I Forged An Axe From The WORST Steel Possible

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]What is the worst steel that you can use for an axe? Most people would probably say rebar. It's inconsistent and most likely impossible to harden. Can I make a functional axe out of rebar? And how good or bad will it actually be? Let's find out.

[00:00:18]So, this idea actually came from BM Sculptures who made a project using the worst wood possible. And that got me thinking like what's the worst steel possible? And immediately rebar came to mind and I just had to try it. Now you might be thinking, "What's the point?

[00:00:34]You can't even harden rebar, right?"

[00:00:36]Well, I may or may not have a trick or two up my sleeve.

[00:00:41]I start by upsetting the piece on the power hammer. The goal is to reduce the length and instead increase the thickness. Basically making the billet bigger and chunkier and also to square things up or in this case rectangle things up.

[00:00:56]Now, you can obviously see the remnants of the rebar lines. They almost look like huge cracks or cold shots, but I know for a fact that they are not deep.

[00:01:06]So, I'm not going to do anything about them at this stage. I want to see what happens. Anyway, I mark out where I want the eye to go and then I start punching it using what's usually referred to as an eye punch. Now, punching the eye is a fairly fundamental technique if you want to make axes or other eyed tools. But just because it's fundamental doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy.

[00:01:30]So, as I start, you can see the punch leaves a little hole in the axe. Now, the goal is to keep that hole as straight as possible. So, I am turning the billet every now and then, and the reason for that is to prevent my inaccuracy of holding the tool straight from making a crude hole. So, by turning the billet, that inaccuracy kind of evens itself out, and I'm left with a fairly straight hole.

[00:01:56]Now, I aim to go about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through, and then I flip it and start punching from the other side. But why not just go all the way through from one side? Well, I suppose you could, but by starting from the other side where the two holes meet, the negative material from the punch gets sheared off cleanly, and we're left with a nice straight hole all the way through the billet.

[00:02:22]Now, to be able to shape the eye and forge around it, I insert an axe strip.

[00:02:27]It's basically a tapered bar of steel in the shape of an axi. My goal here is to draw out the lugs or ears of the axe.

[00:02:35]Not only do they make the axe look more beautiful, but they also increase the amount of surface area in contact with the handle, which is a good thing.

[00:02:43]Anyway, I draw them out using the peen on my hammer. And this can be quite tricky in the beginning. Usually, that first heat or so is the hardest part, but once you get going, it gets easier and easier.

[00:03:07]Now, for the model that I have in mind, I only want the Lux on the bottom. So, to remove the ones on top, I use a technique called hot rasping using a frier's rasp. And it is incredibly efficient at removing material.

[00:03:19]Seriously, this is the perfect moment to take some extra time and work on the details around the eye and the neck. I know it's tempting to jump straight into the blade and make it look epic and whatnot, but we need to hold our horses a little bit.

[00:03:37]Now, for those of you who are parents, you can imagine having a babysitter.

[00:03:40]That gives you the chance to enjoy a nice dinner or tackle a project at home without needing to tend to the kids, if only for a little while. I think of the axe the same way, kind of. The blade hasn't been forged yet, which gives us a brief window of freedom to focus on the eye, the pole, and the lux without being disturbed. And as soon as the blade is formed, it can get in the way and make it hard to reach certain areas. So I always try to make the most of this undisturbed time.

[00:04:08]All right, so I want to share a little trick with you. As you can see, the ax is still very thick in this area of the spine right here. And the next step is that I want to make a set right in front of the eye there. That will act as a transition from the eye to the blade and make a nice clean scoop and also isolate the blade a little bit. The only problem is if I do that now and then thin out the spine area, that initial setown will be drawn out and moved slightly to the front, which is something I don't want.

[00:04:32]So the way to prevent this is to first thin out the section just in front of the eye here before I make the set down.

[00:04:38]That way I will have way more control of the location of the set down.

[00:04:45]Now, I've shown this spring folder plenty of times on the channel already, but I can't stress enough just how useful they are, especially for a single person shop. They allow me to use top and bottom dice and be a striker at the same time. So, I just line everything up and hit it hard, and I get the same precision as if I had another person holding the tool.

[00:05:14]So, I just got to share something with you. A little while back, I got a YouTube recommendation for a podcast I didn't even know existed. The Forged and Foundry podcast with Carrie Stagmer and Tony Swatton. Now, those two guys, man.

[00:05:27]Man-at-arms and Man-at-Arms Reforged is the reason why I started forging in the first place. I watched everything they made and I was such a huge fan. But, you know, over the years, eventually the hobby became a job. And I've been doing this full-time now for quite a while, and some of that fanboy feeling has kind of faded. But when I heard those two guys together on that podcast, something just hit me. It was like all of a sudden I was a fan again. The excitement, the drive, the inspiration, everything came rushing back. It's almost like when you're a kid and your older brother makes you a mix CD. Yeah, I'm that old.

[00:06:07]with Maiden, Metallica, Nightwish. Then you grow up and listen to other things, find your own style, whatnot. But then one day you find that old CD and you put it on and all of a sudden it's like you remember why you love music. That's how this felt to me. And that's also what this rebar project reminds me of. When you're starting out, you don't necessarily have all those perfect materials and tools. You just take what you have and you try because it's all about that spark, that feeling when an idea grabs you and you just have to go there and see what happens. Anyway, I thought that was really cool and if you haven't checked out Man- at Arms yet, you are definitely missing out.

