Model H1 · Concept freeze · Pre-launch

Axe. Hammer. Saw. One helve.

A 31.5-inch saw lives inside a 19-inch handle — and makes the handle stronger. One tool for every cut you have to make out there.

Pre-order now — from $179 See it come apart
Total weight
3.30 lb
As an axe alone
2.34 lb
Cutting edge, saw
31.5 in
Max reach
52 in

Est. ship Christmas 2026 — an estimate, not a guarantee. Full refund any time before shipment. Figures are design targets — here's exactly where we are.

HELVE ONE · engineering render · not a photograph

The problem nobody solved

You carry two cutting tools into the backcountry.
You use one at a time.

An axe splits, limbs and drives. A saw bucks, fells and cuts clean. Neither replaces the other, so you carry both — and the one that isn't in your hand is dead weight for the entire trip. On a solo long-stay, that redundancy is the difference between packing a tarp and going without.

Every existing "combo" fails the same way:

  • Saw folded into the handle.You hollowed out the handle. It snaps. And the blade is 6 inches long.
  • Multi-tool with a saw.A three-inch blade. Useless on anything thicker than your wrist.
  • Hatchet plus folding saw.Two tools, two sheaths, two things to lose. Full weight penalty.

The constraint everyone hit: you cannot take material out of an axe handle without destroying it — and you cannot fit a useful saw into 19 inches.

Why this works when the others didn't

Two ideas, and they depend on each other.

01

The stowed saw is the handle's core.

And the curve you see in the handle? It's in the skin, not the spine. A telescoping rail can't pass through a bend, so the bore runs dead straight while an asymmetric section and a variable-wall overmould sweep the grip line out to a 14 mm drop and a fawn's-foot butt — the same geometry a curved wooden helve has always used to index your hand and neutralise your wrist at impact.

A drilled-out wooden handle snaps because you removed the material that was carrying the load. A tube doesn't have that problem: bending stiffness scales with the fourth power of distance from the centreline, so the material in the middle of a solid handle was barely working anyway. Take it out and you keep almost all the stiffness at a fraction of the weight.

What a tube can do is dent, oval, and buckle locally under a hard strike. So we put something in the middle that stops it: the spine rail, clamped in compression between the head collar and the butt cap. It acts as an internal mandrel.

In axe mode the handle is a tube plus a core. In saw mode the tube is empty — but in saw mode nothing is striking the handle. The empty state and the load case never happen at the same time.

Solid — heavy Hollow — dents Tube + rail
02

A segmented blade on a shared rail behaves as one bar.

A 31-inch blade will not fit in a 19-inch handle. Three 10.5-inch segments will.

Segmented blades normally fail because every joint is a hinge — pull hard and the assembly folds at the seam. HELVE's segments never join to each other. Each one indexes onto the shared rail with a dovetail foot and a sprung ball detent, and the rail runs continuously past every seam.

Bending load goes into the rail. The segments carry tooth load only. Cutting length becomes a function of how many segments you brought — not how long your handle is.

seam seam continuous rail bridges both seams

Provisional claim language

“A hand tool comprising a striking head and a hollow handle, wherein an elongate saw spine member is removably received within the handle bore and, when received, is retained in axial compression between the head collar and the butt closure such that it functions as an internal structural core of the handle; and wherein a plurality of discrete saw blade segments are indexable onto said spine member exterior to the handle to form a continuous cutting edge spanning the segment seams.”

Draft independent claim. Not yet filed — see the honesty section.

Five configurations

One object. Whatever the wood needs.

0s

Chop

Axe, saw stowed. Full-weight felling and splitting tool at 3.30 lb.

0s

Drive

Flip it. The poll is a rated sledge face — stakes, wedges, froe work, anchors.

40s

Saw 32″

Rail, three segments, T-grip. A one-handed bucking saw with 31.5 in of edge.

55s

Reach 52″

Telescope the rail out. Overhead limbing and brush clearing without a ladder.

15s

Light

Leave the saw kit at camp and the tool is still a good axe at 2.34 lb — not a crippled one. This mode matters more than it looks: it's the answer to “I don't want to carry the saw up the ridge today.”

Drawing HV-H1-001 · Rev A

The blueprint.

