Shape the handle profile using a belt sander - take it slowly so you don't burn the leather, and use a new, sharp belt of about 40 grit. I can't remember off hand how the butt is secured on an Estwing, but on knives the tang usually goes through a metal pommel or plate, and is peened over to hold it on. Spread glue on the top (head side) of the first washer, and slide it onto the tang, all the way to the top. I'll see if I can dig up some pics of ones I have done. It's a trip to do this. Incredible improvement.

After that, I rounded the corners, and added a slight concave contour to the sides. Then I changed to a finer belt to blend the top where it meets the shaft and rounded the base. A little hand-sanding finished it up. Now for the shaping and finishing. I thought about trimming some of the excess with a knife but I decided to go straight to the stationary belt sander. In my experience, you don't need to cut holes the exact shape of the tang, but a line of circular punch holes works as long as the diameter of the holes it's about the width of the tang.

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At the end of the handle, the "web" between the two round ribs needs to be filed down enough so that about 1/8-inch of the rib extends past the web. The two ribs should fit through the holes in the butt-plate, and extend a tiny bit beyond. I only had to file a tiny bit to get the butt-plate to fit, and I also used a file to dress the holes in the butt-plate a bit so the plate would fit loosely onto the ribs. As you can see below, when punching the holes you can either take out the material between the holes with a chisel like I'm doing here, or you can just use the punch a few more times. Oh, by the way, you'll probably need to file away a bit of material in the metal web between the end pins of the handle (red arrow) so that the end plate will go down a little farther, which will let the pins extend a bit more ... you'll need that extra material when you peen the ends.

The washers can also be rectangular and over size - create the final shape using a belt sander once the epoxy has set. All in all this is a great hammer. The weight, comfort and just knowing this will last through heavy abuse. At first it looked like it was going to stay on the surface and dry to a shiny finish, but after about an hour it was all absorbed by the leather, leaving the surface rough enough for a good grip. After drying, the surface still has a nice feel, but water beads up on the handle and doesn't darken the leather so it's probably waterproof enough to be fairly durable. We'll see, I guess. There are oval punches available that probably would have shortened this next step, but I happened to have a round one of the correct diameter so that's what I used. It turned out to be the best move anyway because it let me adjust the length of the hole to get a snug fit. This is important, you'll see why later.This is very informative, The axe helve is curved which may make clamping up quite hard. Any thoughts on this?