Paul Chen 2044 Short Viking Axe with Hardwood Handles

Awesome axe, use it when I need an axe and it does the job

It is a fine axe

Top quality designs from Paul Chen and steel from Hanwei -- as always. The steel really is excellent. The design is elegant, functional and loosely historical (theirs were cast iron, where ours are of a steel equal in grade to that used on the space shuttle). The handle is stained and shaped like an oval with flattened sides. It feels very nice in the hand.cons: As with all Hanwei axes, all of the money you spend on them is put into the steel. Fitting an axe head to a wooden handle is not a process which can be done by machine, or with a robot, not even in 2015. So, they would probably triple the price, paying someone to spend an hour carefully fitting a handle.suggestions: Hammer the head toward the top end, and attempt to wedge it as far up as you can with just force. Then go grab a stick from outside, and shave some straw sized splinters off, or I've even heard of people using chopsticks to save time, they work as they're nice and soft. Knife one end until its a nice thin wedge, jam it in a gap and hammer it in until you break the shim stick. And just keep shoving wedges up under the head from both sides, until it's so packed with wood there are no gaps, then you press your knife against the trim to clean it up, and if the wood is white, or off color, and you don't want to paint it, you can always use the old shop-trick of coloring them with a pencil to hide them. Cheers.