Classic_Boat_2016-06

SECTION HEAD

SUB SECTION

SIDE AXE

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS
ROBIN GATES

Few hand tools have shaped the
course of history like the side axe,
also known as the broad axe. But
there it is embroidered in the Bayeux
tapestry, in the hands of William’s
shipwrights building the longships
that would surge on to the beach at
Pevensey in 1066. Without the side
axe to flatten the planks of those
clinker troop carriers, the Normans
might have been exhausted by baling
out, given the Hastings battlefield a
miss and turned back for France.
This is a 4lb side axe made by the
long-gone firm of William Hunt &
Sons at the Brades Steel Works,
Birmingham, in the 1930s. Forged in
one piece so as to avoid the weakness
of a weld and fitted with a nicely
shouldered hickory handle it was,
according to contemporary literature,
‘severely tested on lignum vitae
before being sent out’.
Unlike the smaller carpenter’s axe
it is wide, single-bevelled and with an
almost flat back – like a plane iron.
This enables it to hew parallel with
the timber, paring wafer-thin shavings

to leave a surface flat enough to mate

gap-free with its neighbour – exactly

as needed where the planks of a

clinker hull overlap. It is in effect a

finishing tool. The side axe was a

stalwart of the mast-maker too, used

for squaring up pine logs before they

were tapered, eight-squared and

rounded as spars, and of the

shipwright squaring up a log for the

massive keelson of a Thames barge.

The eye in a side axe, where the

handle joins the head, is forged offset

to allow the flat plane needed from

cutting edge to poll, and the handle is

cocked out to leave knuckle room

when working close to the timber. This

axe is for a right hander but being of

the symmetrical Kent pattern it could

be reversed, simply by fitting a new

handle to the opposite end of the eye.

Having grown chipped and blunt

as a butter knife since last wielded in

an Essex boatyard, this axe was

restored using files and emery cloth

on the bevel and a carborundum

whetstone to hone the edge. Now it

converts a log into a squared-up

beam as effectively as a power planer,

albeit more slowly.

NEXT MONTH: Spring callipers

Clockwise from

above: Timber

squared from the

log by the side

axe; Restoring

the bevel using

files and emery

cloth; Honing the

edge with a

carborundum

stone

Traditional Tool