Looking for some help for a beginner tomahawk...

M

MarkusAurelias

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Oct 19, 2010
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So Ive gotten rather interested in tomahawks in the last few days and I really like the norse or viking style. So Ive never thrown a tomahawk or much of anything before bearing that in mind I came up with three different options and I wanted to get your guys opinions on them. First and cheapest is the Cold Steel Norse Hawk. Second was the Viking Axe from HBforge. Third is the Norseman tomahawk from Fort Turner. Now obviously the cold steel is not up to the same standard as the other two but its also a third the price. The HBforge and the Norseman are also the same price within a dollar or two so I was wondering which was the better hawk/company... Also if you have something else to recommend go ahead Im open to suggestions..
 
Dana Turner is a great guy to deal with. I have a Camp Hawk still on its way, so I can't comment of performance of his hawks yet. But I have never heard anything bad about them.

If you don't mind doing a little work, and just want to see of you like the feel am performance of a hawk, Cold Steel is not a bad option. Just know they need a lot of work before they are fully functional.

I don't have any experience with HB Forge.
 
If you want to learn to throw then maybe you should start with the cheaper one - just in case.
 
Can't really comment on tomahawks, but have you seen the Allan Foundry Hawks? Cast steel, but I've heard they're tough and they ship sharp from Ragweed Forge.
 
I ended up going with a cold steel frontier hawk. It ended up being $25 cheapest of the bunch and has tons of great reviews. If I get more into this Ill revisit some of these other options as well.

Any recomendations or videos on how to throw one of these?
 
The Frontier Hawk is a good one. I have several hawks around here. But the Frontier Hawk is my only throwing hawk. I bought it just for this case.

Look at youtube and search for "Cold Steel Frontier Hawk throwing" or some parameters like this. There are a lot of infos about the distance. For the beginning this should be ok.

Nice choice for a first hawk :)

Kind regards
Andi
 
Cold steels are an inexpensive beginning. BUT the rifleman's hawk weighs a ton, I would use them to start with, Frontier, trail hawk. Norse hawk, spike hawk are all pretty nice and lite.
 
Yeah Im just looking for an inexpensive start to see if this is something Im going to pursue or something im going to get tired of in a couple weeks....
 
Cold Steel is an excellent choice for a beginner hawk/fun project piece and can be very functional as well

I have the Rifleman's, and have just recently bought the Trail Hawk and Pipe Hawk to play with
 
This isn't in the Norse style, but the Cold Steel Spike Hawk is one heck of a good throwing tomahawk. I'm by no means a master, but I can almost always stick the hawk, with one or two throws to ascertain distance beforehand. The spike logically limits the amount of practical uses for it, but if you want a designated throwing hawk, that's the way I'd go.
The only thing about the tomahawk that took me by surprise at first is that the head will slip down the shaft after throwing it. Tomahawks are designed so that the head is removable, but I found it extremely irritating, so I drilled a hole through the head and shaft beneath and inserted a steel pin to hold the head in place.
 
The thing about that is you then take away what is possibly one of the most useful features of the tomahawk

If you break your haft, you can quickly make a new one from wood that you find, and with a removable head you can take the blade off of a given haft and use it for many different uses like a hand carving tool, adze, skinning tool, etc.
 
It came in the mail today and I got to say I like it so far. The handle is a bit bigger than what I had in mind but not too big. I manged to stick it on my third throw which is great excePt the fourth throw broke my target. Any decent recomendations for backyard targets?
 
Go take a gander in your woodline (or local woods). Somewhere you'll find a downed tree from this winter. Cut about a 8-10'' thick section (IMO), cart it home, and use the biggest spade bit you have to allow three saplings to "tripod" it up. Simplest target I've found, and you can adjust the height / size with another tree.

And Nick, IMO hawks have to slip down the shaft during throwing. Throw a hatchet (top mounted) 50 or so times, and the shoulder will be destroyed from the downward slip (and possibly the eye if their is metal on the shoulder). Its why tomahawks are bottom mounted, so you might want to make sure that pin isn't destroying the eye of your hawk.
 
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