Open full drawing →
SEAM SEAM 19.00 in 483 mm 7.65 in HEAD WIDTH 31.50 in / 800 mm CUTTING LENGTH 54.50 in OVERALL — REACH 52 CONFIG HM-1 · 4140 CrMo · 26.0 oz HS-1 · 7075-T6 · SWEPT SKIN, STRAIGHT BORE SR-1 STOWED = CORE SR-1 RAIL · 2-STAGE · 1/6-TURN CAM LOCK HELVE ONE — H1 · GENERAL ARRANGEMENT DWG HV-H1-001 REV A 1/1 ALL DIMENSIONS ARE DESIGN TARGETS AT CONCEPT FREEZE. NOT FOR MANUFACTURE. TOLERANCES TBD AT EVT.

Mass budget

Head HM-126.0 oz737 g
Handle HS-111.5 oz326 g
Spine rail SR-15.8 oz164 g
Blade segments ×36.9 oz196 g
T-grip TG-12.6 oz74 g
Total, full kit52.8 oz1497 g
Axe mode (LIGHT)37.5 oz1063 g

Materials

Head4140 chrome-moly, drop-forged, differential temper
Handle7075-T6 aluminium, Type III hard anodised
Head jointSteel collar, tapered wedge, 2× M6 shear pins
GripDual-durometer TPE, 60A palm / 90A ribs
Rail6061-T6, two-stage, 1/6-turn cam lock
BladesSK5 carbon steel, impulse-hardened teeth
T-grip30% glass-filled nylon 6/6 over steel insert
SheathWaxed canvas over HDPE liner

Pre-order

Pre-order now. We build on the goal.

Charged today, built when the funding goal is hit. Estimated ship: Christmas 2026 — an estimate, not a guarantee, and we'd rather tell you that in the headline than the fine print. Full refund any time before your unit ships, one email, no questions. Goal not reached: everyone is refunded automatically.

100 units · serialised 001–100

First Hundred

$179 / unit

46% off the $329 planned retail

  • Serial number 001–100, engraved on the poll
  • Full kit: head, handle, rail, 3 segments, T-grip, sheath
  • Name in the run book that ships with every unit
  • Direct line to the build updates, including the bad ones

400 units

Early

$199 / unit

39% off retail

  • Full kit + sheath
  • Build updates

Uncapped

Campaign

$249 / unit

24% off retail

  • Full kit + sheath

Uncapped

Pair

$459 / two

30% off retail

  • Two full kits + two sheaths

60 sets

Outfitter

$1,095 / five

33% off retail

  • Five full kits — crews, guides, schools

$0 raised of $285,000 · 0 backers — live, from real orders

Where the $285,000 goal goes — every line costed, nothing padded into “marketing”

  • Hard tooling $109,000
  • Prototypes A + B $38,000
  • Impact rig + DVT $27,000
  • Certification, patent, trademark $30,000
  • 3PL + first freight $25,000
  • Contingency 15% $34,350
$285,000Funding goal — tooling, testing, certification and the first run
RefundableFull refund any time before shipment; automatic refund if the goal isn't reached
Est. Christmas 2026Estimated ship — an estimate, not a guarantee

The goal is the true minimum, not a low number chosen to look achievable. Full breakdown below.

Not ready to commit? Hold a free spot in line instead

No payment, no card, no obligation. One email when the campaign opens, plus build updates if you tick the box. Unsubscribe in one click.

Where this goes

The road to a shipped tool.

  1. Now

    Pre-orders open

    Charged today, refundable in full any time before your unit ships. Every order moves the live funding bar above.

  2. Goal reached

    Production unlocks

    $285,000 buys the forging dies, injection tooling, blade stamping and the test programme — costed line by line above. Not reached: everyone is refunded automatically.

  3. Build phase 1

    Prototype + impact rig

    Billet-machined Prototype A, then 10,000 strike cycles on the head joint. Results published either way — including failures.

  4. The gate

    Pass or refund

    If the design can't pass its impact test and can't be fixed, every order is refunded in full. We will not ship a compromised tool.

  5. Build phase 2

    Tooling & production

    Hard tooling, pilot run, then the funded production run — serialised units 001–100 first.

