How Hoffman Handles are produced.
Quality is paramount; it's what Hoffman Handles is built on. To ensure this quality, we must take matters into our own hands. This is why everything is done in-house.
It all starts with a need, what type of tool needs this handle, and what will it be used for? How long should it be, how thin, is grain orientation important, octagonal or oval cross-section? Design is determined after these needs are established. Have you ever heard the saying, "Don't reinvent the wheel?". When I design a handle, I go back to the classics, to an era where folks made a living with the tools these wooden handles go on. The ergonomics are critical to a workday's success; whether your family eats or not.
While there aren't many people making a living with a hand tool nowadays, It's still vital that we hold onto the quality that was. In modern handle design and manufacturing, these ergonomics and aesthetics are lost in the name of price. As the populous use of tools for a living decreased with the modernization of society, the demand for quality handles decreased. Today, we live in a throwaway culture where you can pick up a poorly made tool handle for a marginal price and use it once. This new "standard" has changed what we know of handles now. The general populous doesn't know how a handle should be because we are surrounded by what handles shouldn't be, simply because the market is being driven away from a professional user customer base to a weekend warrior customer base.
All hope is not lost; we can find handles from this "old school" era and learn from them, bringing new designs to life that pay homage to those of the past. Hoffman Handles embodies this design philosophy. Once a design is established, it's time to move on to material selection. We use kiln-dried hickory from the foothills of North Carolina, which is hand-selected for our handle operation. Grading the lumber is of utmost importance because if not done right, your design will be all for nothing. In this highly skilled task, we look for everything the wood will show us; cracks, knots, bark inclusions, and grain orientation. A good handle is free of as many flaws as possible.
Cracks, knots, and bark inclusions are negative qualities of the lumber we avoid. Grain orientation plays a crucial role in whether the handle is graded as a "number 1" or "number 2" grade. You can read more about grain orientation in our grain orientation article. Once the lumber is evaluated, a template for a specific handle design is traced on the lumber, bucked, and cut to shape on a large bandsaw.
The next step is what separated Hoffman Handles from being able to produce handles on a scale that was only large enough to make handles for its parent company, Hoffman Blacksmithing, to what it is today; a retail and wholesale company selling handles internationally as well as being able to produce proprietary designs for other brands. A large 4-spindle manual copy lathe, the machine used in the 1800s to produce axe handles (albeit our machine is of a newer make), will transform the bandsaw cut blank to a contoured and smoothed handle. This fantastic machine uses a template to "copy" the handles from. Every template is handmade by me and tweaked meticulously to ensure the copy lathe will turn a handle that I'm as proud of as the original.
Immediately after the handles are turned, they are placed into a boiled linseed oil bath, soaking for 24 hours before drying and heading out the door. This oil adds a layer of protection to the handle from humidity and environmental changes. It is always recommended that you oil your handle upon arrival as well.
So, when you hold a Hoffman Handle, you know that a level of care and attention is built into it that will be difficult to find elsewhere; you can feel it. I hope that these tools serve you well for many years to come.
