Woods Nobo T-Hawk

Best hatchet I ever used!! Never need to sharpen it and it cuts through both wet and dry wood like butter. Granted I have only used it on cedar, oak, pine, mahogany, amd maple. Definitely gonna buy an axe in the future and already bought the bushcraft knife for hunting. Definitely worth the money and never rusts. Been outside since the day I bought in and it rains constantly in TN.

I came across this Hawk researching axes for throwing. I’d recently made a target at home and was looking for some inexpensive axes to throw at it. I picked up a couple competition style axes and the woods kangee, i mean why not for the price. When it arrived I was instantly enamored with it. its a fearsome looking piece! ..But I couldn’t get this hawk to land on target. I had the competition style axes landing immediately. Admittedly i was frustrated throwing it, at one point I turned it around and gave a chop, spike first, at the target. That’s when I realized the woods kangee’s true talent. The solid spike hit went 2.5in into the punky log round and actually cracked the top 1/3 right off the target!!The blade arrives dull, that’s fine. You should want to put you own edge on it.-if you use a 1000/6000 whet stone you can put what looks like a sweet hamon on the machined edge.The stock handle is disposable. I only used it to throw, as throwing ruins handles. I was able to find a 3rd party curly maple handle which i hand sanded and fit to the head. That was fun to do.The blade is heavy but manageable. It will do campground duty if it must, but the kangee longs for guerilla shenanigans.With a $25 exhibition grade handle, a few hours of elbow grease (edge work and handle sanding) you can have a visually interesting, tactically functional, utterly devastating tomahawk for under $80.

This tomahawk is really a hatchet out of the box. It's mass is waaay too heavy to be practical for Self defense in the same way a normal hawk is (for Ex a cold Steel frontier, or pipe hawk). However, this hawk is FAR more useful as a woodsmans tool than the Cold Steel variety, or any of the Mall ninja tacticool breaching hawks out there.It could be a tad sharper as many of the negative reviews have mentioned, but as this thing barely qualifies as a hawk, a knife sharp edge is less important than durability and wood processing power.In that role, it does very well, and was a favorite splitting axe for small logs in the several times I have taken it out.The hammer is all but useless, even though I found uses for it, the geometry and design doesn't lend itself well to any real carpentry or camp chores. Even pounding tent stakes, while totally doable, was less optimal than with a hatchet.Really, the only thing that hammer adds, is mass. This helps with splitting, but gets in the way of every other task.As a lark I decided to totally mod mine, and try to turn it into something a bit more like a Hawk.Step one was to remove the hammer with a hacksaw.This alone was enough to bring the weight down to a manageable if still heavy tomahawk level of mass. Now when I compare it to a comparable Cold Steel hawk, it still outsplits (despite the reduced mass) and is a better tool, but is only marginally slower in hand as a weapon.As I am a collector, I have no shortage of hawks and axes, so I decided to go all out and create a new weapon for the ren faire, and as a fan of Vikings I decided to mod this thing into a viking axe, and now, It's my favorite tool/melee weapon in the house!

I ordered three of these. Two were sharp enough to slice paper out of the box. The third was as sharp as a butter knife. The handles all seem adequate and fit well. I plan on removing the lacquer finish and applying boiled linseed oil. I never had an issue, but I will wrap the handle below the head with paranoid to help keep it from.sliding down. This is a decent tool, but one needs to be prepared to put a little work in to it to make it great.I also bought the leather sheath for this. I am planning on making a carrier for my hawk using that and paracord. I will use the belt loop to hold the paracord loop and will tie an inline figure 8 knot on of the ends of the paracord to hold the handle. I will probably remove the section of the shealth that wraps around the handle.I gave it 4 stars due to the one tomahawk not being even remotely close to being sharp.

* Worried the handle will break? Mine didn't and I put it through the wringer on a backpacking trip. Cut down dead and living 8" inch in diameter trees and made it earn its keep with the fire wood.* Afraid its too heavy? Its not. its actually surprisingly light in the hand.* Worried about the craftmanship of the handle, yeah do that. I mean its fine, but the oval of the handle is like, cut wrong at the edges. I don't really notice at all unless I look for it. But, who cares that's going to break over time and be replaced anyway.*Worried about the craftmanship of the head? Meh, its fine. Its uniform in shape but its like a B-. But, for the price this thing is a home run. the steel sharpens well enough too. You wont be shaving with it, but its plenty sharp for outdoorsy stuff.*Worried about the taper of the heads edge? You have the wrong product here. Its tapper is middle of the road. Its not supposed to be a throwing axe, or a cut down the redwood forest, either. Its about 20 degree angle.Worried that it might not be made in the usa? Its not. The handle is, so there's something.Got mine for $35 and I think its worth $50 but, if you're going higher you're in made in usa territory (this isnt) so just buy American and have better quality in Axe head so you can have just one hiking axe for ever since the steel will be higher quality, toughness, keep its edge longer, wear away less quickly while sharpening. all that.