Don't be so dim Jeff. You were unbalanced and wobbly plus the length, weight, shape, day of the week , and weather was all wrong. You're lucky the tree fell instead of you falling over.
Ultimately it's like a lot of things in life. The closer you look, the more complex things get. But most of that is typically taken care of in the design phase of the product to make the end user experience simple. And a lot of things we easily learn through intuition, which doesn't require technical terms. It's just that when you try to describe something precisely it starts getting complicated. Then you try to explain the various levels of "why" and it gets even more so. Just try telling any geologist that a rock is just a rock or a herpetologist that snakes are poisonous and watch them get all rankled.
Well, if you give the snake more belly and widen its fangs you can then throw it in a washing machine and ipso facto, bobs your uncle, snake axe
With this new handle it holds dead horizontal when held with open palms along the main length. And it's holding up just fine in chopping. Good vertical continuous grain end to end, and great elasticity to the wood so I feel confident levering on the handle when need be. The blanks I received were 36" instead of the 38" I was told they'd be, and there was some end cross-grain checking so I was taking a bit of a chance doing a full 36" with it. When driving the handle into the eye one of the checks wanted to start opening up a little so to help keep it from worsening down the road I drove a corrugated fastener across it to hold the end together.
A. You should hang a plumb line and show how close you got. B. This handle will split right along the belly.
A Russian looker-on to my writing on the subject sent this video of himself using a traditional Russian axe with the same sort of offset neck.
Here's a good little article that briefly diagrams some of the same principles I discussed. Good to see a period document (even if only a few decades old) also making mention of these aspects.
Absolutely fascinating thread ! Never been into axes. Boy, have I missed out - Wish I were thirty years younger, could work one of those curvy, hard-bellied beauties.
I was going to buy another ax. I'm just going to buy a Junglas for my birthday. Less math, more choppy, pure Esee.
