How Not To

Step 2 Don't Swing an Adze like an Axe

My people are seriously into axes. Every Christmas my folks gave me a bigger one til I had the biggest one available. Then they started giving me guns. But I digress.

That thing on the right is called an "Adze".
It's a sort of sharp hoe for carving wood. It behaves nothing like an axe.
I spent all morning grinding and shaping a swiss entrenching tool til it looks as you see and was very sharp. Then I went around asking my local wood craft gurus how to use it.
None of them knew so I looked in my Eric Sloane books and started chopping as shown in an illustration there. On swing number three it bounced funny and gashed my foot wide open.

Ever see a reflexology chart? The second picture is an example by Chris Stormer.
When I chopped my foot open, in the split second before the bleeding started I looked deep into the gash in my foot and saw all those lungs and ovaries and things, just like in the drawings.

Then I realized what the Sloane drawings had shown. Those old-timers in the Sloane drawings, they were chopping their feet also!

The final realization was that I was surrounded by people who didn't know how to use this tool, and all I had to do was go somewhere else and watch people doing it right. And that would be a lot safer and cheaper than trying to do it all myself in a state of dangerous ignorance.

"Plane tickets are cheap" I thought. "A lot cheaper than chopping my foot like this."

So I superglued my foot back together and superglued some cloth patches on top to hold it closed.
That worked really well. I only put the superglue on the surface layers of skin, to draw the wound together like stitches. It worked a little too well. I forgot about it and accidentally ripped the patch off a couple of times, re-opening the wound before it was properly healed. More scar tissue.
The photo here shows my foot after the repairs. There were ghastly puddles of blood earlier, and bloody footprints, etc. etc. but I cleaned it up before thinking of a camera.

I went to a bookstore and bought guidebooks, bought plane tickets to the Marshall Islands and rented a room there by email. I learned how to use an adze properly, several different styles.
I've been travelling and documenting Heirloom Technology ever since.

A year or so later a buddy gave me a nice piece of sitka spruce with his dried blood all over it. He'd been carving it into a paddle with an adze and chopped himself. After that he didn't feel like finishing the project or even dealing with that particular piece of wood.

Comments

[ScubaSteve]

Believe it or not, superglue was designed in WWII as a sort of "liquid bandage"

[lordofthedonuts]

It was used in vietnam too, and still used today, you can find it in spray band aid. it's pretty cool ;p

[NormMonkey]

Medical superglue (for closing wounds and such) is basically the same stuff as regular superglue (for gluing hard hats to I-beams and such) except the medical stuff is missing some of the toxins that the regular stuff has.

[rainger]

Right! I don't use hardware-store grade super glue anymore after I found that a leading ingredient is Cyanide! But it did work great for sealing a split lip when playing the trumpet!

[beehard44]

it works by binding with the water in the blood to make a hard substance, kinda like regular super glue but regular super glue gets water from the moisture in the air

[Metalcaster14]

haha wow no one made a comment about him seeing ovaries and lungs in his feet! haha

[Hycro]

Lol...that's probably what it looked like at a glance, when my cousin put a REALLY deep gash in his arm (if it had have been any deeper, he would have been lucky to loose only his arm...), and when the first responders got there, and told me it was alright to remove a buddy's shirt from the wound (using it to apply pressure, and help stop bleeding) I could see the arteries, fatty tissue, and I think the muscles as well in his arm, and at a glance, it looks a lot like miniature lungs and ovaries...well, like the anatomical drawings you see in doctor's offices...

[_soapy_]

So go on then, tell us how to use an adze. In fact, tell us what one is! (Is it one of those things for making a dug-out canoe?)

[bikerbob2005]

take a log crosscut about every 6 inches or so. then take adze and knock out the chunks.leaving a "board"roll log 90 deg repete,and 2 more times have a squared off timber this was before the bucking saw was invented.The timbers can be identified easily by the score crosscuts and rough texture.still in use by Amish when timber it too long to work over the pit with bucking saw. does this help?

[_soapy_]

Thanks. Pretty much like a pickaxe for wood, crossed with a hoe.

[bikerbob2005]

Or an over sized chisel with handle at 90 deg. Smaller chunks of wood place them on a stump to work.

[Ithica]

You were swinging an adze while barefoot?

[ScubaSteve]

superglue was actually designed as a "liquid bandage" in WWII

[minerug]

(true story)- one I was mucking around with a machete, it bounced funny off the tree and peirced a secondary artey in my leg.... lots of blood.

[SevereFlame]

Ouch. Be careful about those bounces.