Steel advice for tomahawk

TLR

TLR

Gold Member
Joined
Oct 5, 1998
Messages
1,574
Hey guys this is most likely above my skill level but I made a promise to a good friend who's heading back to Afghanistan that I'd attempt to make him a small tomahawk.

Trying to figure out the right steel for this project. He operates in and out of a Chinook and this could have to pry it's way out of something so I was thinking 5/16" in S7? It seems to be hard to source and it is expensive. Likely dimensions are 7 or 8 inch long head with a 14-16" long shaft.

Any other suggestions? Regardless of the steel I'll be sending this out for professional HT (peters?) so that removes some limitations.

Thanks for your help.
 
4140 is darn tough. I build axes and hammer heads from it, and built my own power hammer dies from it. All heat treated by myself. And it's easily available in square or round bar in various sizes.

Personally, I'd go with 1" to 1 1/4" square bar for a tomahawk. That's enough to give you a good spread on the blade, but not overly large and heavy.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the responses so far. I should have mentioned that this will be stock removal and a one piece design, head and handle one piece of steel.
 
In that case, small quantities of 4140 plate are available from Speedy Metals. No 5/16", but they have 1/4" and 3/8".
 
In continuing to research this I'm trying to wrap my head around the generic word "toughness" that is used in most charts. Knowing that this might see prying forces applied to it (in an emergency) would anyone care to give me their order of appropriateness for this application of the following steels?

s7
4140
L6
A2
1075
 
Storm Crow - Have you used the plate steel from Speedy Metals? Based on their tolerances I'm trying to figure out if I could really use it as I don't have a way to flatten this large of a piece of steel easily.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top