I bought both of these a few months ago.... I finally got around to cleaning up the small single bit today but there's no makers stamp on it? it's seems to be very nice steel and it has a nice ring to it. I know that the DB is a Hults-Bruk.............HELP?
My best guess is gonna be GB , Whetterlings , Hults Bruks or Sater Banko . A lot were brought into North America with no makers mark .
I clean up heads like that, and much worse, with a 9" wire wheel on a 5" Makita angle grinder. This is a wheel with about 1.5" twisted wire strands around the outside of a steel disk. Used carefully that thing flies off the rust scale and leaves a smooth, dark surface that you cannot tell was wire-brushed at all. Stay away from the edges and corners or it will round them over and leave them "white" in a second. Good gloves, a leather apron and a full face shield/mask are important, when those wires come off they are like flying darts! Obviously you have to orient the grinder so that the brush is always turning outwards over edges, never in towards them or it will catch and scour the edge as mentioned. When that happens it can dig in easily and you find out how good a grip you have on the grinder. The axe head is held in soft jaws on my 5" vise while this is going on of course, since you need both hands for the grinder. All the scale on that double bit above would be stripped off in a couple of minutes flat. For reshaping screwed up bevels and edges, a fine sanding disk on a rubber backing plate on the same grinder does a great job. To finish and polish the edge, the Walter Quick-Step abrasive pads are perfect: three grits, and velcro-backed. They put on a near mirror finish and a deadly, convex edge. Used right they will raise a burr ready for a final strop, and only a very fine stone could make an axe sharper. At that stage you have to be doubly careful to only work with the pad rotating outwards over the edge. If you catch on the edge you will tear the pad off, cut it up, and probably cut up the backing disk as well, and they're not cheap. And if you're unlucky, you'll slice yourself on the deadly sharp axe as well!
