Trade axe for comment

[spiral]

Originally Posted by kronckew

i was recently reading an article on the striped maple. seems that while very decorative it did not serve well on weapons, especially axes/tomahawks as it had a bad habit of breaking along the dark stripes. thus a good wood, such as ash, or hickory.

Indeed! Athough rarer fiddleback does occur in Ash & hickory as well, & in all species it make the wood stiffer , which can lead to breakage from sides loads or impact. {Good for pillars, not good for beams!}

The added stiffness helps the Violin sound/structure as well as being beautiful.

It great for gun stocks & is still used, but it seems to me only the last few decades some have used it for axe handles?

The chemical burning etc,. is not something I was ever aware of before this thread.

[aiontay]

This reminds me of something that happened recently. Back when I was in high school I bought a tomahawk. I used it quite a bit. It was in the back of my car when my car got caught in a flood and ended up under 13' of water, so the head was somewhat aged. Eventually I re-handled with an Osage Orange handle I made myself. About a year ago I gave it to an Absentee Shawnee young man I know. About a month ago he saw me and we got to talking. He told me he had gotten a lot of use out of the tomahawk; his brother had used it recently when butchering a deer he had killed. He told me that whenever they pulled it out to use, people assumed it was some sort of family heirloom. Admittedly, anything that I bought when I was in high school is now an antique, but still just goes to show how hard it can be to judge something's age.