Ancestry of the modern tactical tomahawk

T

tirod3

Joined
Jun 27, 2006
Messages
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A picture is worth a thousand words, and I have about a thousand if this doesn't work :rolleyes:

https://picasaweb.google.com/103681632412643274076/WebShots

Ok, not so great, just click the link, click the photo, and look. Picasa made my vintage S100 Sony Elph look almost as good as your "crappy" Iphone cam shots. We've come a long way, baby.

Point of the photo, aside from having another example of how I can't do it right (I know, something about getting img in the link,) is to see where the tac hawk got it's roots. What we have is 1) a Collins pick mattock, a wonderful tool for excavating the Ozarks when dynamite isn't handy, 2) the venerable Estwing boys axe, representative of all the axes man has used across continents, and 3) the Stanley Fubar, a modern multiuse crowbar/hammer/nail extractor/zombie decapitator.

Each has a shape and feature that allows it get a specific task done pretty well. Each is a bit on the heavy side for walking about in the bush, especially on foot. When you want something that could do a lot of what all three do, then you start looking at the forth item in the picture - the tactical tomahawk. Especially when you have to carry it, not a vehicle or pack animal.
 
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I've read many of your posts and it's clear enough that you are a tactical tomahawk enthusiast.
In my eyes it is like a SAK. It has 3,4,5 or more tools which replace the real tools quite effectively. But the small SAK tools have small performance. Much better than nothing or than carrying anywhere you go a bag with blade, saw, scissors, openers, etc, that's for sure.
 
I would have thought you'd have a Peter LaGana Vietnam era hawk up there ... :confused:
 
Well, I'm old enough, but the Lagana really wasn't that common in the day. Like the SOG Bowie or Buckmaster, there's been hundreds of each sold to the public for every one issued to a soldier or SEAL.

Comparing the tac hawk to the Swiss Army knife is a good analogy - yes, the knife is definitely smaller and not as robust or does as big a job. Don't doubt it one bit. On the other hand, you can't ruck a pioneer kit overland - food, water, and a sleeping bag have priority. You could find room for a hawk, tho.

We are at the very beginning of a tomahawk revival. The tactical knife has run it's course, and the large camp knife is becoming known for it's limits. It can't handle repeated beatings making camp fire wood. Should be no argument about that in an axe forum. I'm just suggesting that a spike hawk can do even more than chop wood.

If someone doesn't have any need whatsoever for what the other tools offer, that's fine, but I'm thinking there are plenty who do and don't want to lug them around when a "Swiss Army" hatchet could do. It's why the Swiss Army knife is the #1 seller worldwide in cutlery - it doesn't do just one thing.

Way back in the Roman days some blacksmith got a wild idea and added claws to a hammer to pull the nails. The spike hawk is just as simple a change. Might give it some consideration.
 
The tact hawk does replace a range of useful tools. Problem is that it misses a VERY basic tool. And that's the hammer. Saying that you can hammer with the side is a exaggeration. You may hammer a small nail but then again the nail must be well exposed in a flat area and not hidden. Besides it's difficult to hold the nail with the fingers of one hand and side-hammer it with the other. You may hurt your hand with the edge or the spike. Imagine the picture.
Sure you can hammer with a stone but stone is not always the best option and is not always easy to find the right one if any. So a hammer is often irreplaceable. According to the stone logic you can dig with a stick or a flat and sharp stone, you can baton with a knife and so on. So a good big fixed blade is all we need. We'll somehow find a stone and a piece of wood. Very simplified I guess but you get my point.
In the photo there is a wrench. I cannot see how the tac hawk can replace the wrench.
Other than that I am pretty convinced that's it is a great and versatile tool, soon to be added in my tool "collection". I do not collect tools btw, I'm using them all.

PS. My new traditional hammerhead hawk arrived today. Pics when I get home.
cheers atb
 
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No, the spike hawk doesn't hammer well. Goes to the intent of the tool - like the FUBAR or shingle hatchet, it's meant to help construct things by fastening them together. The spike hawk's intent is to deconstruct things, to separate the pieces previously arranged by design or nature.

On a construction job, the hammer would be useful. On a deconstruction job, the nail puller would be much more use, and only for something put together with them, getting improved. If it's just getting demolished, no need at all.

Soldiers in the Army are taught how to quickly deconstruct. "When it absolutely, positively needs to be destroyed overnight, . . ." That is the real point of most crew served weapons - their power is a waste used on a single enemy soldier as the target.

This gets back to why the choice of a hawk - because you aren't hoisting a workshop with supplies on your back and taking it twenty miles a day overland. Hammers are pretty much used with nails, nails aren't light, and at that point, a pack animal, wagon, or vehicle comes into the picture.

When you start bulking up your gear with no thought of the limits of human endurance, things get out of hand quickly.
 
But the hammer is not only for driving nails. It can hammer/drive many things, it can form things. It is also used for crashing.
The specialist in tac hawks RMJ makes the Loggerhead. This is somewhere advertised as a crash hawk. That means demolition I guess.
The army and special ops need to crash and breach or escape fast. I don’t. I have broken too many thinks with hammers, brick and cinder wall parts included.
Tac hawk manufacturers claim that their hawks can be used for escaping from a chashed helicopter, attacked humvee etc. I wonder how long it takes to escape from a flaming car with tantos all over the place.
 
I have no idea how well a hammer would break thru when you need to demolish your way out of entrapment - like in a car or downed helicopter. The view over the last 50 years has been to use a piercing tool with large serrations to ripsaw your way out, and that includes the plexiglass dome.

I haven't seen anyone express it in my service that you should beat on the metal to get out. There's simply no room to swing in many cases, and it doesn't cause the metal to separate - it just dents in, absorbing the blow. With a spike hawk, tho, you can pierce with the bit and lever it out like a can opener with the sharpened beard.

