This Reinvented Axe Design Splits Wood In Record Time

While we mostly cover articles pertaining to new advancements and technological breakthroughs, one can’t ignore the improvements in basic design of items, which are used on a daily basis. This time, what we have for you is one such improvisation that has been devised for the traditional axe.
This particular design comes from Heikki Kärnä who is a Finnish inventor and has dubbed the invention as Vipukirves Leveraxe. The key idea behind this innovation was to employ simple physics principles to come up with a more efficient and safer design for axe.

The axe weights a little less than 2 kg and is something, which is a must have despite its high price tag of €193.12. Why one will pay this much for just an axe would be the right question at this time and let us explain why you should invest in this. Alright, so look at the traditional axe; it is a simple design that relies mostly on blunt force and makes use of wedged metal on a handle to transfer all the momentum to the wood upon impact and given that there is enough momentum, the wood splits.

This axe however comes with a unique difference; instead of opting for the force wedge momentum design, this particular axe works like a lever. This has been achieved by altering the centre of gravity’s position and the wedge has been placed with an offset to the handle. Upon striking, when the axe comes in contact with the wood and penetrates it, the rest of the energy that would have otherwise gone to waste is used to create a turning effect. This results in easy splitting of wood and to put it statistically, a single strike from this type of axe will allow the user to open up the wood by 8 cm, which is sufficient enough to split it.

The designer states; ‘Everybody who has tried splitting wood with a traditional axe knows that it takes a lot of power to penetrate and split the wood. Now, you can easily and safely start splitting suitably sized logs from the sides by striking closer to edges. No more need for the futile first heavy strikes just to get the log split in two.’

He further states that this design allows for easy retraction of axe from wood and also said; ‘When using a chopping block with a tire setup you can achieve a burst of strikes at a frequency of 100 strikes a minute. Thus, as an example, using 10 strikes to chop a log would take 6 seconds.’

We believe such innovations and improvising of ideas is a must and should be supported and encouraged.