Some time ago I commissioned a large type M Danish Axe from James Austin to be made of wrought and shear steel. He had not worked with these materials in such a way at that point, but was excited to take on the project.

Knowing the fine work he is doing creating both work and military axes I was pretty happy to get the chance to own one of his pieces. He has sent me two axes to show the progress he has been making toward putting this complex work together and has clearly been committed and put his heart into it. It's been a long road and I am pleased to report that work has begun on our project.

You can read a short description of what he is doing on his site here. I hope it is of interest.

If I get more updates I will share them here and indeed some shots of the finished axe.

http://forgedaxes.com/?page_id=152

Pictures man! Pictures...

Congrats on the new project. How long does he expect til completion?

I look forward to seeing the results. His axes are supposed to be the best! I hope you will share any progress shots you get...

Thank you for trying "new" materials, & for sharing. If you can gently ask & talk Mr. Austin into inventing a less modern looking signature stamp for this project & his future historical work, we will vote for you for something!

Hello everyone,

I received an update from Mr. Austin on our project and it looks as if things are going along quite well. I am including some pictures to show progress.

Here are his comments regarding the iron used and the work following from the forming of the original billet.

"The billet for the axe started with 9 pounds of merchant grade wrought drawn which was stacked into 4 layers and welded together. This procedure was done a total of 3 times. Repeated layering allowed me to break down the slag seams in the bar and change its cross section into the wide slab I needed for the axe. By the time I finished this stage of the project there were 64 layers in the welded slab. Each layer originated from the original bar which was 1.4 inches square (the bar came as scrap from the National Historic Maritime Museum in San Francisco)."

One thing that I wanted to capture in my axe was the eye proportion. Most period type M axes show a slightly smaller eye than we are accustomed to seeing on modern reproductions. In my quest to arriving at a more historically accurate example I wanted to capture this detail.

This axe shows the typical slightly smaller eye seen on historic examples.
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And here are the progress pictures.

The shows the slab of wrought iron which has been prepared for an asymmetric weld to close the eye of the axe.
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Jim stated that this picture probably shows the first blow of welding the eye.
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The third picture shows some finish-up work on the weld. James is using the peen of the hammer to blend the scarf so that it hopefully disappears on the finished axe.
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The last picture shows the finished eye weld. It looks good. There is some leeway with the shape and size of the eye since it can be drawn a bit larger or ground somewhat smaller.
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And next Jim will begin drawing out the blade- very carefully, I am sure!