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I spent a little more time on the new hatchet today. One thing you will notice when buying vintage heads is how little effort was put into making them function properly. Most will have never been ground properly by the end user, who more often than not would just put a half-hearted "edge" on them with a grinder. At one point axes were sold with the intent of the user putting a grind and profile on them that best suited their needs. There was no "off the shelf" option, and even though many are marketed as such today, still require work to be done to it to be a properly functioning tool to each person's specific application. In a lot of older axe manuals you'll come across a "half moon" grind profile that most people recommended. The problem with that is people have an image in mind of what it should look like vs arriving at the proper bevel angle that they're shooting for. This hatchet head is a good example of why the half moon/half banana/full banana or any other rule isn't applicable 9 times out of 10. Rarely are vintage and hand forged axe heads perfectly symmetrical. If you notice on this hatchet head, the cheek closest to the heel is thinner than the cheek closest to the toe, with a high centerline between the two. Im about 2 minutes of filing away from that bevel perfectly being even across the bit, yet I will still have material on the lower cheek that has yet to be touched by the file. You can download and print out bevel angle guides (there are a few in the links in the OP), and I suggest using them vs your eyeballs when reprofiling or putting a new grind on an axe.
