Hi Gents,
I havent posted for many a year. Was looking to get a hand axe, custom or production. Also maybe some ideas on type. Was there a saxon or viking hand axe used for both combat and utility purposes.Did this configuration exist? I seem to recall some militia were armed with such, I assume something that was used with a sheild. Axes arent a strongpoint of knowledge for me, Im currenty googling as quickly as I can. If anyone can answer in the meantime it would be appreciated. :)
The next question would be potential suppliers.

I'm not an expert, but I'd hate to see this go unanswered, so I will give it a shot.

I think that some bearded axes might have been suitable for both. More modern, some tomahawks would have been too. To really oversimplify: I think it's all about thickness - a thicker axe is better for work, and a thinner one is better for combat (to a point - some Dane axes were thin and had a reinforced edge).

I think for medieval axes, Thor's Forge (on facebook - I don't know if he's anywhere else on the web) would be one I think is generally considered very good. For tomahawks, I would say Beaver Bill is the gold standard.

Another challenge is handle length. Long enough to match a sword is awkward for most woodworking tasks (and a head on that long haft can be hard to control with one hand).

Before mass-produced steel circular saws, axes and adzes were used for precision tasks that modern axes don't need to deal with, so blades could be different shapes and dimensions. My copy of an Early Bronze Age axe is similar in thickness to a modern hatchet and the original was gilt so I don't think it was for chopping firewood.

In Heimkringla there is a story involving thick and thin axes.

Quote:

Now I am going to pay back H?rekr for the killing of my father.? He had in his hand a small and thinly forged broad-bladed axe. The king looked at him and said: ?Use my axe instead.? This one was wedge-shaped and thick. The king spoke again: ?You must expect, ?smundr, that the bones in that fellow will be hard.? ?smundr took the axe and went down from the building, and when he got down onto the cross-street, then H?rekr and his men were coming up towards him. ?smundr struck at H?rekr?s head so that the axe immediately stuck down in his brain. This caused H?rekr?s death. So ?smundr went back up into the building to the king, and the edge had all broken off the axe. Then said the king: ?What use would the thin axe have been then? It looks to me as though this one is no good now.?

I have seen modern wood chopping axes that are very thick so the king's axe could still be thick and thinner than those. Still, I think it likely that battle axes came in different thicknesses.