Pickaxe the tool. A pickaxe handle (sometimes called a "pickhandle" or "pick helve") without the head is sometimes used, often unofficially, as a baton: for example it is officially sometimes used as a baton in the British Army. In "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck, pick handles featured prominently as a weapon used against the migrant farmers. A normal pickaxe handle is made of ash or hickory wood and is about three feet long and weighs about 2.5 pounds. British Army pickaxe handles must, by regulation, be exactly three feet long, for use in measuring in the field. New variant
Handles (novel) Handles (novel) Handles is a realistic children's novel by Jan Mark, first published in 1983 by Kestrel Books of Harmondsworth, London, with illustrations by David Parkins. Set in the Norfolk countryside, it features a city girl on holiday, who loves motorcycles. Nicholas Tucker calls it "a happy, optimistic work"; Erica escapes "mean-minded relatives" for the "anarchic motorbike-repair outfit in a nearby town". Mark and "Handles" won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. Thus she became the third writer with two such honors (of seven through 2012), having won