How it began, Adzes…
So I thought, for a first go at this blog and as I’m often asked how, I’d have a look back at how I got into this complete descent into tool making madness and talk about the first tool I really decided to make and that I’m still spending many months of the year making.
Before forging, I’d been carving away steadily from about the age of 14, progressing from just chipping away, to making pieces for a smaller gallery near me over a few years. Then came the catalyst, summer 2019 I bought an old coal forge near enough to me on Ebay, after a months restoration, I had it going, the fire burning.
Aside for a rather rough Drawknife, I didn’t really pair my blacksmithing to make any carving tools for a couple years, at this time I was mainly doing little basic blacksmithing projects. Around this time I was also wanting to get into carved bowls, especially inspired by the work of Dave Fisher (Who later kindly helped me with improving my adzes), now an adze was on my mind, it was a tricky thing to source, especially one with good reviews. So I set out to make one for myself, in hindsight this was a mammoth task as one of my first woodworking tools to make.
After a challenging few months I had a few somewhat adze shaped Items somewhat there, at this time it was also an exercise in patience making the adze entirely with an ~3lb hammer, forge welding some cutting steel onto a mild steel body as well. Anyway progress happened, slowly… After some time, and many upgrades I was making a few more adzes a week, and improving rapidly.
Month by Month they got slightly better, experimenting with edge angles was a big change. I sent an adze across to David Fisher an absolute wizard with the adze and maker of extraordinary bowls (Please check out his amazing Blog https://davidffisher.com ) and he gave me some really valuable feedback, we then corresponded a bit and I began to experiment with edge angles, anyway I’ll leave the complete deep delve of specific angles for a later blog, but a supporting inside bevel was added, meaning I could grind them at a Lower outside angle resulting in a much more aggressive woodchip throwing adze.
There were many other significant changes, the big ones came in the learning of leatherwork to make an effective, strong and long lasting sheath, Bit of a revelation after being told by my leatherworker friends that the various parts of the sheath need to be getting smaller in order to pull itself into the adze shape and the continual improvements to the handle being an ongoing thing.
Anyway I’ve rambled on long enough, hopefully this gave you a brief idea of the various things that happened and my adventure into making tools, the adze being my first project. Many more stories about the other tools I offer to come and some new tools coming up soon. Thankyou for your time - Oscar
Where the adzes are nowadays a good few years of learning in this picture.
One of the first fires in the coal forge