By David Heiller

The axe handle needed replacing, that was for sure, and I almost made the mistake of doing it.

For a few minutes I didn't even recognize it. It lay on a work bench along with a pile of broken hoes and hammers and shovels. My goal last Friday was to fix a few of them. Is there a better way to spend a blizzard?

I pounded out the broken shafts from three hammer heads, and shaped new handles from old pieces of oak and hickory that I have been saving for a couple decades. When each new hammer finally emerged, I smiled a stupid grin. They werenít pretty. They werenít perfectly balanced. But they were functional again.

Same with the spades and shovels. They had sat in a barrel in my garage in Sturgeon Lake, and then Brownsville, for years and years, victims of one too many hard torques in the garden. Last Friday three of them got new handles and new lives. I canít wait for the snow to melt to see how they fare.

I know shovels and hammers can't think. They are just wood and metal. But a part of me feels that they are glad to have a purpose in life again. I know I am glad about that.

But back to the axe. I was on a roll as the snow piled up outside. I picked up the axe. Its handle had a weird spilt. It wasn't cracked below the head, where axes often break from a misguided stroke. No, this split started at the base of the handle and went right up the middle, all the way to the head. It was like the single axe handle was now two separate handles. I could pull them apart like a scissors.

Where did I get this axe? I puzzled it over for a bit, then it came back with another pleasant memory. (Why do snow storms bring out such pleasant memories?) Palmer Dahl had made this axe.

Palmer was an old man when I got to know him. He sharpened chain saw chains and other types of blades as a way to make a little money. Thatís how I met him. He was literally a Norwegian bachelor farmer. Never married, didnít talk much. Never missed church. An old farmer who had moved to town for his final years. A very decent man.

And Palmer was the ultimate recycler. That was the farmer in him. Sometimes I would bring him things that probably should have been thrown away, like a pair of scissors that I had used as a screw driver. Twice. Both prongs were snapped in half. But darn it, they were good scissors! So I took them to Palmer, and he rounded off the points, buffed them smooth, and I had a pair of mini-scissors.

Palmer would never charge me for things like that. He would say that since I was recycling them, he didnít feel he should charge me.

It was with that spirit that I brought him that axe head. I had found it in the garden. It was rusted badly, but I figured Palmer should have a look at it. His eyes got a little twinkle when I showed it to him. He loved challenges like that.

A couple weeks later he stopped in after church and presented me with a ìnewî axe. He had filed and ground off all the rust. He had even uncovered a forge mark, and knew where it had been made, at a business long gone from Duluth. Palmer had painted the middle part of the head green. Both double bits were shiny and sharp.

Palmer had added a fine hickory handle, and painted a red band below the head. It was a functional work of art, and all at no charge.

I put Palmerís fine gift to good use. We heated with wood in those days, and there was no finer compliment to Palmer than to use that axe. Which I did, until one day with my swing was off, or maybe it was the handleís time, but it shivered and split from top to bottom. So it went into the barrel with the other broken relics, and I forgot about it until last Friday. Thatís when it returned, along with Palmer.

So I stopped just in time as I prepared to remove the old handle. Instead, I spread the handle apart, and smeared wood glue on both pieces its entire length. Then I clamped it together with about eight hose clamps.

I took the clamps off the next day, and sanded the handle to a shiny finish. It is whole again, and has a new place of honor in my shop. I donít know that Iíll attack an oak log with it. Kindling for the trash burner might be a more fitting use. But Iíll soon shine the head up, file off the rust, sharpen the bits, and give it a dose of oil, in true Palmer Dahl style. He will be pleased.

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