Alright you lot, bear with me, I really like weapons and had to indulge my autism.
So first off, I was curious about the handle design, because I wanted to know how much of that was forced perspective making it ugly and how much was just that it's a fucking weirdly proportioned design.
When seen in a proper side view, it's a
little better:
This is the axe as advertised. It's part of a two-part 'gift set' with a cheap little knife. It's also literally the second result if you search 'Viking axe' on Amazon.
About $70 bucks, which I think is what she was saying. Sold by 'Azham', which also has a website, where I notice the same shit is being sold for more. Not substantially more, but it's a bit more of a markup.
Now here's the thing. It claims that it's all hand forged, blah blah, whatever whatever. Doubt, obviously, for multiple reasons but also we've SEEN the quality of what Stapphy got, it looks like garbage. But I noticed something interesting.
So if you poke around in the reviews on Amazon, here's a review from a few years ago. This guy said he was happy with the product, etc, but most importantly he had posted photos with his review.
Now first off, that's obviously a different knife; it looks like actual metal, vs the shitty printed blade shit shown in the package deal. But he also posted a detail of the blade, specifically that blob stamp I botched about earlier:
You can see it's still got a little blobbieness to it, on the side towards the blade edge, bit you can actually make out individual runes on the far side of the circle. Hrm.
Quite recently, another person posts a review. Now his photos aren't doing the product any favors, but it looks a lot closer to what Stapphy got in terms of quality.
He also pointed out that the axe head is loose,
Which is echoed by another review.
Take a look at the wrapped handle on the good-quality version of the axe bought by the first buyer, as well as the display picture.
When you look at how the leather is criss-crossed compared to the handle itself, it's almost horizontal. Bricks in a wall, almost.
Then look at what Stapphy got.
Completely different, an X instead of a +. The more recent, cheap looking photo review is too fuzzy to see what way it goes, but looks a lot closer to Stapphy.
This guy may have been selling the actual advertised product once upon a time, bit I think either he outsourced his manufacturing to a cheap Chinese sweatshop, or the Amazon seller is selling Chinesium posing as the actual maker (and either reshaped the real deal once or twice back in the day or made that initial review themself).
Thanks for coming to my Autism Talk.
