Forging

"Thus at the flaming forge of life
 Our fortunes must be wrought" - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The axe begins as a rectangular billet of steel heated in a forge to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit, causing an amazing transformation of malleability. The old saying "strike while the iron is hot" can never be truer here, as this is our opportunity to mold and shape the steel material, which now has properties that resemble clay. We use traditional forging techniques on early 1900s-era power hammers to artfully form an axe head

Grinding

The axe head is forged to shape as closely as possible before final grinding is needed to bring our axe to spec and prepare it for hardening. Our axes are forged from a chromium molybdenum alloy that quenches in oil at a temperature of 1575 degrees Fahrenheit. One distinctive feature of a Hoffman axe is its hardened poll

Marriage Of Wood And Steel

A beautiful aspect of axe making is the mix of woodworking and metalworking skills needed throughout the process. The wood shop is next, where we take rough-sawn hickory lumber and transform it into the second most crucial part of the axe. Grading the lumber and choosing the material's best qualities is paramount to a good handle's workings. Our handles are created in-house and based on historical designs from the late 1800s; we lean on the knowledge acquired when people used axes to make a living. Once the lumber is graded and cut into a handle blank, it's turned on a manual copy lathe, the same type of machine used over a hundred years ago to produce handles for our country's thriving logging industry.