Re-hanging and Restoring a Double-bitted Axe

Here is the grain of the new handle. It had the best grain of any handle at the hardware
store. I bought it at Lowes. Next time I will make my own. 

Today I am going to talk about an old double-bitted axe that I have re-hanged and restored. I have removed the rust, sharpened the bits, and bought and modified a new handle for it. Here is how I did it:

I pulled this ugly staple out of the handle. It was stuck in it
when I bought it. 

Step 1- I knocked out the old handle. I did this by sawing off the handle and leaving a couple of inches, and then I knocked out the old handle with a drift. The handle was removed.

The old axe and handle. 

Step 2-Rehanging. First, I inserted the new handle. I had also stripped all of the varnish off of the new handle with my knife (or as much as I could, anyway). After inserting the handle, I kept removing material from the eye area of the handle until the head fit on well.

The handle from the store (and my ugly carpet, haha!) Sorry for
the poor backdrop! It won't happen again! 

Step 3- I took the handle out and coated it with boiled linseed oil (BLO).

Step 4- I re-inserted the handle and pounded in the wooden wedge.

Here is the wooden wedge I used. I did not use
wood glue when I put in the wedge. Just linseed oil.

Step 5-I pounded in the step wedges. (Here's the story of how I got them: I went to the hardware store because I forgot about getting step wedges. I asked a couple of employees at the hardware store and they didn't even know what a step wedge was. Funny, right? I went over to the part of the hardware store where I bought my axe handle and I found wedge kits for re-handling a sledge hammer. The kits were 98 cents each. I bought one after I saw they had 2 step wedges in each kit along with a sledge hammer wedge.)

Here you can see the wooden wedge and the two metal step wedges.
The wedge system pushes the wood towards all the walls in the axe eye
to ensure a tight fit.

Step 6-I lightly sanded the handle and applied a coat of BLO. I made sure to soak the end grains of the handle and the eye area to make the wood swell so that it wouldn't come loose.

Step 7-I worked the face of the axe: I used a file to remove the major nicks in the axe bit. Then I sharpened it really sharp with a ceramic rod. I lightly sanded the face of the axe to remove any rust.

The finished product.

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