Plywood Inspired Hatchet Restoration

This is an old hatchet I've had for a few years. It's seen a lot of action and it's looking a bit tired. It's time to show it some love.

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/wCarg9bBbdg

The handle is made of rubber. It felt great when I bought it but it's showing it's wear now.

The steel has a think coat of rust on it so that'll need to be removed.

To remove the handle I used a combination of a heat gun and a chisel.

The heat gun softened the rubber just enough so that I could easily slide the chisel through it.

The smaller pieces that were embedded in the steel had to be removed with a wire brush. This was also a good way to clean the steel in preparation for the new handle.

To lock the new handle in place I was going to use a combination of epoxy and dowels. I drilled 3 holes in the handles to accept the dowels.

The holes were drilled using an 8mm bit.

Next I started cleaning up the head of the hatchet. I started with a wire brush...

Then moved on the belt sander. The 36 grit belt worked great for removing the bulk of the rust and restoring the edge.

After that it was onto a 120 grit belt...

And finally 600 grit paper to and a bit of class. 600 grit won't bring it up to a shine but it has a "brushed" looked.

The handle was made out of a hardwood. I think this is Jarrah (an Australian hardwood) but I can't be sure.

I cut 9 pieces of wood roughly 35mm x 20mm x 20mm.

To make sure the pieces were flat and ready for glue I used 120 grit on the belt.

The specific look I was going for with this handle required the grain change direction. This is how plywood is made. You can see the striped effect here.

I added glue to each piece...

And clamped them together. The levels on either side were just to stop the pieces of wood from sliding around.

After the glue had dried I marked a centre line through the new piece, and started cutting.

This left me with 2, bookmatched pieces.

Each cut side was flattened on a block with sandpaper.

The handle was used to trace the area that needed to be cut out on each side of the handle.

To remove the wood I used a router. This cut will never been seen so I did it free hand, but you want to make the fit fairly snug.

Then I applied a liberal amount of epoxy into one side of the handle. The epoxy does the bulk of the work so you want to make sure that it gets into every crack.

I added a few clamps and waited 24 hours before removing them.

Then I used the same 8mm drill bit to drill the the handle and the wood.

This exposed the hole on the wood side of the handle.

Then I could route out the other half of the handle...

Add more glue to the second half of the handle...

And clamp it all together.

Where the holes were made on the first half of the handle, I used them as a guide to drill straight through the entire piece. This meant all the holes lined up.

I added some 8mm dowels through the handle with epoxy as glue. I could've used wood glue but that doesn't stick to steel and I wanted the dowel to be locked into both the wood and steel.

The excess of the dowels was removed...

And the surface was sanded smooth.

To give the handle a rounded shape I used a large round over bit on my route.

To shape the handle I went back to the belt sander. As I went I worked out different methods to create repeatable shapes. Here I'm sliding the base of the handle along the table while moving the top of the handle down. As I got to the steel I would stop. This process could be repeated on all 4 sides.

To smooth the curve I cut some sandpaper, folded it over, and used it like a belt, moving it side to side over the handle.

For objects that are going to be held or used aggressively I like to use linseed oil. The idea behind it is no amount of polyurethane or paint will stand up to a handle like this, so an oil is more practical. Yes, the oil needs to be applied occasionally, but reapplying oil is extremely easy.

I wiped on the linseed oil using a rag. I gave the handle 2 coats.