Wednesday, July 10, 2019

My journey into Axe Throwing

In March of 2019 my bestie organized her father's birthday that included a variety of activities that culminated at Urban Axes Boston located in Somerville MA. I arrived not knowing what to expect and discovered that it's a well organized and well thought out operation. Upon walking in the staff has you fill out a release form if you haven't already done so via the internet. The staff checked my ID and ensured that the information entered on the release matches up and to validate age (21 and over), and finish with a check for closed toe footwear. All checks complete a wrist band is provided indicating when and where I'm throwing an axe, or if you're just spectating (you will still need to fill out the release as a spectator). Off I go to huck an axe at a bunch of 2x10s...well almost.

The throwing area is an arena divided into a set of lanes which are two adjacent areas with targets. think of the two lanes in a bowling alley that share the same ball return. There are clear boundaries for axe throwing demarked by a short wall that doubles as a counter, and paint lines for segregating arena and spectator area, throwing lines and fault lines. I met my coach Travis (Urban Axes Boston) who walked us through how to throw an axe starting with a two-handed throw, then one-handed throw and finishes with explaining scoring and gameplay. Urban Axes is a National Axe Throwing Federation (NATF) member and use the rules and match format provided by NATF. To summarize the NATF rules a match has three throws of five between two players. The target has three rings starting from bullseye to the outer ring and the points are 5, 3, and 1 respectively with two smaller green dots at the top left and right corners above the target called clutch. The clutch is only available on the fifth throw and is worth 7 points. Axe scoring is done by the majority of the blade in a ring with favour towards the higher point value as it is measured from the outer edge of the paint line inward with the exception of clutch where you only need to break paint. Once we learn the gameplay and have had a few practice throws, we begin throwing axes for points. It was awesome. The points racking up and narrowing down to a final style bracket I came out the victor (sorry not sorry bestie's dad's birthday and all). Travis mentions to me that there's a league and encouraged me to join one...


I signed up for what is now Season 3 at Urban Axes Boston and joined Sunday Green which is the earlier of the two leagues on Sunday night. The first time meeting the rest of my fellow Sunday green league on week one was really great, and count myself fortunate to be among some stellar humans within a super supportive environment. It was fortuitous to have joined a night where there are good throwers still dialling in their technique and gave me a lot of room to grow. Our night has 29 people total, and it was explained on the first night that the top 16 players will move onto a final championship and I set a goal for myself to be within the top 16 for playoffs on week 8. Previous to arriving we received league emails notifying the availability of Coldsteel Axe Gangs for purchase by league members, which I decided on immediately recalling every sport I've ever played and how having my own gear helps improves my performance by fixing what may be a variable using house axes. In hindsight, it was a great decision as the Axe Gang has an ideal shape to the axe head where the cheeks (the sidewall of an axe) thinly taper to a fine edge that holds a really sharp edge well where the Axe Gang is differentially hardened at the blade while the rest of the head is softer to absorb impact (read: less bounce out). They initially came with something like an eighteen-inch length handle which is just too long and was cut down to fifteen inch overall for me. I threw with it at that length for a few weeks and I've discovered that 13 3/8" is an ideal length for me, and just slightly over the NATF minimum length of thirteen inches measured from eye to heel. NATF does have clear guidance on min and max on axe head weight and blade length as well. The Axe Gang weighs just .05 lbs over the minimum axe head weight at 1.3 lbs with a max allowable blade length of four inches that provide a lot of surface area for clutches. The blade comes to a sharp point at the top and bottom that increase the chance for inexperienced throwers like myself to stick the axe in the board. Overall an ideal axe and why I see nearly all of the top throwers in the NATF throwing an Axe Gang in one form or another. Since the release of the axe gang between increased popularity of axe throwing and feedback from end users, Coldsteel now offers the Competition Thrower which is an axe gang hung on a shorter handle and the head painted grey versus the original black. Otherwise no difference in the axe head itself.

The fun thing in axe culture is personalizing your axe. There are some things that would be disadvantageous to do, like adding anything that would increase the friction that can negatively affect the release. But sometimes, it's not all about performance and just got to have fun. I've seen vairous painted handles and fully painted axes or covered in stickers from various things. Adorned full of sharpie writing, or just left as is and let age and use be the only character on the axe. I went the route of cleaning up the axe head by removing the paint and sanding and polishing out most of the tooling and production marking. The Axe Gang comes with a straight handle which I've been contemplating replacing with a curved fawns foot style handle, but after getting terribly made handles delivered via Amazon (the eyes were cut in the wrong direction) I decided to apply my woodworking experience and re-profile the straight handle. I also bought two more Axe Gangs to hedge against adverse change that doesn't work. I narrowed it down after experimentation to a profile that I really like throwing and will need to produce my own handles from hickory sheets going forward if any of them break.

First experiment next to my league thrower maintaining the straight handle

Later iterations as I developed the profile that I use today (photo with axe on counter with sharpie graffit)

The first week Zen was the league coach as our regular season coach Abby was busy off winning first place for a west coast swing dance competition (congrats @axcellentabby !). League nights offer an hour window before start time for practice which I showed up for religiously. Each league night practice I doggedly sought guidance and tips from my coaches and fellow leaguers, making small changes to my throw and evolving to how I throw today over the 7-week course of the regular season. I obsessed over the 2018 and 2019 National Axe Throwing Championship (NATC) and observing where possible two-time champion Straun Riley and how he throws (speaking of if you're reading this NATC, two words for you: guy-wire camera). I've read a few articles on the physics of knife and axe throwing, but the unfortunate assertion to every article on the physics of how an axe spin is an assumption without validation. The two hypotheses are either the axis is off centred and controlled by the axe head being the heaviest mass, or is centred to a point between the head and somewhere on the handle. Both hypotheses did figure out that velocity doesn't matter from a fixed distance, but that velocity can remain fixed if the rate of spin can be changed and remain unaffected by velocity to compensate for the change in distance. In a perfect world, those conclusions should be true, but empirical data is very different in that it's really hard to change the spin rate without affecting velocity. I've digressed on my topic and will touch on throwing technique and lessons learned in another article.

We finished our regular season with a bi-week for finals with the fourth of July on what would have been week 8. I did make my goal of making the top 16, what I didn't expect was to finish third in my regular season with pretty good stats for my rookie season. I count myself fortunate for the support I've received from the coaches and the axe throwing community and have signed up for the next season on Sunday late night where the top players are competing and hope to make myself push to match their skill level. Thanks go out to @axcellentabby for all the tips and information on throwing and discovering my throwing handle, and to Travis for teaching me skill drills that have improved my clutch game. Looking forward to kicking some axe at the finals!



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