A LIVING HISTORY BLOG.

18TH CENTURY LIVING HISTORY IN AUSTRALIA.

Monday 2 December 2019

More Information On The Half Axe.



Half-Axe Information.
Basically the half axe was larger than a tomahawk but smaller than a felling axe.
https://www.furtradetomahawks.com/half-axes---21.html

camp axe: an axe with a lighter head (2 1/4 lb.) than a regular axe and a handle that measures around 19”. (also: half axe)
http://www.yesteryearstools.com/Yesteryears%20Tools/Glossary%3A%20Axes,%20Edge%20Tools,%20etc..html

Then sometime around 1750 a new pattern began to
evolve from the boarding axes of the time that were heavier and
much more compact with a straighter, shorter, thicker spike and
a "half axe" style blade.
http://tatcalite.tripod.com/id10.htm

http://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/2010/08/axe-and-tomahawk.html

https://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/2011/03/tomahawks-hatchets-which-is-best.html
Names can confuse as well as clarify, and this is especially true
of the tomahawk. For years students and writers, archeolo-
gists and collectors have been accustomed to using names for
specific forms or general categories of hatchet or tomahawk. They
refer to squaw axes, half axes, or to French, Spanish, Minne-
wauken, Woodlands, or English types with the calm assumption
that these are accepted terms and will be understood.
A final general term occasionally encountered is the half axe or
half hatchet. This derived from the era when axe blades frequently
flared out symmetrically. In the half axe only the side toward the
hand flared out. The other side was straight or curved slightly in
the same direction. In the era considered here, the half axe was
the normal form for hatchets and felling axes, and the term itself
was becoming obsolete. 6
In early examples, spiked tomahawks were sometimes made with shanks for insertion into a wooden shaft in much the same manner as the usual halberd type. In such instances they were normally forged from one piece of iron or steel. One specimen found near Rome, New York, seems to have
been made by applying a small conical spike to a standard half axe.
Johnson, Reynaldo Address unknown. In 1808 he delivered 178 half axes at 500 each and 22 tomahawks at 400 each to the Office of IndianTrade. https://archive.org/stream/americanindianto01pete/americanindianto01pete_djvu.txt


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