Steps I use to forge a spiked tomahawk.....

Raymond Richard

Raymond Richard

Joined
Jun 17, 2001
Messages
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I was asked to do an article or two in the OKCA News Letter and I thought I'd do one on making tomahawks. Thought this might be of some interest to some of you. The only thing I cheat on is the slot for the eye, everything else is done with hand held hammers. The picture is pretty self explanitory but if there's questions let me know........
PDRM0786.JPG
 
awesome Ray..... lets see what one looks like finished... i'm hoping to get into some forging soon, my friend Gary Rua is going to take me on as an apprentice for forging hopefully this week, we'll start it and continue every tuesday, thanks for the inspiration!
 
Terry, The slot starts out as a serries of drilled holes in a line and then I use a carbide burr to clean out the slot. I get the burrs at a local flee market. I'll see what I can do about the article. It won't be for a few months...
 
Ray, that's really awesome! Nice pic, too. I have some questions. If you had a sharpened drop in for your anvil, could you forge your starter slot? I assume you use the tapered,rounded drop ins for you anvil, like the one pictured? Also, would you recommend one chisle edged or square edged, but tapered down to a square edge on the working end? Or both? Please excuse my ignorance, my forge experience is Neanderthal, at best. Also, what steel would you recommend for making one of the mentioned drop ins, or whatever the correct name is for them. OR, would you recommend using a chisle while your hawk billet is laying on your anvil? well, maybe not. You would probably need a third hand to hold the billet while you are using the hammer and chisle to make the starting slot, unless you C-clamped some holding bars on your anvil face. Your drill,routing job for the starter slot certainly can't be faulted, my opinion.
 
Michael J. Spangler said:
...my friend Gary Rua is going to take me on as an apprentice for forging hopefully this week...
Click to expand...

A double-agent, eh? Had too much HT relish, Mike? :D
 
That's pretty nice Ray. Sure looks easy with all those pieces setting there. I can spend an hour just doing the eye, that's whay I decided to mill the last few.
You should do a tutorial on just the eye. I'd love to see that!
 
Peter, The eye's are the biggest pain in the ass for sure. The first few hawks I made I either used a chisel or a hot cutter to start the slot. Time wise I think it was about the same as drilling and cleaning the slot out except when I went with drilling the eye it normally turns out where it should be. At least for me hot cutting has a greater failure percentage. If the eye is off the whole thing is off. When working on the eye's they need to be done at a very high heat. Also you don't want to 100% the eye untill the very end of forging.

Bumping up the cutting edge has always been a hard thing to do untill I gave it somemore thought. I've had an old drill press vice kicking around for years so what I ended up doing was taking the drill press vice and setting it on top on the anvil, heating up the one end of the steel and placing the cold end in the vice with it setting on top on the anvil and then forging it that way. That made life alot easier.
 
never enough HT relish. this way when i learn forging from someone whose been doing it for 25+ years i can finally teach george a thing or two!, other than manners. conveniently i have to bring my girlfriend to a class right down the street from his house, that being about 25 minutes from where i live there's no sense in driving back home when i can hang out and learn how to forge right?
 
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