Tomohawk Adventures

   I still haven't given up on making tomahawks for throwing. My forge welding techniques are a little lacking until I can purchase a welder for the high carbon insert sandwiched in the blade. Never the less, I proceed onward with other techniques.

  One way to make a tomahawk is to refashion an existing one into the shape I desired. The below scraped hatchet was given to me by a friend at work. It was chipped, covered in putty from chipping a floor and black as coal dust. After five minutes in the furnace, I noticed the color begin to change as the flame turned solid green in color. To my surprise, it was a solid brass fireman's axe. I then tinkered around with the shape to fashion a Viking war hatchet used for banging through metal armor of all sorts. The handle was fashioned and shaped out of oak and sanded to the long contour of my hands. After a few gentle strokes of the gas torn and some brown shoe polish, it was ready for a thong attachment.

  After seeing the work from my success, my brother Leon requested a smaller one for cutting up kindling or close work in butchering up animals on his mini-farm. I had just the design, I would make on out of the head of a claw hammer. Little did I know that it was hardened steel which took both Gary and I several anxious minutes with an 8 lb sledge hammer to get the shape I desired. Check out the photo in the above blog post. 

  The design is very similar but with the purchase of a Milwaukee cordless angle grinder and flapper wheel, things went along much smoother at the grinding and polishing stage. Someday, I own a power hammer and have a real shop in which I can crank out the more strenuous designs.