I don't know if anybody is following this thread. . . but for whom it may concern, I picked up the hawk from Cabela's.
When I got it home, the first thing I noticed were hammer marks.
I think it's pretty cool to know that the head was hand forged. There isn't much of a finish on the head either. It looks like they just left the fire scale on. The only thing on the head to prevent rust is what smells like cosmoline. That's fine by me. If I had the CS Frontier hawk, I would just remove the paint anyway.
Out of the box, the hawk wasn't very sharp. I fixed that. I put a nice convexed edge on it. After a few hours of chopping some dry, and some green wood, the edge has held up very nicely.
I had to file the inside of the eye. It was very rough inside, and it even had little specks of spatter all in it. Not real biggie though.
The unfinished handle that it came with doesn't really fit well. The shape of the handle doesn't quite match the eye. It's close though. I sanded the handle so the fit was pretty close, and I called it good enough. If I sanded untill the fit was perfect, I would have run out of handle. I think the top of the handle should have flared out more.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with my purchase. After a little bit of work, I have a pretty nice hawk.
CitizenQ,
I looked at the hawks in the link you posted. They were beautiful.
I couldn't help it though. When I was standing there in Cabela's drooling at the glass case the "Throwing Tomahawk" was in, an evil employee snuck up on me and forced me to fondle it!
Before long, it seemed that I couldn't put it down. The whole time that wicked employee just watched my whole misdeed. He didn't once even try to get the hawk away from me, he just watched with an evil smile on his face. Once I mollested the hawk:jerkit:, it was all over with. That hawk was coming home with me.
You also left a half used box of tissues in there.
