The Gun Counter

Thought I'd peek my head out again to share a little project I was working on back in January when it got warm enough to fire up the old forge.

It's a tomahawk fashioned from a railroad spike and some pipe. I made 2 prototypes prior to this to get it to the shape I wanted. I used high carbon railroad spike (marked on the head with "HC"). I wish I had taken pictures of the process, but those of you who have worked with metal like this before can probably figure it out. I bent the spike about 2.5" from the tip and started flattening and shaping it, then it was back and forth to the grinder and forge for shaping and finishing touches before my buddy welded the beast onto a length of pipe we had lying around.

I know this isn't an ideal design. Doctrine dictates that I would drift a hole in the spike to make room for a wooden handle. Experiments in that direction resulted in colorful language, burns, and ruined rr spikes. So welding happened. As a result, balance isn't great, but I think it came out sturdier and opens the possibility for storing a survival kit in the handle.

The last photograph shows one of the prototypes after felling and limbing a tree. These suckers can get hair-poppingly sharp, and remain so after being thrown at stuff. I blame the edge geometry and my buddy's ridiculous grinder and set of belts.

Anyways, here's what you came to see (hoping I don't screw this up):

much better than I could do an definitely beats the crap out of a field expedient tomahawk (shovel).
All kidding aside, it looks good for a 2/3rd try and more importantly it works.

some day I'm gonna buy / build some cool toy makers like a forge. sigh

Precision wrote:
some day I'm gonna buy / build some cool toy makers like a forge. sigh

Forges are easy. You can make a perfectly usable one out of an old brake drum or disk and $40 in pipe fittings.

Now anvils... they're hard!

This kind of anvil?

http://orlando.craigslist.org/grd/2810003298.html

or is this too small

Chris:
Depending on how you define "useful" there are some free options. For the longest time I was using several pieces of railroad track (notice a pattern?). The top can be milled/ground flat and the end shaped into a horn. Another one upside down with a frame built around or welded to it gives you a nice big flat surface. Finish it off with some dampening so you don't go deaf and you have some options that will do a fair number of hobby jobs and all it cost was a walk down the tracks and some time with tools. The obvious disadvantage here is the time required and the relatively light weight of the resulting anvil, but for most of the stuff I make I wouldn't really have much trouble using a setup like that.

Now, if you have serious, non-hobby use in mind or you want to make money with your forge (for the love of God, no!) then its probably worth just buying the real deal, even at an inflated cost.

Edit:
Just wanted to clarify, I don't intend to advocate stealing track. There are abandoned pieces floating around, and it can also be found at scrap yards and what not. I even found some half buried under the house once. I don't want anyone to think I'm suggesting they walk to an active track with a hacksaw and some bad ideas.

See if you can find some XHC marked spikes. They're extra-high carbon. When I did a tomahawk making class, the guy demo'd making a spike into a hawk. He said when he gets going, it takes him about 15 minutes to make one. Sells them for about $50 a pop or more. He said that he usually cuts the spike halfway through close to the tip, then folds it back to make a larger piece of stock. He used a drill press when cold to drill two pilot holes in the middle of the spike, then after it was heated, used a hot cutter to cut between the two holes, making the eye. Then he enlarged it on a mandrel.

I like the bearded axe look of it. It would make a decent war hammer if the head of the spike was squared. You could even file/grind a "meat tenderizer" face into it for even more nastiness. Is your pipe completely round, or slightly flattened?

I finally bought a railroad track anvil, but it's very small. Looking for a real one, but not willing to pay the retarded prices. I should probably just suck it up and make a weekend trip here. At least I'd save on shipping. Still need to build a forge, too.

CByrneIV wrote:
I need something like a 3-0-0 London, or a Pedinghouse or Habermann.

If you find one, can I come over and watch you move it?

I don't doubt that at all, but I've had to move a 2-2-0 anvil onto a stand, and almost dropped a nut doing it. Of course, I'm not your size (actually a little less than half) but that one was plenty for me!

I posted a link some time ago by a guy I know who made his own anvil. >>LINK<< This was created about ten years ago, so the prices are surely out of date.

I don't know if there's any place in northern Idaho that could supply or burn steel that thick, probably there is in Spokane.

http://www.habairon.org/forsale.htm

Chris, I found the site linked here when I was trying to figure out what your terminology above meant. There are several anvils listed, not sure if any will be useful for you.