The Axe, a test

I posted some pictures in the past of a fighting axe I made. I've used it off & on for trimming branches cut down in the yard, but never thought to treat it as a test. Then today, while I was pruning the trees(again) and cutting up the branches to stack, I remembered a: I have a camera and b: this would be interesting to actually check out. I had been snipping off stuff up to about 3/4" with short chops, not a lot of force, so I decided to measure some stuff and try some things.

First, this is the implement in question:



The head is a fraction shy of 7" long, the edge is 4 3/4"(following the curve), and it weighs about 1.25lbs. I'm guessing weight, I don't have a scale. The haft is oak, 36" from butt to bottom of the eye.

I took a couple of branches and propped them upright. Figure a full swing as being one you'd use with a timber axe to cut wood; one hand at the butt, one near the head, swing it up or sideways and then into the target, one hand sliding down to meet the other to amplify the swing of shoulders and upper body. This was made with one hand at the butt, the other about 2/3's up, making about a 1/2 distance chop with the hands staying in place:

This is elm, measured at 1.25".

Next was a piece 1.5" thick with just about a full-distance swing with hands same as before:

Both of these were a single cut. I've read that a sapling or branch of 1" diameter is roughly equivalent to cutting a human arm or leg bone, which means that either cut could neatly amputate an arm, and would come damn close to taking a leg off in one swing.

When they dug up graves at the Battle of Hastings site, among other things found were a body that had been cut in two at hip-level, the forensics people said by a single stroke. Some of the Saxons, the housecarls(most trusted warriors) of the chieftains in particular used axes with an edge up to a foot long, weighing several pounds, on a five- or six-foot haft. In the hands of a trained fighter, I have no doubt a single stroke could do it.

I've cut through 1" branches with single swings with a sword with no trouble, too. No wonder battles were so bloody.

Oh, while I was doing this my security team was doing some research of their own. Notice the apprentice testing tooth penetration, while the supervisor -er, supervises.