“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” Franz Kafka
Axes are amazing tools that are incredibly versatile. Intended primarily as woodworking implements, an axe, in the hands of a skilled woodsman, can also be used as a striking tool for driving gluts and stakes, as well as a knife for cleaning and breaking down harvests.
Of course, there is more to the use of an axe than you might expect, so I started thinking over things I learned while wielding that I thought would have benefited me had I known them sooner.
Here they are.
How to Swing Powerfully and Accurately
I genuinely don’t remember where I read it, but at some point in life I read, somewhere online, that an axe should be swung, and I quote, like a baseball bat.
I wish I could find the source because it struck me as braindead then and even reflecting on it I’m getting secondhand embarrassment from the person that typed that out and then committed to posting it.
Swinging an axe like a baseball bat, with both hands low on the haft, is a sure-fire way to miss whatever you’re swinging at, not to mention it gives you no more power than the method I’m about to propose.
Whether you’re splitting by swinging the axe over your head, or making a crossgrain cut to fell a standing tree, your dominant hand should start by grasping the haft high up, almost just under the head.
When you swing, your dominant hand should slide down the haft of the axe, accelerating towards your non-dominant hand that grips it firmly and statically at the base of haft, where more often than not there is a swell.
This method drives power, control and accuracy, and is infinitely better than swinging the axe “like a bat”.
Please, don’t.
Crossgrain Cuts: A Quick Tip That Should Be Obvious
Forgive me if this is painfully obvious, but I fear that to anyone that has never actually swung an axe, it would be jarring to note that the bit, no matter how sharp it is, is actually painfully inadequate for making a square-on cut across the grain of any species of wood.
No matter how sharp your axe is, and how strong you are, if you swing your axe bit into wood so that the bit meets perpendicularly with the grain, you’re not going to bite very deep. In fact, most of the time the bit will bounce right back off of the wood and won’t even stick in.
Whenever you’re working across the grain of wood, primarily here for the purpose of felling, you want your bit to contact the grain at roughly a 45-degree angle. It will create shear forces that pull the grain apart as the bit digs in, and the bit will sink in much deeper with much less effort from you. On top of that, with the right angle, you have less of a chance of the bit bouncing off or glanding off the surface of the wood you intend to cut.
Splitting
One of the best tips I have for splitting a piece of wood is that you need to learn how to choose the right axe style and read the piece of wood you’re trying to split. I have a couple of notes here:
You should be using a maul, not a felling axe, for splitting.
If the wood is particularly knotty, don’t even waste your time with a maul. Go straight for sledge and wedge (or wedges).
If the grain is straight and the wood is not dense, like birch or pine, you might be able to get away with a felling axe. Plus, they’re lighter and easier to control.
Here’s another important tip. Unless you are splitting with a sledge and wedge, don’t try to split rounds that are directly on the ground. There are two good reasons I’m calling this out.
One is that, if you are successful, the bit of your axe will go right through the wood you’re splitting and into the ground. Trust me, you do not want this.
The other reason is that the ground is generally springy and has an infinite ability to absorb most of the force you are putting into your swing. In other words, if you split a round directly on the ground, you’re pissing strength away.
Set up a splitting block. Another round of wood works perfectly for this because it will direct most of the force of your swing right back into the piece you’re trying to split, which is exactly what you want.
Split Smarter, Not Harder
This is probably the single biggest splitting tip I’ve ever learned and once I adopted it, it completely revolutionized my efficiency when I had a bunch of wood I needed to split.
Common sense indicates that when you have a piece of wood to split and you swing overhead to strike it and the ax binds in the grain, you just pick the ax up and bring it down again.
Except this is idiotic because you are literally fighting against the weight of the round when you raise it and getting none of that advantage in terms of mass when you bring the ax back down.
Instead of driving the ax down on top of the round or piece of wood when the bit binds, flip the ax over, shoulder it, and swing it so that the poll of the ax comes down on the chopping block, with that piece of wood still stuck to the bit.
Now, you can use gravity to assist the swing, and the mass of the wood that’s stuck on the bit of the ax will do double duty for you; its own weight will split itself over the bit of the ax, like you’re dropping it down onto a wedge.
This is a remarkably effective way to split stubborn pieces of wood that don’t split on the first strike. If you aren’t doing this currently, stop wasting your time and start doing so immediately.
For Extra Precision with a Hatchet…
Sometimes, when you need to get the bit started in the end grain in a piece of wood, it’s tempting to use your hand to stabilize it for a short chop so you can get the splitting started. This is especially the case when you can’t get the piece to stand up on its own.
The problem should be obvious here. You don’t want to have your fingers literally on top of the piece of wood you’re trying to split, even if all you’re doing is getting the bit bound in the endgrain so you can actually make the split.
There is a much better and much safer way. Rather than using your hand to stabilize that piece of wood, use a long thin piece of wood to stabilize it in the manner shown in the picture below.
Problem solved, and no trips to the hospital needed in the event of a miss.
An Alternative Splitting Method
Small, thin pieces of wood that nonetheless have to be split further for fires are a little tough to split a hatchet, let alone an ax.
One of the best ways to split this is not to do it by striking the end grain with the bit. Rather, hold the wood along the haft of the ax so that it hangs over the bit, as shown in the image below.
Raise the hatchet just a bit and bring it down lightly to drive it through the grain of the wood and into the chopping block so that it sticks.
With the hatchet stuck in the chopping block, and with the piece you want to split already partially split, finish the job by twisting the piece of wood laterally. That should create leverage against the bit to complete the split.
Putting These Ax Hacks into Practice
Hopefully you found these tips for axmanship useful and actionable. If you start adopting them, you will split more efficiently and improve your safety while you’re working with an ax.
Be safe.
~The Eclectic Outfitter