TheZLS

Thank you, I really appreciate it. I'm planning on making another with a hammer on the end rather than the spike, which I'll be sure to post pictures of. Thanks! Definitely do and post pictures :] Thank you, I'm glad you like it. Oh cool deal. Good to see another guy in eastern NC! Or forging a head as it were ;] For the horde! Thanks, Tim! Thank you, glad you do. I appreciate it. I've tried throwing it a few times and I figure I'm doing it wrong because I keep hitting right on the base of the handle. I think it might be because I'm throwing it like I would a knife. Any tips?

This is my first tomahawk. I picked up a RR spike at an antique shop and decided to make it into this. I had seen people making hawks with RR spikes by upsetting the end but this made more sense to me. I could have spent more time on finish work but I wanted it to be a little rough looking.

Just finished this a few hours ago. I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

Thanks for the replies guys. Unfortunately being in Oriental it would take me around 7 hours drive to get to either of the meetings y'all suggested. I will be joining the NC ABANA however and there's a regional group based in Wilmington so I'll try to get to that meeting.

Hey Guys, my name is Luke and I'm 18 years old. I recently took a blacksmithing class at the John Campbell folk school to see if I might like to pursue blacksmithing as a career and sure enough I fell in love with the craft! Anyways I've been setting up my own shop and I'm just about ready to start working and I decided that it would be a good idea to get into a forum to glean some wisdom from other smiths. I also thought I'd take this opportunity to show you guys a bit of what I made so far. This is a backscratcher... Everyone else was making fire pokers and I don't have a fireplace so this was my way around that. My first pair of tongs. They were made from 1/2" square. Just a little leaf key chain. A steel ball. Supposedly in all my teacher's years of blacksmithing he'd never seen anyone make a steel ball. Haha. A hook made from 3/8" round. I'll probably be one of those smiths that starts with round if they want square and square if they want round. And finally a picture of my anvil, which I obviously didn't make. And a couple of videos that show what I did to the anvil and what my forge looks like. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyebIN8Sbhc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sYNVTq6fjQ I just pulled this from the description of the video of what I did to my anvil. "This is a hand forged anvil (evidenced mouse holes) that's probably around 100 years old (I really have no earthly idea) and weighs roughly 200 pounds (also a guess as we don't have a scale). It was given to me by someone that was moving away and wanted the anvil to find a home with someone that would use it. She had gotten it from her parents who had found it in a barn they bought back in 1952 in upstate NY by the Hudson River. When I got it it was really rough looking and it was clear that it was abused by previous owners. There were chisel marks on the face of the anvil/around the horn and there was paint on the face of the anvil and some spray paint on the side which I removed with a wire brush. This is the process I underwent for removing the paint on the face of the anvil... I ground off all the paint that was on the face and horn of the anvil. This revealed tons of deep scratches, dings and marks. I then continued to grind the surface until it was nearly completely smooth but some stuff was just too deep to really effectively remove without creating more trouble. After I did that I took a belt grinder to it using 40 grit sandpaper to remove a little bit more material and the circular grinding marks. Once I was satisfied I switched to 120 grit and went back over the whole thing. " I apologize if there are too many pictures, I just like sharing. Thanks for reading!