Underhill Axe

[CADjockey]

Good Evening!
I am not sure if there is a good place for something like this... If there is someplace better, please let me know.
I was recently given a box of metal 'stuff' that contained a lot of rusty tools. Among everything else, was this axe head. Of course, I did quite a bit of clean-up on it carefully remove the rust and grime. During the cleaning, I discovered some stampings:

UNDERHILL
EDGE TOOL Co
WARRANTED
CAST STEEL

5​

Some of the letters in the second line are very hard to make out without knowing what the stamping is supposed to say first.

I have not been able to really identify this. I have ended up putting together little tidbits from quite a few sources to come up with:

• Its a broad axe
• New York style pattern
• Underhill Edge Tool Co. was stamped from 1852 to 1890
• Size 5 (pretty obviously)
• This has a higher carbon blade edge forged into the steel (you can see this in the different colors of the steel)

Does anyone have any information to add to this? It would be GREATLY appreciated!

 

[neophyte]

Adding hardened steel edges to softer steel or soft iron backings was a standard method of manufacturing axes, and may still be used by some manufacturers to this day, although most manufacturers have switched to using forging from a single type of steel.
The process was likely still being used extensively into the 1940s or later though, so it doesn’t really determine age.
“Cast Steel” was a form of small batch crucible steel routinely used for making items that needed high quality cutting performance, but the manufacturing process was expensive, and finally died out somewhere between the 1960s-1980s.
The pattern is fairly similar to the pattern used by Vaughan to manufacture Broad Axes up until recently, although dome of those patterns may have originated with Underhill.
The “Underhill” pattern hatchet, which basically looks like a broad axe cut in half, is still a standard hatchet pattern sold by tool manufacturers selling hatchets.

This article says the “Underhill Edge Tool Co” use may have inly started in 1869.

https://craftsofnj.org/images/sitemedia/toolshed/Tool-Shed-199_03-2020.pdf