#coldsteelhawk

[ru-titley-knives]

 Esee 4HM in good company with a pimped @coldsteelknives hawk and @silky-europe pocket boy all good bushcraft tools .

[ru-titley-knives]

@coldsteelknives trail hawk pimp .

part 4 .

In part 3 a follower inquired as to why I had put a level on an item in a vice .

The reason was two fold ,firstly one of my vice jaws is broken so putting a level on it ensures the handle was flat before drilling . Secondly the trail hawks handle was too long to fit under my pillar drill so it was going to have to be drilled by hand  .

Having the handle level in the vice with so much of the wood sticking up to drill into so that the drill bit isn’t pressured by the vice jaws meant I needed to make sure the drill was spot on level or risk possibly going off an an angle .

After the black leather dye on the handle was dry I rubbed it back with some wire wool to revel the grain . I then epoxied in the female end of the safety breakaway cord-lock flush to the end of the handle . It then fits the male cord-lock with the 6mm fire steel in like a glove and I can either add a tungsten carbide striker or small Photon freedom type flashlight to the technora cord .

As I hope to be sent another handle by @heinniehaynes who now stock them to also do a frontier style pimp to that one I can’t add any cord to the handle as will still need to remove the trail hawks head so opted for a series of large rubber O rings which work well to designate a specific grip area but are also easy to remove .

Between the O rings I wanted to add a bit of practical decoration in the form of some pyrography . The art of burning wood to create patterns is probably as old as history itself but it also indents into the wood leaving a grippy texture.

You can also see that I have sharpened and mirror polished the cutting edge after its stone-washing. 

 CS hawks in the UK via http://www.heinnie.com/cold-steel-trail-hawk

[ru-titley-knives]

 Trail-hawk .

Just getting a feeling for this @coldsteelknives Hawk before I start the pimp up , so have been hammering some nails ,spitting up some seasoned wood for kindling  before deciding if I want to shorten the haft at all .

Ive read a couple of reviews of this axe where folks have commented on issues from loose heads or not sharp edge out of the box type comments , the edge on mine was a little dull but I plan to sort that out anyway .

There have been no issues with the head at all , Ive taken it off a few times now and the grub screw bites deep into the hickory making a rock solid fit.

 The plan so far is to do another step by step tutorial which will involve sorting the edge , pimping up the head and haft and making a protective mask for the cutting edge  but I’m still undecided as to doing a frontier style mountain man hawk or a post apocalyptic preppers type hawk  so may end up doing both if I get hold of another haft .

The CS trail hawk was kindly sent to me by the good folks @heinniehaynes

and full specs can be seen here in UK http://www.heinnie.com/cold-steel-trail-hawk