weaveman

How did you harden and temper the blade? Im guessing that the whole blade was hardened and then tempered the same across the blade. If this is the case then the spine being thicker than with the edge and both being the same hardness the spine had way less flex that the edge and causing the spine to start cracking first. Have you tried a differentially tempering one of you blades or doing a soft back draw? Of course this is just a guess but its the only one that makes sense to me. James

There is a post further back that discusses these drifts. James

I just started forging a few hawks. I ground my own drift it is slightly oval 1 1/4" at widest point which is form front to back sides are slightly narrower with a tapper to the bottom. I did this for two reasons first was the ease of handle replacement second was to prevent the head from spinning. In my opinion it is much easier to slightly thin the sides of a limb to fit the poll than it is to get a good fit with the tear drop poll. I have been thinking more and more about this the last few days and believe that in the user hawks the only benefit of the tear drop is purely cosmetic. You can achieve a much smoother transition from the blade to the poll with the teardrop, but the slightly oval poll is a pretty good comprimise. For hard use where the handle may need to be replaced in the field the only tool you would need to replace the handle would be the hawk head itself held in the hand to hack and slighty thin the sides of a properly sized limb , after which if so choosing a person could use the hastily hafted hawk to make a better replacement. I didnt mean to clutter up this post but this subject has been on my mind alot lately and this post was all I need to make my rant. We are going to put one of my hawk heads thru some torture testing while camping over the next few days and I should be able to post some pics and feed back on how the oval poll has held up. James