BenR.T.
Tanto grinder & High performance blade peddler
Moderator
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2011
- Messages
- 4,914
So I have been building and designing tomahawks of one kind or another since pretty much the beginning. RMJ Tactical tomahawks were one of my first introductions online to high end cutlery and eventually building custom knives. So the fact that I am now offering high performance tomahawks that you can trust when the chips are stacked against you, is kind of a full circle thing for me. I was even fortunate enough to have Ryan give me input in the design process of my most recent design. The "Valkyrie". This is a model I have been building for over year now, but I figured some of you may be interested to see how I build them.
Some of my customers are weekend warriors, and some are trusting these tools with their lives. Either way, it is a tool can count on, no matter what.
Here are some pics of the process. Not all of these are new pics, but I compiled them to show most of the steps I go through in building a high performance hawk.
I had the hawks waterjet cut from a very large sheet of 4140, but they still need quite a bit of work to clean them up. Here I am cleaning the top profile on one of them.
[video=youtube;sEGwJG9Bhdg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEGwJG9Bhdg[/video]
Next I go through and drill all the holes to their final dimensions.
I made a simple little template to mark where I will hard stamp the blades. I use a 12 ton press that I built for the job.
And the results
The axes had quite a warp to them for some reason, so I straightened them out prior to grinding. Here is one on my granite surface plate, nice and flat now.
Here I am scribing the lines that I will grind to.
Some of my customers are weekend warriors, and some are trusting these tools with their lives. Either way, it is a tool can count on, no matter what.
Here are some pics of the process. Not all of these are new pics, but I compiled them to show most of the steps I go through in building a high performance hawk.
I had the hawks waterjet cut from a very large sheet of 4140, but they still need quite a bit of work to clean them up. Here I am cleaning the top profile on one of them.
[video=youtube;sEGwJG9Bhdg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEGwJG9Bhdg[/video]
Next I go through and drill all the holes to their final dimensions.
I made a simple little template to mark where I will hard stamp the blades. I use a 12 ton press that I built for the job.
And the results
The axes had quite a warp to them for some reason, so I straightened them out prior to grinding. Here is one on my granite surface plate, nice and flat now.
Here I am scribing the lines that I will grind to.