Author Topic: Hi picked up this Hammer Axe  (Read 2479 times)

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Offline Bill Houghton

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Re: Hi picked up this Hammer Axe
« Reply #15 on: November 26, 2017, 11:14:29 AM »
on the killing axe, they would hit the animal to be slaughtered on the head with the hammer head, which I think they called the "pole".
The traditional spelling of the heavy back side of an axe is "poll."

...which got me interested in the etymology, which led me to the online dictionary, where I found out that the word used to mean the part of the head on which hair grows and/or the back of the head, with the origin being "polle" from middle English, meaning head or hair of the head, derived from Middle Low German, where it meant hair.  So "poll" as in axe means the back of the axe head; while "poll" as in political poll probably is derived from the notion of "counting heads" favoring one side or the other of a question.

I believe the older European design of axe, formed by bending iron around a form, so that there was no heavy part, is referred to as "poll-less" by axe folks.  Or something like.  Modern remake of a medieval axe:

Offline pritch

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Re: Hi picked up this Hammer Axe
« Reply #16 on: November 26, 2017, 08:43:44 PM »
And then there is the whole "poll-axed" side of the conversation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollaxe

Offline Northwoods

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Re: Hi picked up this Hammer Axe
« Reply #17 on: November 27, 2017, 03:13:26 PM »
Shakespeare used the term in reference to a weapon (an axe made like a sledge hammer) in Hamlet: Act I Scene i:
 Of Hamlet's father, the King, it is said that "...in an angry parle, (conversation) / He smote the sledded poleaxe on the ice."
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Offline kwoswalt99

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Re: Hi picked up this Hammer Axe
« Reply #18 on: November 27, 2017, 03:26:44 PM »
Shakespeare used the term in reference to a weapon (an axe made like a sledge hammer) in Hamlet: Act I Scene i:
 Of Hamlet's father, the King, it is said that "...in an angry parle, (conversation) / He smote the sledded poleaxe on the ice."

Probably one of these https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollaxe

Offline Northwoods

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Re: Hi picked up this Hammer Axe
« Reply #19 on: November 27, 2017, 09:08:41 PM »
Did you happen to notice that ***hache*** is French for ***axe***?
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Offline johnsironsanctuary

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Re: Hi picked up this Hammer Axe
« Reply #20 on: November 28, 2017, 10:29:35 AM »
WOW!!  A really cool piece of Nova Scotia tool history. The next wow is the blacksmith skill shown in the patent drawing. What 'smith today would or could make that fancy hammer head by that method.
Great piece!
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Offline Northwoods

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Re: Hi picked up this Hammer Axe
« Reply #21 on: December 11, 2017, 03:04:20 PM »
I was reading the history portion of the Vaughan and Bushnell site and it noted that the then Vaughan Co. of Chicago made killing axes for the local stock yards.

www.vaughanmfg.com/pages/history-of-vaughan
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