Hi all:
In our family it was the tradition to hand down the handle style in the form of a flat board that holds the historic shape and can be traced to a new rough blank.
Our handles had a quite a bit of swing in the belly of the handle as it exits the head of the axe, and then curved prominently at the end with a carved hand grip or fawn's foot as mentioned.
I use white ash, but really like wild cherry if it can be obtained.
It sounds like all the information from those ahead of my post is good and can not be improved upon in my opinion, I just thought that I would add my little touch on the blade of the handle for your interest.
The turn at the end gives the handle(r) good control of the axe as you swing it, and once you have used an axe with this feature you will not want to return to the boughten straighter axe handles
NH
NH
