- Joined
- Nov 29, 2005
- Messages
- 887
After reading all of the rave reviews of Fort Turner tomahawks, I had to see what they were like for myself. Ordered a Buck Hawk. Probable applications will include outdoor/camping/backpacking use. Light weight will be much appreciated; steel toughness is a must, as a lot of the wood in the Southwest is pretty darn hard. I don't anticipate doing so much axe work as to make a full-sized axe worth the weight on most occasions--hence the tomahawk.
Initial impressions were quite favorable. Roughly the same size as an H&B Forge Shawnee, but the blade on the Ft. Turner is much, much thinner, making for a lighter blade. The width of the H&B bit was great enough to require considerable sharpening to get it to cut respectably--actually, I slowly convexed it on a belt sander, cooling the bit with ice after each pass to preserve the het treatment. The Ft. Turner bit is narrow enough that I don't see as much need to alter the grind at all. I might sort of convex the edge with a file eventually, but I don't see it as a matter of urgency to make the axe function. The thin blade does make me wonder about how well it will hold up to seasoned mesquite--but we'll see. In terms of lightness and thinness it's actually kind of similar to a Cold Steel Frontier Hawk.
The finish on the Ft. Turner head was nicely rustic. The handle was generally well-polished, but still grippable--and it is, as they say, narrower than either the H&B or the Cold Steel handle--but still holdable in my large hands. My wife noted that the Ft. Turner handle's forward edge is more rounded than the fairly-sharp forward edge of the H&B handle--making the Ft. Turner the more comfortable handle for her.
I did have one issue with the handle--and here is where Dana, whom I understand to be the head individual behind Ft. Turner tomahawks, really showed his customer service stuff. I noticed that the handle had a crack on the side, maybe 3 inches long, starting about 2 inches down from the bottom of the head. If you were to look down on the top of the 'hawk with the bit at 12:00, the crack was maybe at about 10 or 11 o'clock. It appeared to be a natural crack or "check", likely from contracting of the wood as it dried. It did not appear to have been coated with the finish.
Checking by itself seems not to weaken wood too much, so I wasn't initially too worried, but then I looked a little harder at the wood and noticed that the grain in that area of the handle was not straight up and down, but veered off diagonally at the back, so that the rear half of the handle just south of the head was running diagonally, rather than straight from top to bottom. Again, nothing terrible, but I was a little concerned that the combination of the longitudinal crack in the front plus the latitudinal weakness that would be created by the way the grain ran in the back might diminish the handle's durability right at the high-stress area about two inches down from the head. I'd say the odds of the handle failing under normal use because of these issues was less than 50%, but I didn't want to have it break 5 years from now and find out that Fort Turner has ceased to do business, or whatever, so I e-mailed Dana. I described the issues, which he addressed intelligently, suggesting some other things that I'd want to make sure weren't the explanation for the crack. At my suggestion, he agreed that a good resolution would be for me to order another handle (or two), and he would waive the shipping charges. I'll now have the added security of a presumably-unweakened handle, but he will not bear the full burden of replacing something that might or might not really be compromised.
All in all, an A+ for customer service to Fort Turner. I figured the least I could do was pass the word along to the forum.
Initial impressions were quite favorable. Roughly the same size as an H&B Forge Shawnee, but the blade on the Ft. Turner is much, much thinner, making for a lighter blade. The width of the H&B bit was great enough to require considerable sharpening to get it to cut respectably--actually, I slowly convexed it on a belt sander, cooling the bit with ice after each pass to preserve the het treatment. The Ft. Turner bit is narrow enough that I don't see as much need to alter the grind at all. I might sort of convex the edge with a file eventually, but I don't see it as a matter of urgency to make the axe function. The thin blade does make me wonder about how well it will hold up to seasoned mesquite--but we'll see. In terms of lightness and thinness it's actually kind of similar to a Cold Steel Frontier Hawk.
The finish on the Ft. Turner head was nicely rustic. The handle was generally well-polished, but still grippable--and it is, as they say, narrower than either the H&B or the Cold Steel handle--but still holdable in my large hands. My wife noted that the Ft. Turner handle's forward edge is more rounded than the fairly-sharp forward edge of the H&B handle--making the Ft. Turner the more comfortable handle for her.
I did have one issue with the handle--and here is where Dana, whom I understand to be the head individual behind Ft. Turner tomahawks, really showed his customer service stuff. I noticed that the handle had a crack on the side, maybe 3 inches long, starting about 2 inches down from the bottom of the head. If you were to look down on the top of the 'hawk with the bit at 12:00, the crack was maybe at about 10 or 11 o'clock. It appeared to be a natural crack or "check", likely from contracting of the wood as it dried. It did not appear to have been coated with the finish.
Checking by itself seems not to weaken wood too much, so I wasn't initially too worried, but then I looked a little harder at the wood and noticed that the grain in that area of the handle was not straight up and down, but veered off diagonally at the back, so that the rear half of the handle just south of the head was running diagonally, rather than straight from top to bottom. Again, nothing terrible, but I was a little concerned that the combination of the longitudinal crack in the front plus the latitudinal weakness that would be created by the way the grain ran in the back might diminish the handle's durability right at the high-stress area about two inches down from the head. I'd say the odds of the handle failing under normal use because of these issues was less than 50%, but I didn't want to have it break 5 years from now and find out that Fort Turner has ceased to do business, or whatever, so I e-mailed Dana. I described the issues, which he addressed intelligently, suggesting some other things that I'd want to make sure weren't the explanation for the crack. At my suggestion, he agreed that a good resolution would be for me to order another handle (or two), and he would waive the shipping charges. I'll now have the added security of a presumably-unweakened handle, but he will not bear the full burden of replacing something that might or might not really be compromised.
All in all, an A+ for customer service to Fort Turner. I figured the least I could do was pass the word along to the forum.
