Pike Head

[bigfootnampa]

I used to be a Firefighter and we had pikes available on our trucks. When I saw the one that Jake made for log rafting it gnawed at the back of my mind that I need one of those for the farm here and maybe for our boats too. My first one was just a hook as I had not worked out the details of forming the spike and hook on the same piece. I was not quite satisfied with that though and it kept nagging at me so today I made another with both spike and hook. Now I have to come up with a worthy pole to mount it! It was made of an old tent stake of 3/4" diameter metal that seemed to work like some real hard high carbon stuff. I had some trouble getting it split on the end and ended up using my cut-off wheel in my angle grinder for quite a bit of the cut. I had to finish it with the huge railroad hot-cut though. I did a poorer job than I would have liked at cleaning up the inner end of the split... but I am pretty sure that this hunk of hard steel isn't going to crack apart on me. I believe that I could pull any of our trucks with this hook. It is heavy duty for sure! Eleven and one half inch long by three and one eighth inch wide. Perhaps just a tad overbuilt!? I really like the look though!

[pkrankow]

Nice looking, but...with that fat of a tang how fat of a shaft are you planning to use?

Phil

[bigfootnampa]

Nice looking, but...with that fat of a tang how fat of a shaft are you planning to use?
Phil

The tang is 1/2" square on the thick end... I regularly make them 3/8" so just a wee bit heavier than normal. I'd say about 1 1/4" diameter maybe just a bit thicker at the tang end. When you hot seat them as I do in green lumber (if I can get it) the tang socket gets hot molded to shape and the resins act as hot glues (similar to old time ferrule cement) so the connection is astoundingly solid... You could put a collar or ring for reinforcement but it would be pretty extreme overbuild even for me. Sometimes I do drizzle Kwik-Poly down into the cracks and that penetrates the wood and hardens the whole area with very tough plastic. I might do that with this one but the larger tang should give it PLENTY of strength in any case. I think a shaft of that size will be consistent with the heavy-duty nature of the pike head itself (I might make it pretty long too, 12' seems right). BTW using green timber allows the moisture in the wood to cool the tang as I drive it in and then the wood shrinks as it cures which tightens the tang socket joint even more. Additionally the green wood is more flexible allowing for a little more effective hot-molding as the tang is seated. Note that I do this at a black heat... not red, that would char the socket and the tang would fall right out or work loose quickly.