Reinventing the Axe

Three weeks ago, we featured the work of the young Australian behind the Primitive Technology blog, who built a stone adze from scratch in the wild, which he then proceeded to use to build a primitive, yet effective and durable shelter from his surrounding materials.

As human invention goes, the adze is a contemporary of the axe, another tool that first saw the light of day in the stone age.

Today, we're going to feature the modern reinvention of the axe, in which the millenia-old design is being revisited by Finnish inventor Heikki Kärnä to make it a more effective tool, funding for the development of which is now being sought via Kickstarter. Meet the Leveraxe:

We love the quote from Business Insider regarding the invention:

This weird, super-efficient axe solves an engineering problem most people don't even know exists.

Which explains why we're helping to spread the word. For anyone who has ever had or will have a need to split wood logs, this design looks to have an edge up over its traditional axe competition.