Most human habitat and the vehicles we design are crash resistant - we don't want or need something so flimsy it can literally fall apart with a few blows. Of course, it doesn't much apply to interior doors, as many are just veneers over an empty frame - the average 15 year old can kick her way out. Most exterior frame doors are much tougher, and it many countries they are much stouter, as there is high jinks and misdemeanor out in the streets. Hence the use of rolling steel shutters over shop storefronts at night.

The LEO and Fire Departments here in the US developed a variety of Halligan tools, large crowbars they could use to lever a door open. One significant feature on the end is spike - not a hammer. If they need to crash thru a door, they use an entry ram - which weighs 25 to 35 pounds.

That's another one of those things that is carried from the truck at the curb to the front door. Not on long overland treks thru the wilderness - where you likely aren't going to ever need it. In third world situations like early America, a hammer poll on a hawk wasn't meant for pounding nails in trees out in western Kentucky. It was a weapon used on the head of your opponent. Nails were too expensive in that time, they were hand made, and weren't wasted on frivolity.

We quite often attempt to justify our vision of why a certain feature exists on older tools by the framework of our modern existence, but with some diligent research, you often find things aren't what they seem.
 
Plus how common is a hammer compared to a spike hawk? I would rather have the "rarer" tool in person... of course then there's the war hammer...
 
tirod3, after more than 3 decades of using tools inside buildings and in a farm full of trees and plants and after years of camping and trekking I think I can tell which are the most used tools for a man with quite a few activities.
I buy the gear I need, therefore they see action from the first day. I do not invent needs to justify buying gear and then try to find a (usually silly) reason to use them.
Some LEOs, soldiers etc do carry a tac hawk but they also carry a M16, a pistol, a grenade etc. Civilians (at least in Europe) do not.
I see it may have a place in my car for emergencies and that's why I'm gonna get one sooner or later like I said in a previous post.
For self defence situations (less likely to happen) my afck and the traditional hawk are more than enough if I find the time and courage to use them (even more less likely to happen).
 
I agree completely - after 40 years of using tools remodeling two houses, and landscaping, plus 22 years in the Reserves, some tools come to hand more often than others.

BTW, even as an officer or in the MP's, it was either the pistol or the rifle. Very often in the field, the rifle. Grenades, only on the range or as issued in combat with combat troops - about ten percent of the force.

The point is that very often we use the tools that are germane to the job at hand - shovels for digging good dirt, pick mattocks when you live on ground like I do. I see a place for the spike hawk in vehicles, and very much if on foot, too. What does happen tho, is that we discover something with a great deal of utility that society has largely overlooked or even shunned. When you get passed the sociological bans on possession, tho, you find things can be quite different than what was misrepresented. Like, concealed carry - frequently much less deadly than portrayed, or automatic opening knives, which are really no more special than a thumb opening one.

Same with the general use outdoors of a spike hawk - it's not really that tacticool, it's just a tool.
 
Well, last weekend I had the opportunity to try my new forged and special heat treated traditional hammerhead tomahawk in the farm. It was on my belt (the Indian way) all day long.
I used it hundreds of times for real and not biased work.
It's really a valuable tool. It chops wood perfectly, it bites very deeply, has it's limitations though because of the edge's small surface. I don't know if ANY tactical hawk can chop wood THAT well. I compare it directly to the GB wildlife hatchet I used to have.
After so much use on fresh and seasoned wood the edge was still biting my nail something impossible for a GB axe with its' soft steel.
The hammer saw a lot of action too for the usual jobs.
Cutting a stick, making it pointy and then hammering it into the ground to make a plant support is something I do all the time. It was a blessing to be able to do this with one and only tool hanging from my belt.
I also “chopped” a (thin) metal tin. There is no sharpened beard so no can-opener effect.
I also dragged things like fallen branches and big wild plants with thorns.

For my needs there is no better all-day-carry tool.

There are jobs I couldn’t do with it though:
Digging. I wish I could. For serious digging I pick special tools like a mattock or a pickaxe but there were times I just needed to dig a little around a plant to clean it's root from useless weed. So I needed to go and get the mattock.
I also needed to pull a couple of quite big stones hidden deep into the ground. Again the hammerhead hawk was useless.
And for one single time I needed a crow bar to remove a nailed board (wooden strip). That is something I rarely need but it happened.
Last but not least I quickly realized that if my hawk had a sharpened and curved beard (the RMJ style) it could be a decent pruner for wild weed and thin branches. This is something I do very often and the main edge was good for the branches and my folding knife is very fast for the weed. But then we are talking about a second tool (the knife).

I already know from various threads here and there about the many uses or the spike. No need to mention all of them. They are just not a part of my farming, camping and hiking routine.
Spike or hammer tomahawk, no way to do all the jobs with only one tool. That's my conclusion.

PS. Sorry for the crappy and tiring english.
 
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This has turned in to quite the insightful thread. Lots of excellent points of view. I'm glad I kept following along.

I personally carry two tomahawks in my car at all times: a Fort Turner "Iroquois" with an edge profiled for downed-limb removal, and an ATC VTAC for possible forcible removal of injured persons from vehicle crashes. Depending on my circumstances, I'll grab one or the other.

I've come across two single-vehicle accidents recently where I was the first or second person on the scene. (Note: I am not a first responder, just an Army veteran with Combat Lifesaver training and a desire to do what's right.) One was a tractor trailer that was flipped over on its side with two occupants trapped in the cabin. Two men (in one vehicle) had stopped just before me and were prying at the windshield to get the trapped occupants out. When I saw this, I began to run back to the car to get my VTAC. Fortunately as I began to run back to the car, the windshield popped off. No hawk needed... this time.
 
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