Sharpening
The sharpening of an axe is done in several steps, depending on how worn down the axe head is and the type of axe. With a Splitting Maul you may stop at the shaping step. With a Carpenter’s Axe or a Forest Axe you have to go through all the steps if you want to have a good cutting tool.
1. Shaping. If terribly damaged, you can use a file or a power grinder to reestablish the original edge bevel, the curve of the edge and bevel face. Do not overheat the edge, which will cause it to lose its temper. Cool often! If the bevel face is straight (Carpenter’s Axe, Carving Axe and Broad Axe), the total bevel face should be in contact with the stone or the file. When filing, use a flat fine cut file. Keep the axe head in a vise to allow you to file with two hands. Bear down the file against the sharpening bevel, with some of your fingers on the tip of the file, as you push the file away from yourself with firm and even strokes. Lift the file off the sharpening bevel on the return stroke. Keep free of filings.
2. Grinding. Always keep the original bevel shape! Even a straight bevel face has to be a little convex at the edge; a convex bevel has more strength. If you make the bevel of the bit too straight and thin it will deform or break. You can use a whetstone (whetstone bench grinder) to grind smaller damage and normal wear and give the edge its basic sharpness.
Stand steady with one foot placed beside the grinding machine and support yourself with the axe against a supporting stay on the grinder or with your elbow against your hip. Move the axe slowly back and forth during grinding so that the whole sharpening bevel becomes evenly ground to its original shape. Also grind evenly over the breadth of the grindstone, otherwise it will soon become warped and beveled and difficult to use. Don’t leave water in the grinders bucket; it deteriorates the quality of the stone.
You can also use a handstone, usually a round, pocket-size, “dry” stone with different grits on the two sides. Don’t put oil or water on “dry” stones. Use the stone with a circular motion, first with the coarse side then with the fine grit side. Rotate the stone in your hand so it will wear evenly.
There are more alternatives: “wet” handstones, to be used with water (Sandstone) or honing oil (Carborundum stone or Arkansas stone).
3. Stropping. After you have finished with the fine grit stone, the bit will usually have a feather-edge, a wispy border of steel attached to the length of the cutting edge, like a tiny fence. To get rid of the feather-edge and to make the cutting edge more keen you can stroke it against a length of leather, like a belt. The direction of each stroke runs away from the cutting edge.
(At Gränsfors Bruks the cutting edge of the axes are stropped on a rotating buffing wheel made of cloth.)
Always keep the original shape of the bit and the bevel. An axe that is given the wrong shape and bevel face can easily slide and cut you.
