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French Drain work continuing

The main drain is dug, but not quite deep enough. Needs another few inches which requires lots of banging with a rockbar.

dischgarge trench
Discharge trench, putting in a 2″ or 3″ pipe connected under the fence door.

Discharge thru the front would require cutting a trench thru the driveway cement, backyard is easier and I can build a swale to catch the water.

The Side of the house that Pools water. Needs to be deeper
The Side of the house that Pools water. Needs to be deeper
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Hafting a Hewing Axe

I’ve got a 1890’s Douglas Axehead model ‘Pittsburgh” for hewing. One side is beveled and it is a little offset for hewing timber into lumber. I hafted it with mountain cedar (juniper actually) and after an hour of use the beefy handle broke much to my surprise.  It was a *very* beefy handle overly thick and still it broke. That tells me juniper is quite brittle and can’t use it for handles for striking tools. I still have one on my spoon hatchet but it has broken once, an I merely reused the handle because it was too long anyway.

I’m using oak this time, it worked for my mallet, which also had a broken juniper handle.  The handle is naturally curved oak wood from the tree that fell in my front lawn.  I’ve gotten it shaped to roughly what I want, I’m going to leave it to dry for another 2 weeks then work it down to the final shape.  I really want to avoid any shrinkage after fitting.

On length, it is for hewing not felling. So shorter than a felling axe, and research says about 28-30″. After all, this axe is just going up and down to chop off wood lumps between the jogs.

 

Axe handleDouglas Hewing Axe Head

 

 

 

 

-Update –

May 2, 2016

Finished the hafting. Leather cover from scrap leather and some tooling tools.

Douglas Pittsburg 9# axehead on a 29" handle. 32" from bottom of handle to toe of axehead.
Douglas Pittsburg 9# axehead on a 29″ handle. 32″ from bottom of handle to toe of axehead.
Scrap leather cover with a nice little tree.
Scrap leather cover with a nice little tree.
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Built a draw horse out of scrap and rough lumber

DrawhorseForgot to update, built this  6 months ago.

 

Took about 30 minutes to build:

used a 1″ wood drill,

a hatchet to made the tenons on the legs to 1″,

legs made of juniper to forestall rot,

the clamp lumber was a split hackberry that later cracked, have to redo.

Lessons learned: make sure the front legs of the horse are far forward not to touch the lower foot clamp when fully extended.