While axes were once commonplace essentials, utilized for centuries to build shelter, cultivate land, chop wood for heat, 
and provide personal protection, its functionality ceased to be of great use to the modern world. As the 20th-century American landscape shifted from rural to suburban environments, the made-to-last axe became lost and forgotten. Inferior, 
mass-produced products took its place.

But a new-found yearning for simplicity has created yet another shift. As an enduring symbol of hard work, integrity, and commitment, the recent rise in sustainable rural living among the rugged outdoors has brought the axe back into prominence. And with it, a resurgence for premium axe making.

Despite working inside a 6000 square foot shop, Liam Hoffman stays nestled in a 15-by-15-foot area—counting his steps as he glides in a triangular working station, focused on efficiency as he challenges himself to shave milliseconds off the time it takes 
him to forge one axe. When I'm forging axes, I'm forging in a production manner, so my thought process is upholding a standard 
of quality, Hoffman tells us. As long as that center is upheld, my focus is purely on speed and efficiency.

That’s because for Hoffman, quality is everything. And every detail counts. “I have the constant drive to make something as symmetrical and clean and premium as I can,” Hoffman explains. I'm trying to constantly figure out how we can do the handmade process quicker, more efficiently, without compromising the end product and the process. Because the end product is process driven so you can't have the product that we sell and make it in a drop forged manner, which is how a lot of things are mass-produced. Hoffman’s process for axe making is the old way of doing it—the right way of doing things—the constant pursuit of perfection. 
If that's lost, then we've lost the entire point of making them.

There’s an art to making a tool by hand, steel, and fire. Using traditional forging techniques on early 1900s-era power hammers to artfully form an axe head, Hoffman and his crew mold and shape the billet of steel heated in a forge to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. When the metalworking process is complete to Hoffman’s relentless standards of perfection, the journey to the wood shop begins. Here, rough-sawn hickory lumber is transformed into the second most crucial part of the axe; the handle, which Hoffman creates in-house using top-quality graded lumber with designs inspired from the late 1800s. Before the completed axe undergoes meticulous cleaning and inspection, it’s paired with a premium leather sheath to not only protect the user but the axe itself.

Throughout each process, every step is painstakingly thought out. Every detail is carefully considered. Even down to the tools they use, which are mostly over 100 years old. “Tools used to be made to look good,” Hoffman explains. If you look at an old machine 
or an old tool, it will almost always have rounded-over corners, curves, unlike modern equipment that is all squared off and flat. 
They could have made that tool square and ugly, but someone cared enough to make it have curves and flowing lines and look nice. Which just tells me that people used to make higher quality items, used to care more about what they were making, to the point where they wanted it to not just function nice, but they wanted it to even look nice.

Hoffman’s integrity is bound to every component of every axe that comes out of his shop.

As the natural materials transform into a one-of-a-kind Hoffman axe, each craftsman in Hoffman’s shop undergoes their own transformation as well. Each alloy that quenches in oil, every slab of lumber that is graded and cut, and every piece of leather that is assembled with contact cement transports the crew back in time. As they lean on the knowledge acquired over two hundred years ago when people used axes to make a living, they feel a sense of honor for those who came before them and a responsibility for those who come after. I hope that [my axes] become an heirloom, Hoffman explains. He wants them to be used, needed, and relished. Then something that can get passed down through generations.

As a man who has been blacksmithing from a passion for metalworking since curiosity led him to this craft at age 13, Liam Hoffman has a deep-rooted need to forge with heart. The axes are part of my legacy out there in the world, Hoffman explains. It's got my name on it. So it's very important to me that they're inspected, and that I don't let anything go out the door that I'm not 100% happy with, because that's a direct reflection of me.

While some may view axes as discarded relics, and blacksmithing as a frivolous waste of time, Hoffman knows better. Forging is 
the American dream. It’s the spirit of the wilderness. It’s a soulful art. And Liam Hoffman holds the torch for the future of blacksmithing