ball peen hammer to spike tomahawk

J

Jason Fry

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Jun 5, 2008
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Started from a ball peen about 16 oz, USA stamped. Forgot that my phone was plugged in, but I got a few pics later in the process.

Here it is after some of the blade was beginning to be forged out, right before I started drifting the eye.
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A bit more forging...
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Forged to shape all but the spike end. Time for a little profile cleanup on the grinder.
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Drifted the eye out larger to fit a regular hammer handle.
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Got it close to finished. After this I normalized in the oven and then did a bit of finish grinding. May heat treat tomorrow.
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No sir, mystery steel at its finest. Figure 4140 or similar, but who knows. 1500, medium oil, see how it goes.
 
Nice job! I'd like to do one. I'll have to get to a flea market and collect some hammer heads :)
 
I want to see somebody play around with a Estwing tool of some kind. I have only seen guys grind one of their hatchets into a hawk-like object with too short of a spike. IIRC, those are 1060/65
 
jdm61 said:
I want to see somebody play around with a Estwing tool of some kind. I have only seen guys grind one of their hatchets into a hawk-like object with too short of a spike. IIRC, those are 1060/65
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Ha !
I welded the head of adjustable wrench to cheek of an Estwing ES22 which is a Concrete Carpenters favourite tool. It was intended as a prank, but its recipient found it very useful. The joke was on me afterall.
 
Did you harden the whole thing? How far did you temper it back? I'd like to try this at some point, but I'm not really clear on how the heat treatment is done on axes/hatchets. Great work!
 
I heated to 1500 in the kiln and full quenched. Tempered at 450 (higher than I would for a knife) and also drew back the spike to purple with a torch.

The other option I considered was heating in the forge till only the edge was past critical, quenching, then doing the same with the spike end.
 
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