More advanced or not, that's incredible and I suspect that the end results will still impress and leave us all in awe.
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Mike's Flintknapping, Blacksmithing, & Primitive Crafts
- Thread starter Blade-meister
- Start date
The order is for some pretty simple tomahawks. The customer didn't have a lot of money so I worked with him. He traded me some cools stuff to knock some money off them. I normally would add a lot of brass tacks to these tomahawks, but that just adds cost. Many didn't have the "bling" historically that us modern guys like to do. Sometimes all the additions take away from the beautiful curly maple pattern of the wood anyways. I've had hawks that I've literally had a hard time starting the brass tacks because the wood was just so beautiful that I hated to take away from that.
I agree. More often than not, I prefer the simple beauty of tools. I'm not much of a bling person despite being attracted to very shiny things by default.
Look forward to the finished product.
I'm with you. I love the old wood block planes that are simple and all the wear tells a story. Sometimes, the fancier something is the more that can go wrong with it. I knew a guy who got his new pipe tomahawk and proceeded to try to throw it at a target. The hawk hit on the mouthpiece and and shattered. A nice and simple trail tomahawk would have survived without issue.
One like that from that maker would probably set you back $800 or more. I honestly don't know where they find customers at that price point. Mine are much lower, but then again I'm not well-known in the market.
My pipe tomahawks are fully smokeable. So if you like to smoke a pipe, you can make a great impression by whipping out a pipe tomahawk for your next smoke. A lot of guys make these and they are not able to function as a pipe because they either don't drill out the handle or they don't drill a hole from the bowl to the hole in the handle. Even when they do, you need a brain tanned piece of deer hide to use as a gasket so that smoke doesn't come out of every space imaginable once the pipe section is lit. There's a lot of detail work that goes into pipe tomahawks.
I find the combination of pipe a tomahawk an interesting one. Why combine the 2? Is it a tomahawk that can function as a pipe or is it a pipe that can function as a tomahawk?? Are they combined for a reason or just because they can be?
Dave in KY
Shave Newbie
You don't crave a smoke after a good scalping?
But Depending on what you're smoking you may want to scalp someone afterwards.
Quite the pickle
It is an odd combination. When settlers made contact with the various Indian tribes they noticed that smoking and weapons were two very important cultural traits. Combining a pipe into a tomahawk was more of a marketing ploy than anything and the Indians coveted such items. You were of great importance if you had one. Often times they were presented to tribal leaders as part of the greasing of the tracks so to speak to be allowed to trap or to gain allegiance. The French and the Brits make a lot of weapons that were handed out to Indians that they sought to have fight for their causes. I made one that is in my collection that has a removable pipe bowl.....so you go to war, wipe off the tomahawk, and screw the pipe bowl in for a smoke!
I just think Mel Gibson going postal in The Patriot when I think tomahawk...which was BA!
Fun!
Those of us who make pipe tomahawks really cringe at Mel Gibson's tomahawk in the Patriot. Nothing about it is period correct. Pipe hawks also don't throw well, so seeing him throw it as a weapon and it performing so well is just not right. I know, I'm a killjoy, but pipe tomahawks rarely saw much action - not many found on the battlefields from what I've seen. The "postal" scene is one of my least favorite. Killing someone that up close and personal is just something horrible, but at least they got the amount of blood covering him correctly.
I've finally got the metal blades dove tailed into the brass head of this pair I'm working on. Now I'm ready to do some file work and then silver solder them in.
Still a ton of work to be done on these hawk heads. The brass top part is in the rough after being cast from an original and lots of file work that needs to be done to crisp up the lines and polish them to a nice shiny brass look. I then go back with an aging chemical and give some slight patina to the areas that don't see much handling so it doesn't look too shiny. If all goes well with the silver soldering, it will be on to pouring the pewter mouth pieces.
Still a ton of work to be done on these hawk heads. The brass top part is in the rough after being cast from an original and lots of file work that needs to be done to crisp up the lines and polish them to a nice shiny brass look. I then go back with an aging chemical and give some slight patina to the areas that don't see much handling so it doesn't look too shiny. If all goes well with the silver soldering, it will be on to pouring the pewter mouth pieces.
Thanks guys. Lots of work left to do on them, but I'll take the cadre on the journey. The profits from this order should allow me to purchase a welder that will really open up the possibilities of my metal working. Shawn has been a great help in guiding me what to select for what money I will have.
