I thought it would be fun to buy one of the Sportsman's Guide Swiss Military surplus hatchets and see what they are about. 


It came today! I was pretty excited cutting the box open and ripping off the packaging. 


My initial observations:


The head looked like it was on upside down. Partly because of the upsweep, but also because of the radius of the grind. The hang looked slightly open rather than the usual neutral or slightly closed. 


The handle had a pretty substantial gap at the back of the eye. The handle was pressed on with a hydralic press so there was a very substantial amount of wood peeled up around the rest of the eye. 


The handle is more comfortable than it looks in the pictures. It's not fancy, but it's functional. There was no coating. It looked treated with BLO. It was very light so the handle material is not classic hardwood. 


The wedge was huge! Very wide. 


The edge was pretty thick. It took a lot of thinning to get the cheeks down to anywhere near what I wanted. It would have been a lot of work with a hand file. 


My mods:


I started by drilling out the wedge with closely spaced 1/8" holes all the way across about 1" deep. Once I tilted the drill bit enought to connect the holes  it was pretty easy to pop the rest of it out with a small screw driver and some patience. The kerf wasn't deep enough to be effective for long. 


I refit the head about 1/2" lower on the handle while vastly improving the fit and removing all gaps. I cut the kerf to about 2/3 of the height of the head. I had a wide wedge that filled the entire gap perfectly! 


I measured the eye top and bottom. The eye is the same on both ends and tighter in the middle. It can easily be mounted either way. I saved myself some grinding time by flipping it over. 


Then I thinned out the handle right below the head and sanded the entire handle. It drank in lots of BLO. I did two consecutive coats it was so thirsty. 


The final length is 15" and 2 lb 2 oz over all. The head seems to be 1.75 lb. 


After that, all that needed to be done was sharpening and trying it out. The steel was very tough. It took a lot of grinding to get to my desired profile. I had to dip it several times to keep the heat down. 








The edge looks a bit crooked in the picture but that is because the edge is angled away a bit. It's actually pretty well lined up. 


I made several cuts including some flatening cuts and cutting some branches in two. The handle is nothing to write home about but it did work out okay. It cut like a laser. The steel seems very good. It was still shaving sharp with zero damage. 


The head is on the heavy side for working with it all day single handed. I would be happier with this head on a 20" handle. For right now it can stay. 


It fits in the small axe covers sold on Amazon. 


Over all this is a very decent hatchet. I am very glad I bought it for $19.99 with a free shipping code. I would not spend any more than that for it, but it is very much worth they money. 


I do not consider this axe a finished product as it comes, but with 60 minutes of work it became a really decent little axe. I think it was worth the effort.