The review consists of :
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The review consists of : |
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The Gransfors Bruks Wildlife hatchet has a one pound head forged from spring steel and edge hardened to 57 HRC. The bit is left rough, as forged. The total weight is 600 grams or 21.2 ounces. The bit has a three inch face, and is about 3/16" thick behind the edge bevel which is convex. The edge starts off at 0.190" thick with a 10-12 degree slope and deepens to about 12-14 degrees right near the edge. The head is attached perpendicular to the 14" hickory handle and is secure. The head is fitted with a traditional bottom taper, glued in place, wedged and metal cross wedged. The handle grain is vertical and uniform. It comes with a grain-leather sheath.
The Wildlife hatchet can trim meat and chop small vegetables. It is fairly managable with a grip in the throat and is much more manuverable for such cutting than a large khukuri or other blade used for heavy chopping work. The very acute edge also raises the performance significantly and as long as the cutting is shallow it actually outperforms many knives. However as the edge as so far in front of the handle some tasks like peeling potatoes are very awkward. The thickness also makes sectioning thick vegetables difficult.
Light vegetation is efficiently cut by the initial shaving sharp edge on the
Wildlife hatchet :
In general a long blade would be prefered such as a decent machete as the short bit on
the hatchet doesn't cut very much of a swath and of course the balance of the
hatchet is designed for much heavier cutting. The vegetation also tends to pich
and gather on the underside of the bit. The hatchet is however still many times
more effiective than tearing it by hand or using a small pocket knife.
Precision cutting of woods is enhanced by the very thin and
acute edge which readily allows the axe to split the fine ends of spruce roots
to make cordage.
The carving and wood shaping ability of the hatchet is actually ahead of many
large production blades promoted for chopping. The hatchet was compared to a Machax which had been heavily regound to improve its cutting
ability and the Wildlife still readily out cut the Machax pointing 16 stakes . The Machax had only 63 (3)% of the ability of the
hatchet in terms of number of cuts needed to make a point. The difference in
performance was so obvious that the blades could be ranked simply by the size of
the chips produced. The hatchet was also compared for wood roughing ability
against a Battle Mistress with a 15-17 degree
edge bevel. Through seventeen pieces of small lumber there was no significant
difference in wood carving ability. While the Battle
Mistress had a slightly more obtuse edge bevel it is thinner behind
the edge bevel due to its more acute primary grind which compensates.
Chopping is the main focus of the design of the small axe
and it does it quite well, easily taking down a small sapling in just a few
seconds.
It works well both on fresh woods as well as stock lumber able to both achive solid
penetration as well as fluidity in woods. In compares well to the best blades
seen in regards to wood chopping
ability in general and especially does quite well compared to knives
on thicker woods where it doesn't suffer the loss of penetration that happens
with knives. The only areas where it doesn't do well as a chopping tool are
on woods which can't take the sheer impact energy of the axe due to being too
sprinly like alders, or are too weak like clapboard or are poorly rooted
saplings. For those woods a small saw or much ligher and faster blade can be
more efficient.
For limbing the Wildlife also does well but unless the limbs are so large they have to be individually chopped off a larger knife tends to be more effective. On smaller limbs, under an inch or so on spruce, a knife like the Battle Mistress has the ability to sweep off many limbs per swing and can arc the blade during the swing so as to cut along its entire length and thus sweep out more limbs. The hatchet only has a small bit length and thus has to chop straight through and is thus outperformed by more than two to one by such a knife for limbing smaller wood.
As a splitting tool the Wildlife hatchet does quite well
able to directly chop split woods. The performance is significantly better than
large knives like the Battle Mistress which have
just a fraction of the chop splitting ability of the hatchet. It takes really
bad wood for the hatchet to not be able to at least just chop slabs off the side
and once these are shaped into wedges they can be pounded into cuts started by
the axe and thus take apart larger rounds efficiently. Note the very knotty
piece of wood on the right, this was broken apart by side slabs turned into
wedges. This is another advantage of the hatchet over long knives in that it
functions much better as a hammer.
Long blades do however have a couple of advantages for splitting over axes.
On really small woods, up to a few inches in diamater or so, it can be easier to
baton the knife through than split with an axe. Trying to be precise enough to
split 1-2" wood with an axe isn't trivial and if the wood is wet it may still
need to be split, plus it is also useful to split it for construction purposes.
If the wood is twisted or knotty as the axe will also tend to just take pieces
out of it plus that wood is too light to serve as a counterweight for a poll
strike if the axe gets stuck in knots. On larger wood which is really knotty the
same can hold and the blade can be pounded through bad wood faster than the
hatchet can make wedges and crack the wood apart. There are also other issues
like slabs ans shingles which is why froes (heavy blades) were a common
splitting tool for carpentry.
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The combination of high cutting ability and solid chopping and splitting performance makes the Wildlife hatchet an excellent tool for firestarting. It readily gathers barks and cuts fine shavings for tinder to get the fire burning. Felling wood as necessary and cutting deadfall to length and splitting as necessary to enable aggressive burning. |
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The Wildlife hatchet actually has a much higher cutting ability for many materials than many tactical knives. For example it cuts ropes and such far easiler than knives such as the SOG SEAL 2000 or Strider WB. The big problems with miscellaneous cutting in general is that the narrow bit prevents long draws for slices and deep cuts will bind heavily around the poll.
After a light chopping session of say 250 chops the shaving sharpness can be restored with a some stropping on 0.5 micron chroimum/aluminum oxide loaded leather. After a few such sharpenings the edge gets reworked with a fine abrasive usually a a 1000 grit waterstone then a 4000 and back to the fine buffing compound. It also responds well to a file which was needed initially to remove some damage from knots. This initial damage was likely due to less than optimal steel left along the edge which is common with production blades in general. After the initial problems in the first year and the sharpening which removing all damage, subsequent years of use has seen no such issues.
The Bruks has the traditional curved axe handle. It lacks the paint commonly found on hardware store axes and benefits as expected from a light coat of linseed oil. It works well both with a grip around the edge for chopping as well as in the throat for percision cutting. However the underside of the handle could use some work as it will be abrasive against the hand for extended work. The grip is too short for two handed work, there is a slightly larger model, the small Forest Axe which allows two handed swings.
Unlike most common axes bought in hardware stores, the Gransfors Bruks Wildlife hatchet has both a well shaped edge for high cutting ability and a quality forged spring steel bit hardened to 57 HRC at the edge. The performance compared to such an axe is many to one in favor of the Bruks axe, so much so it can outperform much larger axes due to its more efficient grind. The very efficient cutting geometry also allows it to perform precision cutting which it does better than many tactical knives. It also has a secure head/handle attachment and well shaped traditional axegrip. Compared to quality long blades for wood work, the hatchet will generally outperform them chopping and splitting thicker woods and the long blades are much more efficient clearing light brush.
Comments can be sent to cliffstamp[REMOVE]@cutleryscience.com and seen in the following thread (ARCHIVED) on Bladeforums :
There is also a website for Gransfors Bruks. PhotoBucket Album.
| Last updated : | Jun 16 : 2004 |
| Originally written : | March 2 : 2001 |