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
Biltmore stick science. Gifford Pinchot, the future first chief of the United States Forest Service, and then Carl A. Schenck were hired in the 1890s to restore of land around the Biltmore estate to a healthy forest. Schenck was the developer of the Biltmore stick. Ever since this time, the Biltmore stick has been used by foresters to quickly cruise timber. Biltmore stick The Biltmore stick is a tool used by foresters to estimate tree trunk diameter at breast height. The tool very often includes a hypsometer scale to estimate height as well. It looks much like an everyday yardstick. A Biltmore