Useful tool to have around the yard; great for cutting roots!
Make sure you don't hit your own foot!

Appearance is nice, I had to sharpen mine out of the box. Comfortable handle, bright color as well. the tool is pretty heavy. Axe bit works well de-limbing. Can't wait to use it on the fire line I'm sure it will perform well. I would recommend this Pulaski if your in search of a good fiberglass type tool.

My axe arrived with a big nick in the cutting edge. It also isn't evenly sharpened so the cutting edge shifts to the side moving from top to bottom. After some work with a sharpener the nick is nearly gone and it functions well. I was just disappointed to see a lack of attention to detail.

It is, too, sturdy and well balanced that is, and the shaft is very good for ergonomics and vibration control. I can't fault Nupla for getting that part of the engineering down.

Quality control on the head is another matter.

The rear blade (the one you use to bust through stuff, break up ground and such) is thicker towards the center, meaning that it is an oblate oval with truncated ends. And blunt. You may want to do some of your own work on that depending on its target use. If you want to get through roots when clearing a firebreak, then you know exactly what you want there. That side is only a bit out of dimension on the right side, having an end just a bit truncated. There is no sheared off face, which means this was a casting or forge problem and should have been caught by line QC.

The forward blade (the one you go after upright stuff with, like trees) had a nick out of it at 2/3 of the distance from the top end towards center. Just a bit up from that on the left side is a flattened glob (maybe 1/3 down from the top to center) that should have been pounded out somewhere in production but wasn't. A QC problem. The bevel (such as it is) actually does not go through that area well, and left an uneven bevel on that side. That should have been caught in QC. The bevels on opposite faces are, as a result, uneven which should have been caught in QC. I don't mind the main cutting edge being dull or even blunt and with a nice belt sander it takes an edge very well.

For the price its not bad, but the number of minor imperfections (and, really, a nick out of the main blade starts to hint at something else) on both sides of the head get it docked two stars, one for imperfections and the other for having to spend time reshaping the bevels in a pretty major way.

PROs
- Well designed
- Good balance and weight distribution
- Ergonomic for swinging and absorbing impact

CONs
- Awful QC on the business ends, 1 flaw is about what I expect
- Uneven bevels should not happen on one side nor side-to-side
- Bevels needed reshaping to remove flaws

This is not an everyday axe, but one for doing some brush clearing and chopping of roots, plus taking down some structures. For the price I expected something a bit better from Nupla, given the hard work they put into the design. It will do the job, however, so it is not returned, and it is enough to be a negative when weighing the purchase of future Nupla products.

Use it as an ax, hoe or trencher. you cant beat it. Well made and probably will last for years. I have used it for many thing, taking out stumps, trail building and thinning it excels at all. You can always find a new use for it.