Rede Forge
  • Tools
  • Sharpening
  • Where to buy
  • Repairs
Order one
Pattern No. 3

A billhook that will outlast three handles

The No. 3 is our hedging pattern: a 10-inch blade in shear steel, forged in one heat and edged by hand. It is the hook we make most of, because it is the one people come back for after the first one is worn past re-grinding — which takes about twenty years.

Order one — £148
Made to order. Eight weeks, usually.
4.9 from 168 owners
Rated 5 out of 5
Forged to order  ·  Re-handled for life  ·  Re-ground, never replaced

Forged in one heat, not three

The blade is drawn from a single bar in one working. Reheating to finish a shape is quicker and leaves a coarser grain, and you find out which was done about fifteen years in, when the edge starts to chip rather than roll. Ours is one heat, which is why there is a waiting list.

Shear steel, because it is what this wants to be

Modern alloy takes a keener edge and loses it into a blackthorn stem. Shear steel gives up a little sharpness for an edge that rolls instead of chipping, and rolls back under a stone in the field. For a tool used against unseen wire and stone, that trade has never been close.

The bevel is cut by eye and by ear

There is no jig. The bevel is ground against a wheel, checked by candling the edge, and finished on an oilstone. Two hooks off the same bar are not identical, and the difference is the smith correcting for how that particular billet moved under the hammer.

Hardened, then let back to straw

Quenched in oil, then drawn back until the oxide runs straw at the edge and blue at the spine. Hard where it cuts, springy where it is levered. You can see the colour band on the finished blade — it is not decoration, it is the record of how it was tempered.

The handle is ash, and it is a wear part

Riven ash, not sawn, so the grain runs the length of the handle rather than across it. It will break eventually, usually against a gatepost. Send it back and it is re-handled for the cost of the ash, for as long as the blade lasts.

Every hook carries its smith's mark

A struck mark on the tang: the forge, the smith, and the year. It is how a tool that comes back in thirty years gets re-handled by someone who can look up what steel it was and how it was drawn — and it is why we can tell you, honestly, that the mark is the only decoration on it.

What arrives

  • The hook, edged and sharp
  • A riven ash handle, oiled and fitted
  • A stitched leather sheath
  • A sharpening card, one side
  • The smith's mark and the year
  • A note on what this pattern is for
I have laid hedge with it for nine winters. It has been re-handled twice, re-ground once, and it still takes the same edge it came with.
Ruth Ellery
Hedge-layer, Radnorshire

Before you order

Eight weeks as a rule, longer between October and February when the hedging season takes the whole bench.

Send it back. A chip in the first year is our fault and is re-ground free; after that it is the cost of the postage.

Tell us what you are cutting before you order and we will say which pattern, or that none of ours suits. We would rather not make it than make the wrong one.

For as long as the blade lasts, at the cost of the ash. Handles are the wear part and always have been.

Why this shape

Buy one hook, send it back for handles, and it will see you out. That is not a slogan; it is the reason the order book runs eight weeks long and always has.