Meat axe ?

[bvieira]

Hello,

Just bought this item, sold as old meat axe, weights 2 kg, never Saw a meat axe like this One with 2 blades and heavy... anyone familiar with the model ?

Tks

BV

[Madnumforce]

Looks like an Italian "mannaia" (meat cleaver). The all steel construction is common for butchery cleavers in France, but here both the blade shape and handle shape indicates an Italian filiation.

As for the blade, it blends different features of a pennato (billhooks with a hatchet blade on the back) and a mannaia:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=181548

As far as I understood, on mannaie, the back edge was to crack the skull to get access to the brain, but it slowly evolved into something purely esthetical, with no real function. Probably as general steel quality increased, and there was no need to save the main edge. But on yours, the back edge has been clearly sharpened and used.

As for the handle, it's a rather interesting form I've never seen, but it's clearly one of the long time evolution of the handle shape we see on the billhooks from Pompei and Moregine:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=181545
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=181546

We see other intermediary forms like this undated late Roman thing, halway machete, halfway billhook, halfway falchion:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=181543

And this later, 10-11th century Italian billhook:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=181544

It also evolved into a form of billhook with a socket handle, rather typical of Piedmont:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=181547



It's very interesting that on your mannaia, the evolution went to make both the back and front projection simply flat and square. I'm saving this into my personal data, cause it's another form of evolution of this handle termination. And it's really specific to Italy, or at most what used to be the Duchy of Savoy and the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. So it's a bit hard to pin exactly where your mannaia comes from, but it surely is Italian, and I would likely say late 19th or early 20th century. If one day you want to part from it, think about me!

Edited to remove all exterior links. For some reason, even though using the IMG tags, the images won't appear in the post.

[fernando]

As per forum rules, posting pictures using links to external hosts is not safe to archives data longevity and therefore not allowed.
For that purpose, we have the Manage Attachments features, where one may save pictures to his disk and then upload them using such method.

[fernando]

Hello bvieira,
Surely this is a meat cleaver, judging by its design and as supported by Madnumforce; and one which doesn't seem to be directly associated with any weapon typology.
Not that such beast couldn't be used as a weapon, though ;).
Let us move this thread to the (non weapon) Miscellania forum, to check whether further opinions are consistent with the ones already given.
And by the way, i saw a cleaver the other day in a local street fair, which fully resembled your nice piece.

[bvieira]

Hello,

Many thanks for all the help and replies.

Regards,

BV