Making a cheap old Craftsman hatchet a much better hatchet

[cstockwell]

I had purchased an inexpensive Craftsman hatchet 15 or so years ago to keep around for small cutting needs.  I never liked the finish on the handle and the hatchet head was not ideal and cutting edge on it was pretty awful.  So I put it aside with a bunch of stuff and came across it again a couple weeks ago.  I decided I was going to make into a better hatchet that I would like and use.  One thing I did like about it was the handle itself had a shape I liked and it was shaped to fit in your hand better than many of the other less expensive ones that were basically a chunk of wood that made it cheaper to build and sell.  

I didn't care for the finish on the handle and the poly/lacquer type shiny finish because it made it slippery and can give blisters over time.  That was pretty easily fixed by removing that and putting lindseed oil on it.  I also filed the hatchet head on the cutting edge to take off metal and make the cutting shape better.  Then used sharpening stones to give it a sharp edge like a knife.  Then I needed to make a sheath out of extra leather pieces I had.  Overall it came out well and now I will use it instead of my Fiskars hatchet.  Didn't take long to do, used basically inexpensive tools and things I had lying around was not an expensive hatchet to begin with.  I detail a little more in the video what was done to it.

First picture shows what the hatchet looked like before I started doing any work to it.