WATL opens 2026 Craftsmen Awards voting for certified makers

World Axe Throwing League opened voting for its 2026 Craftsmen Awards on April 13, putting certified makers in the same competitive frame as the throwers who use their gear. The annual contest returned with four categories, Best Hatchet, Best Big Axe, Best Sheath and Best Laser Engraving, and WATL said the winners would be chosen through a blend of community voting and panel judging, with the panel carrying more weight.

The field was tightly controlled. Submissions had to be created between the end of WAKTC VIII and April 3, 2026, and every participant had to be a member of the Certified Craftsman Program as of February 15, 2026. WATL also required every submitted axe to use a WATL axe head, a rule that keeps the awards tied directly to the league’s official equipment standards rather than to custom pieces built outside its competition system.

Judging leaned hard on details that matter in sanctioned play. Panelists scored each category on a 10-point scale and evaluated head alignment, handle fit, surface finish, straightness, rust, stitching quality, blade coverage, and whether the design work was original and clean. WATL also barred any panel judge from scoring a category in which that judge had an entry, a safeguard that kept the process closer to a standards review than a popularity contest.

Those standards line up with the rulebook that governs WATL competition. The league’s official rules, updated June 15, 2026, cap hatchet axes at 3 pounds, 19 inches and a 4-inch bit. In Big Axe competition, WATL allows total axe weight from 3.00 to 4.25 pounds, head weight from 2.25 to 3 pounds, handle length from 23 to 30 inches, and blade width up to 4 5/8 inches. WATL said the awards also check whether blade modifications maximize coverage within the 4-inch and 4 5/8-inch limits, and whether a handle is straight rather than bowed, cupped, bent or twisted.

The Craftsmen Awards have grown with the sport’s maker scene. WATL held the first annual awards in 2021 at the World Axe Throwing Championships in Fort Worth, Texas, where the original categories were Standard Hatchet and Big Axe. By 2024, Best Sheath and Best Laser Engraving had been added, and by 2025 the league named Gregg Ward of Anvil Axe Co. as Best Hatchet and Best Big Axe, with Ty Ledesma of Samurai Ty Leather Craft winning Best Sheath.

WATL says its Certified Craftsman Program exists to support craftsmanship and connect throwers with qualified makers and one-of-a-kind throwing axes. The league describes itself as the global governing body for axe throwing across more than 300 venues in 20 countries, and the Craftsmen Awards now sit inside that same competitive system, where the best gear has to look sharp, feel right and survive the rules.