Throwing Iron
With my Nordic blood and the wife’s Apache/Comanche roots, it was inevitable we’d have tomahawks or belt axes around the place.We watched a couple of seasons of the History Channel's Vikings and that sealed the deal. I gathered up three 'hawks off tables at the local outdoor junk sale, along with an old ‘Cera Hunter II’ Chinese Bowie that I originally purchased as a rough knife for the pickup toolbox. I took the scales off the bowie and replaced them with a length of rubber hose.
I don’t have 50 bucks in all of them.
Two of the ‘hawks are cheap throwers, but the third is a good Frontier style ‘hawk with some serious steel in it. It will get razor sharp with a little work and the sparks really flew when I beveled its edge on a belt sander. It has an obvious hammer forged axe with a ‘G’ stamped in the head. My wife wanted ‘her own axe’ and I gave her this one.
I threw knives as a kid and I've watched various videos of rendezvous contests, where they toss the knife or hawk just hard enough to stick it in the end of a log. I figure these are weapons not lawn darts, so I throw hard enough to bust ribs and bury the iron. I don’t claim any expertise at this but at 7 yards I am pretty certain of accomplishing that.
This is all great fun.
tossing 'Hawks and rendevous...
You missed the handle cutting part...
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Of the Troops & For the Troops
I used my hawk to hunt ground squirrels at FT
Hunter-Liggett in 1976-77 and actually got a couple. Great stress release.
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Sincerely,
Hobie
DANG IT SARGE!
I have a CS Rifleman's hawk that rides behind the back seat of Old Paintless. But it's more a small axe than anything. I've used it on hard as Chuck Norris two year dead oak and it worked great. Now I have to order a frontier hawk just for flingin'.
Throwing Iron
I mentioned the other day that I threw the cheapest no-name hawk we have, and the $15 junk sale Bowie, at an old galvanized water tank I was hauling off. I was able to pierce it almost every time. The effectiveness of these basic melee weapons didn’t sink in on me until today, when I shot the tank a couple of times with my old Star Model F using Remington Thunderbolt 22 LR ammo. The hole above the 22 dents are from a tomahawk and two below them were made by the bowie.