side of a log and make it nice and flat but I think whoever been using this lately been using it to split wood because they've been beaten so much on the back they were like bam bam bam and using it.

To split logs which this will do as well it's just a beautiful fun axe it still works good and it's cool a lot of you guys have been asking me to do an axe giveaway and I'm gonna do just that I'm giving away this X however I'm not gonna do it quite the way you wanted because I'm giving you the wood of my brother my my brother's big outdoorsmen lives up in.

Alaska with the most my family and he I know has been coveting some of these axes I've been restoring so I wanted to do something nice for him and wanted to make one for him so I'm gonna go slap this bad boy in the mail and I'm gonna go send it to my sister-in-law and to have her go surprise him with it thank you look this is awesome.

Well thanks for watching guys I hope you enjoyed this video if you want to see more videos like this I have an entire playlist of axe restoration and tool restoration videos and a lot more videos coming up so make sure to hit that subscribe button and if you like these types of videos make sure you click like so that I can know that that's what you.

Want and we can do more in the future thanks for watching we hope you guys enjoyed this video if you'd like to see more great videos from the outdoor boys YouTube channel don't forget to click subscribe we put out new videos every week and don't forget to hit that Bell button so you'll get notified when we put out another great video.