Excellently put, Jim! And I appreciate those quotes as well as I haven't looked at my copy in awhile. i was just about to make this very same statement, but not nearly as eloquently as you have! I understand Bruno's concerns with it appearing less aged. The problem with this, however, is that many of these axes never saw action and sat in a rack (or a barrel, as they did in Age of Fighting Sail where they literally 'rolled out the barrel' during a boarding). Likewise, there are many examples of known boarding axes that appear ever more 'minty' than mine. The front/rear langets on mine are seen on French boarding axes, but also on fire axes, military trench tools, etc. But the difference is, most of the fire axes with said langets have a square eye, like the French boarding axes. My example has a round eye, like the Brit and (some) American patterns. I can't remember seeing a fire ax with front/rear langets and a round eye. Likewise, most fire axes were machine-made pieces coming out mid-19th and later. The langets on mine are definitely made by hand, uneven, with the prongs (for lack of a better word) that extend over the eye being primitive and again hand-made. Finally, the haft is made on a lathe, which seems odd for something coming out of the Industrial Age and in large batches. The head also appears to have minor smithing flaws, pointing to it not being cast...
28th December 2020, 10:51 PM
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