My first tomahawk and forge weld.

[Guest guest T]

I have been reading the viking age axe tutorial thread and it gave me a bit of axe fever. Unfortunatly, it is a bit beyond my toolset to make an axe so I decided to try just forg welding a flat bar into a rough tomahawk. It is solid leaf spring with no bit which as Mr. Alan once said is not ideal due to the weld line on the edge. That is okay because something tells me I won't be using it for any heavy chopping. The weld lines are visible but I I am still happy considering it is my first (real) attempt to forgeweld and I did not really have any proper blacksmithing tools except a hammer (not even a mandrel to shape the eye); I just wrapped it around a round bar to start before welding.

 

 

It is about 3 inches long in total and has a 1 inch edge

 

 

A few things that I am going to do differently next time: 1 make sure that the faces being welded are clean, 2 weld a bit in and focus on welding the edge and eye well, 3 possibly a full sized wrapped tomahawk...

[Alan Longmire 2,659]

Not bad for a first! Go bigger, you know you want to...

[Don Abbott 99]

I was cleaning up my shop last week and found one almost identical to yours that I had made many years ago. You are doing a good thing by starting small and learning one step at a time. You really did a good job on that.

 

I agree with #1... I always try to grind my surfaces before welding if it's possible.

 

When you try #2, be sure to forge and/or grind that bit to paper thin on the edge. Even the thickness of a dime will cause gap problems.

 

And for #3, just rememeber that you'll need to multiply your ability to make heat as the size of your work grows. You can't fake welding heat. If you come up short and try it anyway, you'll usually ruin your weld.

 

Again, great work. Keep at it.

[Phil Ullrich 22]

Nice work Tre. At the Alamo museum in San Antonio there is an old tomahawk head no more than that size.

[Carl Brill 0]

Nice!

[Krateros 11]

realy nice for a first!