First Hawk, Rail Road Spike Hawk

[sjaqua]

Well a few weeks back I got my Axe Eye Drift from Kayne & Sons.
So I finaly got around to playing with it this last week. Here is
my first hawk. Once again I reached into my bucket of Rail
Road Spikes.


With the RR spike making for a small head, I went for a
throwing hawk from word one. Handle angles back slightly
from the axe edge for less chance of striking the target
face when the axe sticks at either the heel or toe. Balance
is real nice. A close match to the throwing axes I
bought several years ago.

The axe head ws quenched in Super Quench giving me a
Rockwell hardness reading of 57c

Handle is maple from Dixie Gun ( I can't carve one that cheap).
Lightly colored with the torch and rubbed with Danish
Oil. Made a nice contast to the polished head.

Last, my makers mark fit real nice on the left side of the axe eye

[Darren Ellis]

Looks really good Scott!



-Darren

[rhrocker]

Scott that's really nice work. Can you tell me anything about the drife size? Does it only take one pass, or maybe one from each side? Really nice!

[sjaqua]

Robert,

The drift is only used from one side, to create the tapper in the eye. It appears to be a pretty standard size. The handle I used has a 1 degree tapper that goes from 1 to 1 1/2 inches. The eye formed by the drift fit that handle very well.

I first upset the end of the spike to try to increase the metal mass where I would be later forming the edge. I then punched through spike with a slitting chisle made from some old oil company sucker rod. I then opened it up and did the eye forming operation with the axe eye drift. It took about three heats to form the eye, due to heat loss to the drift. Water cooled the drift each time I put the spike back in the fire. I then forged out the axe blade. I used the drift one last time to reshape the eye and remove any deformation caused during the forging of the blade.

[McAhron]

[Ray Cover Jr]

With the head of the spike still in tact this would make a great camp hawk. THe head could be used for driving tent stakes and the blade for sinking into camp intruders.

Just out of curiosity what do you charge for these?

Ray

[Keith Montgomery]

I think that railroad spike worked real well.

[sjaqua]

Thanks all for the comments.

The hawk was making a nice impression at yesterdays event. right up untill the rain moved in and froze us all to our core. It was snowing 500 ft higher up on the hill.

Ray,

The price I put on this hawk is $75. A little more work than that amount went into this hawk. But I figure I can hold to this price, because my prototypes always take a little longer to get right.