A LIVING HISTORY BLOG.

18TH CENTURY LIVING HISTORY IN AUSTRALIA.

Thursday 3 June 2010

Another Tomahawk Head.


I made this one this afternoon from a hatchet head, along with a new helve made from a broken felling axe helve, which is now soaking in lindseed oil.



4 comments:

Unknown said...

good one...what sort of linseed oil is it?ive tried to darken my wood to get a patina,but it never works,ive been using raw linseed oil,whats your method you used on the war club you showed..?

Keith said...

Hi Grimbo. Raw or boiled lindseed oil, I have used both. Two ways I do it. I used to hand rub lindseed oil into the wood in front of the open fire. The warmth from the hand rubbing helps the oil seep into the wood. The heat from the fire also helps, and I would often leave an item in front of the fire to warm.
Now that we have moved into this house with no open fire, I tend to soak helves etc in lindseed oil. I have a length of sewage pipe, one end glued and capped. This is standing up and wired to a post in the shed. I put in a roughly 80% lindseed oil and 20% terps. I have different sized looped wires (fence or coat hanger wire) to hold different sized helves etc. I lower them into the lindseed oil mix so they are completely submerged, and leave them there for at least a month if I can.

Unknown said...

cheers keith,it seems i wasnt soaking them long enough..

Keith said...

That could be the case Grimbo, but some woods may take longer to absorb the oil.