I often find myself needing to fit a new handle for various tools. I haven't had very good success. Take a sledge hammer for instance. What I do is pound nails in the head to make it tight. While that makes a good tight fit, usually a couple blows later the handle breaks off at the head. I don't know if it is due to technique, quality of wood, or both. I also need to make handles for other tools like hammers, machetes and scythes. So wondering if anyone has some experience or advice:

1. Tips on how to fit a handle securely to a tool?
2. How to make a hardwood handle?

Hi,
If your down in the tropic zone - as Tom Waits says - you got to find out from the locals first of all what sorts of wood they use there for such things, probably not ash n hickory, and many tropical woods can be very hard and brittle and not suitable for axes and hammers and such. But I'm sure you'll be able to find the local equivalent.
That said, that wood must be very dry to begin with, then using chisel, knife, I find a small spokeshave useful, properly fit that handle. Many test fittings will be necessary, marking the high spots and pairing them slowly down. I wouldn't grind the high spots by filing, rasping or sanding or anything, just shave them down carefully. At the end you'll probably want to wedge the handle with a kerf perpendicular to the striking direction. Drilling a little hole at the end of the kerf can help to prevent it going further. No need to glue that wedge in there, with a proper fit it will stay put.
You write of a pretty broad variety of implements you are wanting to put some kind of grip or handle on. I'm referring to here to a handle that passes through the implement like an axe for example. A scythe usually has some kind of integral clamping mechanism and so the fit is not overly critical unlike the choice of wood which must be tough like ash wood - maybe you could make one from rosewood.

Greetings

Don Wagstaff

When Tom, a friend, taught me how to fit hammer handles to heads for my mechanic broken off handles, we used a shaving horse to hold the handles and spoke shaves to fit them. And we used two inside caliper gages to set one for the large distance and one for the short distance. We transfered these to two dimensions, to outside caliper gages so we could test our handles to make them the correct shape before testing them into the head.
Once they were the correct size we placed the handle into the head, and seated it to the correct spot. Then we drove in a prepared hardwood wedge to flair out the handle end, cutting off the excess wedge once it seated to the bottom of the kerf cut into the handle.
After the hardwood wedge was seated, we then drove in a small metal wedge on and angle to the hardwood wedge and this secured the hardwood wedge, as well as somewhat flaring the handle out in the other direction.

If it wasn't mentioned to you, ever, don't soak a handle in water to expand it into the head, this will only damage the handle and cause it to break off later on.

If you're not using dry wood, one method to attach a handle is to place the end of the handle, that is going into the head, into a pail of sand, which is on top of a heat source like a stove. This heated sand will dry out the handle end a little, making it easier to fit into the head.

Once secured into the head, the moisture in the handle will equalize back down into the head end and swell it up a little and hold it tight to the head, letting it all dry out evenly together.

Good luck.

Jim Rogers