i've contacted the vendor, he's in france at the moment & will be back thursday to post it. his son runs an antique militaria business in the UK. looks like i might be draining my bank into his, some nice stuff on line.
he mentioned he'd seen a german fire axe that was a fair copy.
apparently he was wandering a french street market and found someone selling old tools this one was in the pile & he got it for cheap. apparently i got it fairly cheap too. so we're both happy.
our village general store is also the local undertaker/coffin maker so i'll buy a quart of real boiled linseed oil (not chemically artificially 'boiled' like at the DIY store) & ask their advice.
my wood method is ' soak overnight in (boiled) linseed oil, then rub in once a day & wipe off excess for a week, once a week for a month, once a month for a year, then once a year. way back, i once soaked a wooden ramrod for a hawken rifle (repo) for 6 mo. or so in a capped pipe full of a kerosene and linseed oil mix. makes it nice and springy & stronger so you don't shatter it while loading a tight patched ball. (also used a starter of course.)
a starter (mine was all wood): the short stub is used to initially push the ball on top of the patch cloth into the muzzle, patch knife trims the patch, then the longer one starts the ball further down, then you ram it the rest of the way with the ramrod. you can skip the starter if you are in a hurry & the white-eye bluebellies are attacking your teepees. you can even skip the patch if you are really in a hurry, tho it does reduce the velocity, but the target will likely be close enough that it doesn't matter much if you are that desperate.