Cold Steel Rifleman’s Hawk Axe

An awsome buy, the blade is extremely durable
and can seriously take punishment
makes a perfect self defense weapon
(never bring a gun to a "HAWK" fight!!!)

This is my first tomahawk, and it's one I've admired for quite some time. I finally got it to clear some small fallen trees from the high tensile fence and to tool around in the woods. It came with a far better edge than I expected, but I did sharpen and burnish it a bit so it would lift hair. This took a matter of minutes. It rides nicely tucked into the belt, but I felt better carrying it upside down with the axe head in my hand. I chopped 4 fallen trees total, the biggest being rotten but 8" in diameter. The strong ones were about 4" in diameter and were not rotten, but just dense, dead hardwood. This hawk takes a deep bite, so be very careful about the path of the blade in case you miss or swing through your target. After removing the trees, I tested the hawk on planing shavings for tinder, and it works very nicely. Even after putting the edge through so much hardwood, it worked great, producing a nice pile of tinder. I tried a few throws, and had a blast, but I didn't want to abuse the handle or chip the blade on an unseen rock. I can see why people like this hawk for throwing. When I got back to the house, I didn't have to get a stone out, but had only to burnish the edge a bit, and the blade was back to hair shaving sharp again (under 5 minutes to restore after over an hour's worth of hard work). The one caveat is that this heavy hawk requires a bit of strength to use safely, but if you're a bit above average in strength, you should be fine (otherwise, I'd recommend the Trail Hawk, under the assumption that it's equally good). I'm also happy to have ordered it from Trueswords.com for their great customer service and fast shipping. This is a great hawk.