AXE-iddental Wrist Damage

My unnamed axe is currently resting peacefully in the tool shed, soaking up linseed oil and its new sharp-ness. Unfortunately, my wrist has just come out of its ace bandage for the first time today, and the only sharpness it is feeling is pain.

I decided to make my axe experience as authentic and, at times annoying, as possible. That means I spent 8 total hours sanding the head of the axe to get as much rust off of it as I could by hand. Everyone did it by hand, but I decided I didn't want to use anything but my hands for as much of it as I could. Again, it wasn't more impressive than the work any of my teammates did. In fact, it's probably what killed my wrist. I held the head by hand instead of using a clamp, which meant just about 8 hours of repetitive motion on my joints. It didn't end well, but I'll just have to toughen up.

After getting all of the rust off I had to "hang" my axe, meaning get the head onto the handle. 99.5% of people have to painstakingly file their handle down to fit the head, then whack the butt of it to see how far it goes on, mark that place, then lather, rinse, repeat. It takes on average two hours, but it can take much longer. Mine, somehow, took ten minutes. It went on almost perfectly the first time. I got the head off once (not easy) to sand down very minor issues and hung it again. Then a wedge gets beat into the top to fill out the gaps so the head stays on. It was so freakin' gratifying.

Today was my "final" work day (I put final in quotes because it'll never really be done), which included sharpening, and then sanding and applying linseed oil to the handle. It was a much shorter process than the last two days, and blissfully so! I was one dominant down.

Casualty of the AXE. It could be worst.