Marbles Camp Axe 18

Great little axe , a nice weight to it and the head is well made with a good sharpness, my only issue and its not a big deal , is that the handle is a little thin , otherwise great little hatchet for small tasks.

So far this axe looks and feels great. It is sharp straight out of the box and the handle feels solid I will soon put it to the test.

I like it. It's no Gransfors, but it does the job. The head is a nice shape, decent amount of blade, but still fairly lightweight. The edge grind is quite wide, which makes for a durable edge, but not as sharp as I'd like. It comes convexed, but I might sit there with a stone for a few hours and reprofile it to a flat bevel, but that's just my preference. There's no sheath with it, it's just an axe in a box, so it's worth bearing in mind the extra cost of making/buying a sheath, or just living without one. Bit of a shame, but at this price it makes sense. Grain alignment is decent on mine, about 10 degress off, but I can't see it being too much of an issue. To me, one of the weakest points of the axe is the handle. It gets very thin towards the bottom. I don't have big hands, but even I wish it was wider. It's wide at the top, and is a bit of a strange shape for comfortably choking up for finer work, but tapers down to a very thin handle. Not only does that make it weaker, it makes it less comfortable. I like about 5mm of gap between my fingers and heel of my palm when gripping an axe, but my fingers wrap around and touch my palm holding this one, which isn't very comfortable. It works fine, but I just wish it was thicker. Almost feels like it was designed as a youth axe. That's about it really. Nothing too exciting here really. It's a nice head, but the handle geometry kind of lets it down. It's nice, small, portable hatchet, and really, I don't think you could do better for the price. Not an absolute must-buy, but still a decent purchase.