So over the weekend I silver soldered the steel blades to the brass heads. This involves fluxing the seam and heating the area until the flux starts bubbling then you run the silver solder over the seam. The flux / heat suck in the solder forming a weld of sorts between the two different materials. I wouldn't bet my life on a silver solder weld, but for things like this it's just fine. Once the heads cool, I snap the steel blade with my finger tip to see if it rings. If it rings then my weld is solid all the way through the seam, otherwise I'd get a dull thwap or something along those lines. Both welds took beautifully, but that's the easy part. Lots of hand filing is next.
Above you can see me starting the process of filing the welded area. I used my grandfather's square file, and the larger file is one I put a chestnut handle on while I was laid up after the hip surgery. The Yankee vise is one I picked up all rusty at my favorite junk shop last week and put it right into service. $5 was all the vise cost and it was a steal. I just had to clean it up and oil everything to bring it back to service. I love this little vise though it's missing the jaw plates. Yankee is a top end vise maker from days gone by (or at least I believe they are top end!) The larger file in the picture was one of 10 I picked up at my favorite junk shop only paying $10 for all. I was going to make knives out of them, but once I cleaned them up and carded them they were all in great shape so I put them back to work by putting handles on them all.
After a whole morning of filing I ended up with two beautiful looking hawk heads in the rough. Still a lot of finish filing to do. The reddish hue is just a reflection from the shirt I was wearing, the heads really don't have that color at all but you get the idea of how the filed heads look. The premium curly maple hawk handles are sitting by them and will really look beautiful when I get to that stage.
Up next will be pouring the pewter mouth pieces on the ends of the curly maple handles. This involves making a paper mold and pouring molten pewter in it hoping for the best. Hours and hours of work left, but I hope to wrap it all up in the next 2-3 weeks. When I get tired working on them I just think to myself "Welder........welder.......welder man" and it keeps me going. Actually, I enjoy working with my hands a lot. Anything in the world of old time craftsmanship I just love to practice. When was the last time historically a pipe tomahawk was made using this process in the area I live in? Maybe it's never been done, or maybe it's been 150 years? Using my grandfathers tools and being surrounded by my anvils in my workshop / smithy just feels right and I get so much satisfaction working down there and it is my hope that my work reflects that. One of these days I need to make this type of pipe tomahawk for myself to have in my collection. I don't own a single one with the dovetailed steel blade.
Above you can see me starting the process of filing the welded area. I used my grandfather's square file, and the larger file is one I put a chestnut handle on while I was laid up after the hip surgery. The Yankee vise is one I picked up all rusty at my favorite junk shop last week and put it right into service. $5 was all the vise cost and it was a steal. I just had to clean it up and oil everything to bring it back to service. I love this little vise though it's missing the jaw plates. Yankee is a top end vise maker from days gone by (or at least I believe they are top end!) The larger file in the picture was one of 10 I picked up at my favorite junk shop only paying $10 for all. I was going to make knives out of them, but once I cleaned them up and carded them they were all in great shape so I put them back to work by putting handles on them all.
After a whole morning of filing I ended up with two beautiful looking hawk heads in the rough. Still a lot of finish filing to do. The reddish hue is just a reflection from the shirt I was wearing, the heads really don't have that color at all but you get the idea of how the filed heads look. The premium curly maple hawk handles are sitting by them and will really look beautiful when I get to that stage.
Up next will be pouring the pewter mouth pieces on the ends of the curly maple handles. This involves making a paper mold and pouring molten pewter in it hoping for the best. Hours and hours of work left, but I hope to wrap it all up in the next 2-3 weeks. When I get tired working on them I just think to myself "Welder........welder.......welder man" and it keeps me going. Actually, I enjoy working with my hands a lot. Anything in the world of old time craftsmanship I just love to practice. When was the last time historically a pipe tomahawk was made using this process in the area I live in? Maybe it's never been done, or maybe it's been 150 years? Using my grandfathers tools and being surrounded by my anvils in my workshop / smithy just feels right and I get so much satisfaction working down there and it is my hope that my work reflects that. One of these days I need to make this type of pipe tomahawk for myself to have in my collection. I don't own a single one with the dovetailed steel blade.