I recently finished hammering out an old RR spike into a thin hawk head. I've read articles and seen videos where you wrap the axe head band directly on to the wood handle, then weld where the metal meets.

 

My question is, what about heat treating and tempering? Are you supposed to remove the axe head after welding? In the videos I've seen they never discuss how the heat treat and tempering is accomplished... They just show the guy wrapping the head, then usually cut to the finished axe.

 

I tried googling this question to get a better video or article... But most the results were about wrapping paper or Ragnar Lothbrok.

If I'm understanding what you wrote, you probably wouldn't have to worry about the wood handle after getting the metal forge welded. It probably will have burned off by then.  Or were you talking about electric welding? Or gas welding? 

 

Heat treating is not going to buy you a lot with that alloy.  One thing you could do is to just heat and quench the edge of the hawk and try to leave the rest cool. Not knowing what kind of forge you are using makes it hard to make suggestions.

I would bend around a piece of pipe and forge weld and then drift with a hawk head drift, which I have on my rack to hand. and then slip the wooden haft in and tweak cold.  Pop it out for final heat treat.  A hawk handle slides into place like a pickaxe handle rather than being mounted in place like a hammer handle.

32 minutes ago, NFLIFe said:

I tried googling this question to get a better video or article... But most the results were about wrapping paper or Ragnar Lothbrok.

If you Google your blacksmithing questions with "iforgeiron" as one of your search terms, you will get the relevant results from this forum much better than with either Google or IFI's own search function.

I can not see using wood as a drift or mandrel as a good idea.

I don't think that woodwork either.

it wood definitely be very smoky, and the wood wood burn up too fast to be of any good.

Add the tag "site:IForgeIron.com" without the quotes after your search words to search this website only, helps weed out a lot of clutter!!

16 hours ago, NFLIFe said:

 I've read articles and seen videos where you wrap the axe head band directly on to the wood handle, then weld where the metal meets.

 

 

Can you provide any links to the articles? It simply woodn't work

Using a metal drift should't seem IRONic, but that's ok. You're steel learning.

My relative experience is PUNy, but every article and video I've seen on this style they wrap around a pipe or wrap around a drift. I've seen wrapping around a drift the most. No way you could forge onto the wood handle. A slit and drift approach might be an easier first go at a hawk rather than jumping to a wrap and weld. For my monkeying around learning things I forged a simple drift out of one railroad spike and used it to drift other spikes. It isn't wide enough to be a proper hawk, so I put the handle on hammer style (which I know is historically incorrect, but just learning)

2 hours ago, lanternnate said:

My relative experience is PUNy, but every article and video I've seen on this style they wrap around a pipe or wrap around a drift. I've seen wrapping around a drift the most. No way you could forge onto the wood handle. A slit and drift approach might be an easier first go at a hawk rather than jumping to a wrap and weld. For my monkeying around learning things I forged a simple drift out of one railroad spike and used it to drift other spikes. It isn't wide enough to be a proper hawk, so I put the handle on hammer style (which I know is historically incorrect, but just learning)

 

I think I'll do that on the future^

 

So, it sounds like I need a metal pipe that roughly matches my handle... Wrap, weld, HT&t, then put it on the handle.

I'll report back once I'm done screwing it up :-)

8 hours ago, lanternnate said:

It isn't wide enough to be a proper hawk, so I put the handle on hammer style (which I know is historically incorrect, but just learning)

Well, there's more to it than just the history. Since a tomahawk is constantly hitting the target at all different angles, it is important to have a very good handle. Not that a taper handle never gets loose when it hits, but it doesn't matter because it tightens itself when you throw it anyway.

C-1, that's true. I have jokingly called them tomahatchets because of the handle style. Reality is I'm not throwing it at anything and it's a railroad spike, so it'll go dull before you can knock the head off mostly just a way to practice upsetting steel, drawing out the blade etc. Attached is the very first one I did this way in case it jump starts some creative juices for NFLife

You have a point too. In my opinion though, RR spikes aren't bad steel for a tomahawk.