Sunday, August 11, 2019
Sunday Reflection: A task
A week ago, I was in the middle of a trip to Osler Island, the remote off-the-grid Boundary Waters redoubt where I retreat for a week or two every summer. It was an unusual day, though: I was going into town. That sounds simple, but to do so you have to take a boat for a half hour, then drive for 64 miles down the Gunflint Trail before you get to the little town of Grand Marais.
I had a few reasons for going into town. One was that IPLawGuy was coming up to visit, so I needed to meet him and show him the way up (there seemed to be a very real possibility he would get lost and then get arrested unless he was supervised). The second reason was a seemingly simple task: I needed an axe handle.
An axe is an important thing in a place where wood is a principle source of heat and energy. Ours is old, and the handle had splintered and broken.
The first thing we needed to do was get the wood out of the axe head. My dad suggested throwing the axe head into the sauna furnace, which seemed a little weird but was 100% effective. The axe head came out with an interesting burnish, too.
In Grand Marais, I found that I had arrived on the day of the "Fisherman's Picnic," right before the parade down Main Street. It was lunch time, so I went to the Lions Club booth and got a fishburger. It was great-- just a bunch of walleye jammed into a hot dog bun with some tartar sauce.
Heading over to Buck's Hardware, I was a little self-conscious about walking around with this bronze age object for seemingly no reason. Grand Marais is pretty sympathetic to eccentrics, though, and it wasn't as goofy as my classic 2007 foray into town.
At the hardware store, the new owner (apparently Buck had sold it) went over the axe handle selection with me. Nothing was quite the right size ("Where did you get this?" he asked, and I had no idea-- axe heads can probably be 150 years old and no one would know), so I got one that was a little too big with the idea I could shave it down. Then I strode through the post-parade crowds with the axe handle in one hand and the iron blade in the other.
Back at the island with IPLawGuy, I worked to get the handle to fit. It turns out that axe handles are (understandably) made of very hard wood, and I used a bunch of tools before finding that my best bet was to chip away at it with a ripsaw and sand it down. Then I pounded the handle into the eye (where the handle comes through the blade) before hammering a wooden wedge, then a metal one, into the wood pushing through the eye. By the end, I was sweaty and standing in a spray of sawdust.
Then I gave it a few test swings. It was solid, heavy, good, real.
The truth is that the hardware store was selling new axes for $24.99, not much more than the $18.99 for the new axe handle. But I'm glad I didn't get a new one. There is value in keeping what we have, renewing it, feeling it in our hands.
And next time I use the axe, feel the blade bite into wood, I will look down at the handle wedged into the eye and know, at least, where that came from.
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I have had a similar experience putting a new handle in an axe, and once in a sledge hammer. My experience is that it is better to buy a new sledge hammer than try to keep a new handle in an old one! A litttle looseness in a sledge hammer handle mount is a dangerous thing, probably also in an axe!
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