Garant Axe Makeover

I was gifted an axe by a friend of mine, Ross aka Wood Trekker, a little while back.  The axe was the Garant Grizzly Pro Series which he did a review on. Ross's results of the Grizzly Pro Series Axe (follow the link for Ross's review) were pretty good despite the look and feel the axe originally had.  The head was very good and even kept up with a Gransfors Bruks Scandinavian Forest axe.  So the axe just needed a little touching up and I felt it would be quite the user.  So let's get to it.  Here's the axe as it arrived:

I was initially going to replace the handle but soon realized it had a pretty large eye for a 1.75lb head.  The eye was the same size as my 3.5lb Dunlap axe.  So I decided to see if I could make the handle fit my needs.  First thing I did was sand off the paint and lacquer from handle.  Next I took most of the paint off the head.

 Now the two inches at the end of the handle were about as worthless as I've ever seen.  So I trimmed it down to a nice straightline end that fits the hand nice without the extra inches sticking out.  Total length is now 23 inches.  This will now pack better as well as looks better in my opinion.  I put on a few coats of boiled linseed oil and it's more the bushaxe we all like to carry.

The way it came it was hafted with only a wooden wedge.  I decided to add a metal wedge for added security.  The initial wood wedge must have been sealed pretty well as the there was a small gap in the eye I was sure would fill in after the metal wedge.  But it didn't.  So either way now it should hold up very well.

The grain was okay.  Not bad but not great, but good enough for an axe this size.

Well all it needed now was a sheath.  So here you have it finished and ready to go.

Well this wasn't hard by any means but it is an improvement for the use I have in mind for it.

Thanks for looking