have been looking at your Hawks for a while, my first impression was WOW, you are probally making the greatist Hawk Handle ever.
thanks.
we have learned some
hard facts; -
namely - folks want
strength over speed for their
"tomahawks", which is a shame in many ways
(to me) - so we will be
beefing up the handles as an option for folks, and expanding into a production axe replacement handle for the Wetterlings, GBs, etc. - that axe handle will be a different creature from what i consider a good tomahawk handle to be, but it will be relatively light still, for the strength it affords. i am presently attempting to get a special paintable 20 Mil monomer flash coating on all the tool handles that is
extremely tough, and will further protect the units from IED flash fires, and a bunch of other stuff.
at any rate;
-
as they are now, i consider my hawks to be very
combat-realistic (USMC infantry and Navy Corpsman veteran here) but the simple fact is that folks mostly do not give a damn
(generally) about
technique or
hikeability - they want
brutes for choppers mostly. those heavy boat anchors will always stay in my vehicle when i hunt, etc.
give me a
proper long hawk and a
long blade every time.
i will
outdistance myself, and
outwork myself with those
two humble things over time, compared to any heavy single tool.
they are more realsitic towards an extended Bug Out scenario IME.
i've lived with headhunters -
they adopted me in fact - guess what they carried? - stuff that acted like tomahawks and machetes... LOL...
we got along.
this is my question after some thought it seems that you are making a 200.00 handle for a 20 dollar Cold Steel Hawk Head. with all the great custom Hawk makers out there it seems you could pair them up a little better, after all when it is said and done the cutting/chopping is the important thing right? Now maybe i am overthinking this or i didn,t get the point.
i think those are good questions, brother!
- one has to recall that when i started the
humble Hawk Project almost 4 years ago, the
Cold Steel Trail Hawk was the only hawk head readily available that had the
DIMENSIONS i needed for
(what i considered as) a
proper hawk - most other heads were
overweight, and their
centers of mass were
way off.
since then, ...a lot of what i have been evangelizing about proper hawks is becoming more common
(which i am not saying is because of me, but it is a correlation )- you are seeing alot more long skinny heads in the market.
the
next challenge for head choice was
eye dimensions. as criticval as people are about Cold Steel, their eye dimensions were
fairly consistent, where others were
random. - i couldn't make a living off of
what was perceived as the best hawk heads at that time. - that is beginning to change now as we have tooled up and gotten some wiles, so to speak.
we have done a lot of custom work on many makers' custom heads - i still like
Cold Steel Trail Hawks though, particualrly after we
BUG headed them,
shaving their weight and increasing their edge geometry, etc. we talkd about BUG heads somewheres in here....
we have been trying to get some forges online in the USA to make an All-American hawk for a similar price point to our current line, the
Gen 1 Mk V hawks, but that has been slow in coming.
slow but steady.
we'll get there.
all that said - a lot of folks
(most of our Investors) write me back and say they didn't realize how good
Cold Steel Trail Hawks were, in use. a lot of these folks are hawk users and collectors and tell me that a lot of names you hear connected to hawks all the time
have some issues (that's why you want to go through people who you know, and who back their product Unconditionally).
a lot of the failings of Cold Steel Hawks are
simple edge geometry issues.
Cold Steel Trail Hawk heads, in my experience, work very well when you scandi the edge, and then
knock the edge down at a very high angle.
you don't have to work that edge with a microscope like other specialty edges, and the bit
just gets sweeter over time. i love rolling out from under my tarp in the morning in some Pacific Northwest rain forest, giving the hawk and machete a few quick licks on the diamond stone that will last all day, and moving out. that's all that edge usually needs, when i do my part with proper hawk technique.
hawks aren't knives. - when they really get flying, you are going to ding the best ones up - if it is
too hard,
good luck fixing it.
maybe i should've just said that i love Cold Steel Trail Hawk heads. - i am not too hot on the other ones they make because of their designs, but i have been wanting to get a bunch of the Spike Hawks they now do, and vectorize them. - so there is a distinction that should be made - i think the Trail hawk is superior to all the others, before modifications are made, and usually after. the Cold Steel Rifleman, with a lopped poll is an exception that i like as a replacement Forest/Battle Axe - but that is not a proper tomahawk - it is well over the
one-ounce-per-inch-of-length rule of proper hawks -
battle axes and good limbers are more like 1.5 - 2 ounces per inch....
there are
a lot of subtle things going on in a
proper hawk.
i can talk about them for pages and nothing will register - but when i hand someone a proper hawk,
you can see the pupils dilate - it doesn't matter if it is a
Marine or a gawddam
gramma -
a proper hawk turns on something primal inside... or it is
simply not a proper hawk IME.
eventually, i hope to have handles that the end user can load on their hawk head themselves and adjust as they see fit, ballast-wise, ...so all this talk will be meaningless - folks will just order a handle within a size range of their hawk's eye, and take it on and off as they please. other projects are taking precedence right now, like the
Daisy Cutter (which is kicking my ass BTW - LOL).
I am not professing to be an expert on this subject but before everyone jumps me as some couch potato I will say i went through Infantry Basic and Jump School at Benning when you still ran in BDUs and combat boots and the Drill Sargents could still put their hands on you after that i landed at Bragg with the 3rd 325th. also grew up hunting and fishing in the Mtns of NC so you could say i have spent my time in the dirt. once again i am not trying to insult you or your work just asking a Question
knowing what ya like is important. - folks like that are very helpful to deal with for me personally, because
we have a reference to talk over. i turn a lot of people
away who want me to make a proper hawk into something else entirely -
i'm a proper hawk maker. - not a Belt Axe Maker. not an Ice Axe Maker.
(although i went through a real Battle Axe fetish that i haven't quite shed - HAR! )
- i've seen folks who heft a
6 pound axe through the mountains ever day for most of the year - and God Bless 'em, but i want to see them fight with that thing, and i want to see what their knees look like by the time they are 40 or 50....
me? i got what i need -
A PROPER HAWK. - if anyone wants one, great! i'll make 'em one, with a
Happiness Guarantee, ta boot.
'seems pretty reasonable to me.
LOL - i'm still
reeling in shock that they don't run in Boots and Yutes no mo'.... shaking my head at memories of lost toenails that got run off, open sores in my back from an M16A2 banging into it for miles daily, etc.,... i hated it, but
oo-RAUGH, it was better than being a
mere hu-man. 
:thumbup:
the
humble Hawk Project has always been a
Development Project to make better hawks - in some small ways we have succeeded, but there is still very far to go. if i had a lot of money, we would've been a lot farther by now,
but ya do what ya can....
the best part of the whole thing is all the friendships.
because of hawks, i got to meet Mike Fuller of TOPS, Lynn Thompson of Cold Steel, and we have really made firends for life all over the world. i've been invited to Africa, Russia, Asia, Australia, Scandinavia, and all sorts of cool places to go fool around in the dirt with brothers from other mothers.
it's been a dream. i want my hawks to reflect the joy.
to be
righteous.
not everyone has been pleased with us. - frankly, they have been so few, that i probably shouldn't care, but i always try to do a good job for my brethren.
when we dig out from all this production work from TOPS, etc. - we should be coming out with some stuff you guys are going to really appreciate.
and thanks for asking, brother stryder'.
vec
