A bonan axe

[ausjulius]

Here is a bonan style of axe, newly made, it cost about 6$ us in a weekend market I attended, they were selling livestock, nuts and metal products mostly.
The axe is basically identical to Mongol and Turkic axes and really isn't great for cutting timber but as a weapon one handed or from a horse it's probably very effective.
There was several styles of these axes some also had a wider more flared head and some had an even pointier blade where the top of the edge was almost pointing like a spike and the cutting edge nearly 45 degrees down. Making it impractical for wood.

There was also a small type of pick axe (not mattock) they make with a recurve curve to the spike used for digging in rocky clay soil. It looked more like a mediaeval weapon.

Generally people just used these as an axe for timber but looking at them you can see they are weapons. There is an even smaller type with a long handle that can only be a weapon as the blade is so narrow.
These axes were widespread in the region the bonan live and greatly preferred over any Chinese made axe. As were local hammers, meat cleavers, knives and chisels prefered to Chinese factory products.
Chinese mass produced scissors had replaces local scissors totally though.
I might add the bonan knife sellers were all very friendly. In this shop they sold a mix of mostly bonan knives, Tibetan and Uyghur knives and then factory products from Guangdong they would rehandle or regrind to a sharp convex edge.. the Chinese made knives sold mostly because they were cheap and were stainless steel but all of them had been reground locally I noticed.
Generally locals would pay x2 or x3 as much for the bonan. products.
There was also axes with rectangular sockets and ones with totally round sockets .. but there seemed to be no preference.
Some axes had a laminated bit of high carbon steel. We I asked about it the sellers said older people preferred it even though a mono steel axe was better

[kronckew]

Cool axe! I like...