Clive McIntosh
Great axeman and axemaker, and worker for the sport
Clive McIntosh learned his woodcutting skills working during the Depression years with his father (champion axeman, Les) and brother cutting sleepers and girders in the bush near Kyogle in northern NSW. He competed with his father at the Sydney Royal Easter Show before he was 14 and dominated the sawing there for twenty years from 1940 to 1961.
Clive was also a talented inventor, designer, axe and saw maker and toolmaker. He invented the axe drift, a tool for removing handles, and the number hammer that is used to mark logs in the forestry industry. He improved the clamps that secure the standing and underhand blocks in competition and perfected today’s handicapping system for chopping events. Clive’s sawmill also supplied the timber used in the Sydney Royal Easter Show woodchopping events.
From 1962 he took over the manufacture of racing axes from Gordon Keech’s Keesteel foundry in Sydney. Clive ordered six tonnes of axe heads, pulling them straight out of the casting sand and filling the boot of his Holden Statesman before driving to Kyogle… a trip repeated may times.
Later he sold 375 to the US and hauled the heavy load to the Kyogle Post Office in that reliable Statesman, his wife Coralee behind the wheel. The local branch of the post office took four full days to process the shipment.