Pickeroon

Your first question is probably what even is a Pickeroon, well it's basically an arm extender for picking up wood. If you cut your own firewood or handle a lot of wood then it's a great way to make the work easier and faster. The idea is that the 'pick' shape will stick into the wood and make it easier to either drag or pick up the wood.

I found an old broken one a few years ago and didn't even know what it was at the time, since then it's come in handy and the only problem has been I only had one, so when my boys were helping me with firewood they pilfered it and I went without.

So I've been meaning to either buy or make a couple more of these for a while. I've had a couple of spare axe heads floating around so I decided to chop one up for this project.

• Old Axe Head
• Wood for Handle
• Angle Grinder
• Cutting Disc
• Grinding Disc
• Flap Disk
• Bucket of cold water
• Saw
• Spokeshave
• Wood Rasp
• Wood Glue

Using the cut off disc on the angle grinder cut the axehead into two equal halves. You should be able to make two Pickeroons out of a single Axe Head.

Have a bucket of water nearby you can keep dipping the axe head into to cool off.

I used my existing Pickeroon to trace out a basic stencil onto a piece of cardboard and then transfer this onto a piece of the axehead.

I have since made a proper template you can just print out for this step.

Once again use the cut-off disc and start to cut pieces of steel away until you have the basic shape of the pick formed. You will need to make a series of relief cuts to be able to easily remove the steel.

I then swapped to a grinding disc and quickly smoothed it out.

The backend of the Pickeroon doesn't need to be as robust as an axe since it's not really working anywhere nearly as hard, plus I wanted to remove as much weight as possible and make it looks a little nicer.

I took the hard corners off with the cutoff disc and then one again gave it a quick smooth with a grinding disc.

Now you should use the grinding disc to remove any remaining material you need to arrive at the final shape you want. Now swap over to a flap disc and sand everything smooth and round over all the hard edges. You can also use the flap disc to 'sharpen' the final point of the pickeroon at this stage.

It's your choice to stop at this stage or go through a series of finer grit flap discs until you bring it to a finish you are happy with. I just gave it a quick buff to be honest.

At this stage, I had to stop for the night but took a few extra photos to show what it should look like.

The first step is to select a piece of wood with straight grain and without any knots. I checked the length by comparing it to an axe handle template and my existing Pickeroon. I then sawed it to a little longer than I needed.

Now saw the wood down the length to create a flat surface, I then put the wood into the vice and used a scrub plane to take off any high spots and then my Jack plane to finish flattening it. I gave the other side a quick skim down with the scrub plan to tidey it up since it was a piece of wood I had split in half a while ago.

I used a Jigsaw to rough out the basic shape of the handle. The more you can saw off now the easier the final shaping process will be.

I used a marking gauge to set the final thickness of the handle and then used the scrub plane to quickly take the wood down to the final level.

Use a pencil to trace the inside of the pickeroon onto the handle and saw away the unneeded wood. Use a rasp and chisel to gradually trim away enough of the wood that the handle will fit tightly onto the pickeroon head.

I find using a Spokeshave to shape out the contours of the handle is really fast, and I just finished off the handle with a rasp. I then used a card scrapper to remove the bulk of the rasp tool marks and finished the entire handle with some sandpaper.

Now you just need to saw a slot in the handle for the wedge and you can insert the handle into the pickeroon head tightly. I cut a wedge out of some hardwood and after applying some glue into the slot and on the sides of the wedge I used a mallet to drive the wedge into the slot firmly. Use a damp rag to wipe out glue that spills out.

Once the glue is dry you can trim the wood out the top of the handle, I like to leave between 5mm and 10mm poking out.

Unfortunately, a small knot in the base of the handle fell out and left a hole, so I mixed up some 5-minute epoxy on my new mixing table and filled the hole. You can sand or file this smooth after it sets.

Lastly, I applied a coat of linseed oil and after leaving it to soak in for a while I wiped off the excess oil.