Detailed review and demo of a custom blacksmith-forged axe splitting tough hardwoodfrom @bradley.thor

Transcript

This beautiful piece of art is in the top three best axes I have ever owned, held, seen, used, you name it. I really don't like talking about it too much just because it's not on the market. It's not like an available act that everybody can purchase. It was actually created by a master master blacksmith named Brent Bailey. But now that it's lasted two and a half years of absolute abuse, it's time to give it the flowers that it deserves. So today, I'm gonna show you just how great this axe is and then review it. And we're gonna do it on none other than Australian red gum. For those of you who are new here, you might not know that I've broken a lot of axes on camera on Australian hardwood before. That's just the nature of the beast. That's the type of wood that it is. And it's only fair at this point to really show what this axe can do by breaking wood, splitting good. That is actually harder than the handle the very axe is hung on. Ma'am, this axe should be dedicated as my Australian hardwood axe. So we're gonna split a larger piece of gum with a pretty nasty grain pattern on it. Now this piece comes from kind of the midsection where the grain starts to spin. So I don't know if I'm doing the axe justice by making it split this, but it's too late now. I don't know how many people can relate to how great that is. Because if you haven't split gum before, you might just be like, yeah. He's splitting wood. You see how the axe bounces? That's something we're gonna talk about in a minute. Let's review it. So worst, I have to start with the only negatives. It does not have an over strike protector. Okay? That's the guard that usually protects the handle from breaking if you miss or over strike the wood. One over strike is all it takes to destroy a handle. Next, the weight. It's four and a half pounds. Does not qualify itself as a maul. Obviously, it's not gonna be your best choice when you're driving wedges, when you're trying to split gigantic rounds. But here's the interesting thing about that. Because it's lighter, you would think it would perform more like a splitting axe. If any of you have ever used the splitting axe, let me grab one to show you. They're best, but they're very narrow. And this is an amazing splitting axe, so yes not dogging this at all. But they're very narrow. So you'll spend a lot of time removing that splitting axe out of the wood that it got stuck in because the cheeks are so narrow, they'll get wedged in there. Run back the tape and watch this thing when I swing on the wood. It doesn't even get stuck in gum. It bounces right back out. Obviously, you have to be mindful of the fact that it wants to bounce out of the wood. Here's the deal. I don't know that this axe should have an worst protector because of the fact that one of its best features is how fast it is. So if you add more weight, you're losing one of the things that it's really great at. So this is where you'll kind of find I start to really struggle and get into the weeds because this for utility tool is a 10 out of 10. But it's not gonna out split maybe an eight or 10 pound mall on a lot of large pieces of good, so it's hard to rate something that isn't quite the same tool. And boy, do I appreciate all the hard work that went into this thing. I'm gonna get back to splitting some more eucalyptus because it's a lot of fun with this. Cut. No pun intended.