My Big Ass Axe: The Beginning
I'm taking a props design class this semester. one of our assignments is to make a weapon out of wood. we were to purchase our own materials and have to work on it mostly out of class, as there aren't enough tools in the scene shop for everyone to get their work done in class.
so I took my happy little ass to home depot and set off to look for my materials. a worker had to help me, because I had no idea where anything was because I'm an idiot and I've never been inside of a home depot before. with my grandad on the phone helping me out, because I have no idea what the actual hell I'm doing, I ended up with a whole sheet of 1/2 inch plywood and a 1 1/8 dowel. a worker cut the plywood down into two sheets that were 2 feet by 2 feet long, and I just asked them to leave the other half of the ply uncut and I would just let someone else in the class use it. some people aren't as lucky as I am to be able to buy a shitload of wood from home depot, and almost everybody else in the class is building their projects out of the same dimension of ply.
today we were taught to use the band saw on some luan wood, which is pretty flimsy and thin. the band saw cuts through it pretty easily. to quote my professor, 'like butter'. everyone got a turn to use the saw, and we also got some time on the belt/disc sanders and learned how to use those.
I used the hour and 45 minutes I get between my fourth class and my last class of the day to begin actually building my axe.
professor corry, the shop professor, set me up with the band saw, the belt/disc sanders, and the table saw. that was what was available to me in the shop at the time. the chop saw was also available for my use, but the other shop workers were using it at the time and I didn't actually need it for my project.
I set to work cutting little bits off of my 1/2 inch ply square, cutting it down to a more manageable size that would be maneuverable around the blade of the band saw. after a long while, I had managed to cut most of the excess off and had almost all of the blade cut out.
I had an issue with one corner of the blade. the blade itself is one piece, and it was far too wide for me to be able to accurately maneuver the blade around the band saw to get that bit cut out. luckily, one of the shop students offered to help me cut that bit out with a jig saw. I'm not the biggest fan of the jig saw, since its fairly heavy and I'm not confident using it on my own because I fuck up with it a lot. the student was very helpful and did a pretty good job of cutting that last bit off.
I took the axe blade over to the belt sander and used it to bevel the edges and further sand them down to make them look like an actual blade. I sharpened the edges of the blade and sanded the middle to smooth out any imperfections in my cutting. there's still some minor bumps in it at the moment, but I can still sand them down a bit more in the coming week. nothing too crazy that I can't fix.
finally, professor corry notched my dowel with the table saw, since I had never used it and would probably have taken off a finger if I tried. he also helped me understand how the table saw would cut more on the bottom due to the position of the blade. he managed to cut a 1/2 inch slot in my dowel about 6 inches deep. the blade of the axe slipped right into the slot without any problems. the fit is quite snug, and it seems like it can take a bit of a beating before it comes loose. I will still be securing it with some wood glue, and maybe some screws if that won't damage the structural integrity of the handle. I will also be wrapping the top with some leather strips and string to hide any imperfections in the top of the handle. progress pics taken by my roommate below.
