When I was a lot younger, I had a fence crew composed of myself and three, ummm, exchange students from Mexico.... They were Hell on Wheels with an axe.
But, my axe education started much earlier when they first showed up at the ranch. I put them to clearing my fence lines. They cut a few trees and stop and sharpen the axe with a file they kept in their back pocket. On they'd go... Being young and stupid (as opposed to being old and stupid) I interfered and told them I wanted them to keep swinging the axe and not sharpen in so much (it appeared to me that they were being lazy and taking advantage of the $5/day and meals I was providing for them). I had to take a load of cattle one day and left them working on their own. When I got back that evening I drove out the fence line. It was all cleared and they took a left and another left and another left and were cleaning out the cattle guard when I got around that 90 acre field. They had watched me go by but I hadn't seen them I was in such a hurry to get out there and see how much work they hadn't done.
All I had to do was stay out of their way and let them do their thing. They were VERY used to using an axe where they came from, they just didn't have good quality files there.
A dumb white boy could have hurt himself with one of those axes too. They were extremely sharp.
After that we started working fence and after I paid for gas and materials, we split the profit 4 ways equal.
But, they wanted to go back home and they did. I got another crew from town and within ten min on the first day, all the axe handles were broken. I bought new handles and they were all broken by noon of the second day... Thus ended the fencing business..
Alan