  6. Est. Christmas 2026

    Estimated shipping

    An estimate, not a guarantee. If it moves, you'll know exactly why — and your refund right holds until your unit ships.

Read this before you reserve

What doesn't exist yet.

You are pre-ordering a tool that does not physically exist yet. Most campaigns bury that. We're putting it above the fold of your decision, because the fastest way to lose you later is to be vague now.

No unit has been built.

Every figure on this page is a design target at concept freeze, not a measured result. Weights are calculated from the CAD mass budget. Hardness values are specified, not verified. The first physical object exists in about eight weeks.

Every image here is a drawing.

There is no product photography on this site because there is no product to photograph. We would rather show you an honest engineering render than a convincing render of something that has never existed.

Two risks could kill it.

The head joint loosening under sustained impact, and the tube denting from a glancing overstrike. Both get answered on the impact rig. If either fails and can't be fixed, every order is refunded in full, automatically — and we'll publish exactly what broke.

Christmas 2026 is an estimate. Here's the honest maths.

Hitting it needs fast funding, first-pass tooling and clean test results — any one slips and the date slips with it. That's why it says estimated, why nothing about it is guaranteed, and why your full-refund right never expires until your unit ships. We'd rather lose the sale than surprise you.

Where your money goes — and when we touch it.

$109k hard tooling · $38k prototypes · $27k test programme · $30k certification, patent and trademark · $25k logistics setup · $34k contingency. Production spending starts when the goal is reached; if it never is, every order is automatically refunded in full.

The patent isn't filed.

Publishing this page is a public disclosure, which starts the US 12-month clock and affects foreign filing rights. The provisional is drafted and filing is the first action item. We are telling you that rather than implying protection we don't have.

Field notes

Definitions, physics, numbers.

Written so a search engine — or an AI — can cite them without inventing a measurement.

Questions we'd ask

Straight answers.

Doesn't a hollow handle just break?

A drilled-out solid handle does. A closed tube doesn't — stiffness in bending comes overwhelmingly from material far from the centreline, which is why the middle of a solid handle contributes very little. The real risks with a tube are local denting and ovalling, and that's exactly what the stowed rail is there to prevent. It's the load path we designed around first, and it's the one we test first.

Why aluminium and not wood or fibreglass?

Because the handle has to be a precise, sealed bore that clamps a rail in compression. Wood moves with humidity and can't hold that tolerance; fibreglass can't take the local dent case at this wall thickness. Aluminium can do both, and hard anodising handles the abrasion. The cost is shock transmission, which we're mitigating with a nitrile isolator and a dual-durometer overmould — and measuring against a wooden-helve control.

Can I really hit hardened steel wedges with the poll?

That's what the 4140 differential temper is for. A plain high-carbon axe poll at 55+ HRC will chip when it meets a hardened wedge. Ours is specified at 50–52 HRC on the face — hard enough not to mushroom, soft enough to deform rather than spall. It's a rated striking face, not a decorative one.

How long does it actually take to build the saw?

Target is 40 seconds for the 32-inch configuration and about 55 for the 52-inch. That's a design target and it will be measured, on video, with the first prototype — and published whatever it says.

What if the impact test fails?

If it fails and the fix works, the schedule moves and we tell you why. If it fails and can't be fixed, every pre-order is refunded in full, automatically. Either way we publish what broke. We will not ship a compromised tool to clear a deadline.

Why is there no ferro rod / compass / bottle opener?

Because every one of them is a hole in something that has to survive impact, and none of them make the tool better at its three jobs. Restraint is the feature.

Will there be a smaller one?

A 15-inch one-hand model is on the list as a stretch goal at $1.2M. It isn't a promise; it's a costed option.

What exactly am I buying today?

A pre-order, charged in full today at your tier price, for a unit from the first production run — estimated to ship Christmas 2026; an estimate, not a guarantee. Full refund at any moment before your unit ships: reply to your receipt email and it's done. Goal not reached: automatic refund. Prefer not to pay yet? The free hold-a-spot option sits below the tiers.

The last tool in the pack.

Axe. Hammer. Saw. One helve.

Pre-order now — est. ship Christmas 2026