![]() ![]() It’s a tool that combines strength, utility, and aesthetic appeal – that’s part of what makes them so fascinating and collectible. But it’s also a symbol of hard work, honesty, and simplicity. Owners of these tools would proudly polish their axes to a mirror shine and argue the superiority of their chosen maker.įor some, the American axe has come to represent brute strength, the taming of nature, and even violence (Lizzy Borden comes to mind). What resulted from this lumberjack fever was a seemingly endless array of axe designs with impressive names such as The Woodslasher, Champion, Best Axe, Legitimus, Keen Kutter, Northern King, and the True Temper Perfect axe. Over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were more than 1,000 different North American axe makers who engaged in a fiercely competitive market selling axes to lumberjacks, homesteaders, farmers, and foresters. The axe was their ticket to a strong shelter, open ground for cultivation, a heat source, and even personal protection.Īlthough the first European-American axes were hand forged, industrialization would be central to the development and distribution of the axe. Because the axe is such a simple tool – it’s essentially a wedge with an edge – it was affordable to produce and acquire, enabling early settlers to carve out an agrarian existence from the forest. Although some of this wood was cut with crosscut saws in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of it was felled, limbed, and bucked entirely with an axe. It is estimated that more than 300 million acres of timber were cut prior to the advent of the chainsaw in the mid 1920s. The American landscape has been altered more by the axe than by any other tool. Used with permission from Storey Publishing. The embossing tells us it dates from between 18 and was considered a premium axe. This axe was made for the Marshall Wells Hardware Company of Duluth, MN.
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