Gransfors Bruk Outdoor Axe

Lightweight, a fantastic chopper and splitter...much better and lighter than a large Bowie-style knife for bushcrafting and camping chores. A joy to use.

This is a beautifully designed and balanced lightweight hand axe for the hiker, back country camper, and bushcrafter. You can certainly build an expedient shelter, you can fell, limb, buck, split, and carve trees that are 5-inches in diameter or less fairly readily. You can use it to skin, clean, and butcher small game. Carrying this and a small locking folder would suffice for multiple days in the back country. 

The handle is fairly small in diameter, and round with just a very slight curve at the bottom along with a swell to aid in retention. It's big enough to consider this a "hand-and-a-half" axe...primarily for one-handed use but you can use two hands for larger jobs like felling, bucking, or splitting. The blade is wedge-shaped and works great for splitting, but has a small length for its weight which helps in penetrating and chopping beyond expectation.

This thing chews through wood without a lot of effort. I was able to fell, limb, and buck a 10-foot tree that was around 4 inches in diameter (dead madrone, fairly hard wood), in well under 10 minutes...yes, I did work up a sweat. For bucking, I held the limbed trunk vertically and four or five one-handed swings would do it. While I was at it, the 8-foot Christmas tree had to be disposed of. Normally we haul these to the dump/transfer station, but in less than five minutes I used the Outdoor Axe to literally shred it (limb and buck) and put it in the yard waste dumpster.

I've only gotten a few weeks' use with it, but Granfors Bruk has a sterling reputation and there are plenty of YouTube reviews on this axe (how I discovered and then became intrigued by it). Suffice it to say that if it is properly maintained your heirs will enjoy it long after you're gone.

I compared this axe to several similarly-sized competitors including the HB Almike (another good hand axe), but chose this over the others for its combination of light weight and the capabilities based upon its design. I bought this axe for multi-day hiking/camping trips in the Cascades here in the PNW, and also as a camp axe for multi-day adventure motorcycling/camping trips up and down the West Coast and cross-country. I can't wait to take it along with me. In the meantime, I've cleaned up an awful lot of dead limbs and trees in our one-acre yard, and enjoyed the resulting firepit fires.

Background

Some experience with axes and hatchets, mostly American, but moving to the Swedish axes for their quality of design and manufacture. This is replacing a Gerber camp axe w/17" handle, and is much lighter and does a better job.