Its a rare day...I, like many other members, have not posted pictures of my attempts in front of the anvil. Well, here is my first attempt at forging something sharp. It was a small ball pein hammer head. No wit is barely recognized as maybe a tomahawk. It took me a few heats to understand the difference between forging mild steel and the harder stuff. I learned a lot and hope to do better next time. This one will be in the next Iron In The Hat for our guild...I am also thankful the best picture I took was still blurry.

Peyton

I like it! I bought an old ballpein head the other day to try one of them, they're pretty neet. Did you re-drift the hole with a tomahawk drift or just leave it as is?

Peyton,
At least you've had success! Success has been a bit intangible for me so far, but that'll soon change.
I like it. I can still recognize it around the haft, but it looks like you put a good blade on it. Is the back of it still functional as a hammer? If so, that would make a decent camp axe!

looks great to me. lot of work and heat treat process to boot. super cutting tool.
thumbs up.
buzz

I left the eye alone...for the most part. I did have to clean it up some from all the forging. Next time I will forge a drift first to fit the head then forge out the rest of the stuff to cut out my headache of fixing the hole. Yesteryearforge has a small building full of handles so I just found the one that fit the eye the best and went from there.

Thanks for the kind words.
Peyton

Peyton,
Now that has personality. It looks like a nice handle fitting job also.
I just bet we will see more of your work in the future, I hope so.
Be safe!
Old Rusty Ted

That's very good for a first. Here is a tip for the next one. Know that with a hatchet like this, when you set it down so that the blade and the end of the handle is touching the ground, the center of the cutting edge (perhaps a little above the center considering your hand isn't at the very bottom) should touch the ground while the end of the handle is on the ground. Your hand at the bottom of the handle is the pivot point so it needs to be in cahoots with the center of the edge....kind of hard to explain right now. If you are going to make axes, hatchets, and tomahawks, a copy of The Ax Book by Dudley Cook is great to have. He covers what I am talking about in it. There is a great chapter where he explains what makes an efficient ax.

Looks great Peyton, I haven't tried anything like that, still making R/R spike knives, I want to make a spike tomahawk, however, I'm having trouble
upseting the metal, and I don't have the the proper tool to cut & drift the eye. but in time I will. :)

Now how did you do that without burning the handle????
Nice job Peyton Ill have to try that, someday when Ive had more practise!
:cool:
Bb

Ralphy
The proper tool for drifting is on the auction site of IForgeIron.com and currently up for bid.

What a shameless plug!!! I'm going to check it out! ;)

Cool stuff. Keep that hammer flyin;)