How Collins Made the Axe Your Grandfather Trusted

An axe stamped "Collins" is sold today in every big hardware chain in America. Made in Mexico, priced like every other import next to it. In 1909, the same name went to the North Pole with Robert Peary. Fifty years before that, it went into the ground for the Trans-Siberian Railway and the California Gold Rush. This is the story of a Connecticut river town that didn't exist until an axe company built it, the machinist it trained who went on to run Colt's Manufacturing Company, and the flood that started the ending nobody in Collinsville saw coming. Knife Guy Stories covers the history, forgotten or still existing, behind the blades people actually carry.