This extraordinarily mighty single-bit felling axe, embossed with the single word HOMESTEAD was made by the Collins Company. Collins can trace it’s origins to the early 1830’s and is a fabled axe and tool maker. The company has forged several styles and makes of axes in the last 180 years (over 1,000 edge and striking tools can be found in some year’s catalog). The Homestead mark is a line of axes whose hey-day was in the 1950 – 60’s. This particular model is a prime example of a Connecticut pattern head (Collins Axe Co. is in Collinsville Conn.) and is marked on the bottom of the poll end with a number ‘5’. On a scale, it weighs almost 5 lbs. (over 2 kg.) and measures 8″ in length and wears over 5″ worth of tempered steel ground sharp at it’s bit.
When hung on an smartly shaped fawn foot haft, the weight, balance, and finish of this tool offers notions of empowerment and Apollonian ideals to anyone who grips it. Axes stir my senses for many reasons, least of all because there is no artifice with these objects. They are meant to be used. They have been designed consciously, each with a singular and intentional purpose. Reverence is not in itself as an object, but in the action it provides: humbling work, often done far from witness, with a focused mind, in the quiet of the forest or in the dark winter of a backyard, when no one is watching. The reward of it’s service often not recognized for many seasons, until it’s subject has been cured, split, or milled – wood sized to frame the upright peaks of a roof, stand a wall straight, or to be burned to warm the space within them. To delay gratitude many say is the sign of strong character. Self-Reliance was Emmerson’s cry.
They don’t make them like this any more. Mostly because we don’t much live like this anymore. This giant axe may have outlived it’s popular necessity, but as object or artifact, there is still a need. It both still serves a clear and specific purpose – and also provides a general frame of mind – ready for anyone who grips it.
For sale to a proper handler at The Purveyors Shop on Etsy.
