The Voyageur Hudson Bay Axe

Featured in DownEast Magazine.

Steve and Mark Ferguson grew up with a Hudson Bay axe that only came out of its box when it was time to go canoeing. At home, they chopped wood for the basement woodstove. On river trips with their father, that lightweight axe split firewood and cleared ground for portages — trip after trip, all the way to their last one together in 2009.

Today, their father’s axe lives in the South Portland workshop of Brant & Cochran. It reminds the Ferguson brothers why they do what they do: forge long-lasting traditional Maine wedge-pattern axes built to carry a lifetime of stories.

“Every time you use an axe, it tells a story, whether it’s about a canoe trip or camp or making your daughter a grilled cheese on the woodstove. You can’t say a screwdriver does that.”

“We want to build an heirloom axe that will last 100 years. Maybe it’s a poor business plan to make something that someone will buy once and never need to buy again, but that’s what we’re building.”

The Voyageur follows that same old Hudson Bay logic: light enough to portage, capable enough to make fire happen when the weather turns, and balanced for one-handed camp work from a canoe thwart or around the site.

• 1.75 lb head on 24" American hickory handle

• Hand-forged in South Portland, Maine

• Comes with leather blade guard

• Traditional Hudson Bay pattern inspired by Brant & Cochran’s family river-trip axe

• Built as an heirloom tool — the kind someone buys once and keeps telling stories with