[00:06:50]Now, I got to say I'm a little bit worried whether or not we can get this become a functional axe or not. It feels quite soft if I'm honest. Now, don't get me wrong, it's amazing to forge. It moves to my every command, but I wonder if it's maybe a little bit too soft.

[00:07:24]Once I'm happy with the blade, I flip it around and go back to the eye section once more. This time it's all about the final shape. Making sure that everything is straight and just how I want it.

[00:08:18]All right, so I'm done with the forging and I got to say I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. However, there are a couple things that I'm not so happy about. First off, I personally think that the proportions are a bit off. The eye section is just a little bit too big compared to the blade. And secondly, I would have liked the set down to be just a little bit deeper. That would have given it a little bit more schwung and just look a little bit better in my opinion. Anyway, it's time to clean it up. And since I did all the forging with just hand tools, I might as well continue on that trend and do all the cleanup with hand tools as well.

[00:09:14]Hey, hey, hey.

[00:09:35]All right, that cleaned up nicely. Now, it's important not to forget to mark your work, something I have a tendency to almost always forget. After that, I normalize the axe and let it rest before we move on to hardening. Or do we?

[00:09:57]So, if you're interested in learning more about forging axis, I actually wrote a book called Beginner's Guide to Forging Axis, and it's basically everything that I know about forging axis in one book. It's jammed up with lots of pictures, and it even has video demonstrations. So, if you're interested, you can click the link in the description to learn more. It's also a great way to support what I do here.

[00:10:16]So, thank you so much for considering.

[00:10:17]Let's get back to the video.

[00:10:35]All right, this is the moment I have been waiting for. It's time to find out if we can harden this rebar axe. Now, we are going to do a little bit of a test here. So, in front of me, I have three buckets, each with a different quenching fluid. In the first one, I have regular hardening oil. In the second one, it's plain water. And in the third one, and this is interesting, something that's usually referred to as super quench, a type of mixture that's sometimes used for lower carbon steels to make them a little bit harder. Now, before we jump in, I have prepared two test pieces from the same rebar as the axe. One for the oil and one for the water. And I also have these rockwell files so we can test the hardness. And that way we can measure before and after the quench to see if anything actually happens. All right. Can we harden rebar or at least make it a little bit harder? Let's find out. So I just want to mention the rockwell files real quick. So these range from 40 to 65. 40 being a bit softer and 65 being very hard. Now higher hardness is not always better. It all depends on the purpose of the tool.

[00:11:26]For example, a splitting axe needs to be a little bit tougher to absorb the impact. While on the other side, a carving axe tends to be a little bit harder so that it can maintain a sharp edge for longer. And in general, most axes tends to fall somewhere in between 50 and 55. And some are a little bit higher and some are a little bit lower.

[00:11:43]It's all about finding the right balance between hardness and toughness. And that balance depends on the purpose of the tool. So, with that out of the way, let's begin. So, basically, the way it works is if the file bites, the file is harder than the object. In this case, the axe. If the file skates and doesn't bite, most likely the object is harder.

[00:12:00]And if that happens, you take a harder file and try again until the file bites.

[00:12:05]That way, you can get a pretty good idea, even though it's not perfect, of how hard the object is. In this case, on both the axe and the rebar coins, the 40 Rockwell file bites fairly easy.

[00:12:18]All right, let's begin the test. And I start by quenching the first coin in the oil.

[00:12:29]It seems like the 40 Rockwell file doesn't really bite anymore. It scratches the surface a little, but it definitely does not bite.

[00:12:40]The 45 file scratches a little bit more, but still no deep bites, which is not what I expected at all. I even had to try the 50 file, and yeah, that took a pretty deep bite.

[00:12:52]>> Yeah. Okay.

[00:12:53]>> Weird. Let's move on to the water quench.

[00:13:04]Those are pretty deep scratches. Maybe not quite as deep as before, but the 45 file. Yeah, that's a KO. Okay, so I wasn't expecting that at all. In my mind, there were only two outcomes from this. Either there would be no difference at all because rebar is unh hardenable or the water quench would be harder, but it seems to be the other way around. So, I don't know what to think anymore. Anyway, let's move on to the super quench and see how that goes.

[00:14:29]Yeah. Okay.

[00:14:39]All right. So, that was kind of interesting. The 40 Rockwell file definitely did scratch the surface slightly, but it never really did bite in. It mostly skated off. However, the 45 file did bite in a little bit, but not as deep as it did before the hardening. Now, what's funny is that it almost feels like it's a little bit patchy. Like some places it bites a little bit more, and others it almost skates right off. And even though I had a pretty even heat going into the quench, I think at least it seems to have hardened rather unevenly. Now, maybe that has something to do with the composition or how rebar is made. Now, if you know why this happened, please leave a comment. I would love to know why. But anyway, it seems like it got a little bit harder. Or at least I'm imagining it did. So, let me clean this up, put an edge and a handle on it, and then I want to give it away to one of you guys.

[00:16:36]So, did we manage to make a functional axe out of rebar? Well, the short answer is obviously yes, but I guess it depends on your definition of functional. It definitely holds an edge better than my aluminium axe, that's for sure. Please let me know what you think in the comments section. And as promised, I am giving this axe away. So, if you're interested, make sure that you're subscribed to the YouTube channel and leave a comment including the word rebar and I will pick one out that will receive this axe. Now, make sure to read the pin comment. All the necessary information about the giveaway, when it ends, and so on is in the pin comment.

[00:17:05]So, make sure to read the pin comment.

[00:17:06]Anyway, thank you so much for watching.

[00:17:08]I really hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you in the next one. Goodbye.