A quick tomahawk/trade axe.

In which I forge a quick and dirty tomahawk.
The video quality drops during the forge welding bit as I had to film through a safety lens to protect my camera.
A fellow in the comments asked why historical steel is easier to weld than modern steel.
Historical steel contains a significant percentage of silica impurities. This silica acts a bit like the borax that I added as flux, essentially making the steel self-fluxing. Boring answer, but what have you.

[@Luziferrum]

Less than an hour work? Now I see why they were mass produced trade items. Do you think bach then they used broken off files for tool steel as well?

[@MalcolmPL]

I don’t see why not. It’s always good to work with scrap.

[@tommyadkins844]

Malcolm you're one heck of a artist/blacksmith, may i ask are you going to make a trade knife one day?

[@MalcolmPL]

I've had a couple commenters asking about trade knives. I did a series of videos last year where I made a hunting knife. A trade knife would be more or less the same procedure, the only real differences being the omission of the wooden mallet step, and the subtleties of the grind. Anyway, forging videos tend to do very poorly. So unless I get inspired, I'm not going to do them very often.

[@Gunny672]

This the most efficient build of a trade axe I have ever seen.👊👍🍺

[@mattthescreamer177]

Excellent video, great work

[@MalcolmPL]

Cheers.

[@junichiroyamashita]

Ever seen Wingard Wearables and their EDC tomahawks? It looks like something right up your alley

[@MalcolmPL]

Edc is not a thing in Canada.

[@terrynewsome6698]

I usually work rail spikes I buy through etsy into a tomahawk head, and make the eye using a chisel and hammer when the metal was red hot. But this seems a lot more interesting, I will have to try this style next time.

[@MalcolmPL]

I did that back in the day, Rail spikes aren’t really ideal. They take a lot of effort to drift without help, and the narrowness at the eye makes the head more likely to work loose.

[@terrynewsome6698]

@@MalcolmPL yep

[@hillbilly4christ638]

I like to take a torch to the handle to raise the figure of the wood. Sometimes I stain a little before the blo. I have used a torch to make spirals, tiger stripes and just darken one end. There is a lot of room for creativity here, so have fun!

[@JohnnyP_outdoors]

That's awesome, Im gonna try making one .

[@WhiteThumbs]

The plus side with watching this outside but out of the rain is that my neighbors hear I am working hard through the weather

[@vladimirkovacevic1656]

very nice hawk

[@MalcolmPL]

It’ll do for twenty minutes work.

[@geraldstamour1312]

Dope AF results!

[@ethanstang9941]

Thank you for making this video.

[@MalcolmPL]

Not a problem.

[@normal9782]

great content, very informative and it makes me appreciate my handmade tomahawk I got from a blacksmith even more.. I do have two questions that I'd be most appreciative if you could answer, though: 1. is this the same axe you used in your "making a ball head war club" video to process the material? 2. in your opinion, how critical is it for an axe blade to be absolutely in line with the centre of the eye? I've seen a lot of historical and modern axes with the blade/bit slightly misaligned and bent to one side, off centre thank you very much

[@MalcolmPL]

This is not the same axe. The eye doesn’t need to be perfectly aligned. Some axes were made deliberately offset for certain applications.

[@polydactylproductions6787]

Amazing. Love the channel. Did Native Americans use fire to harden the wood of their tomahawks and war clubs?

[@MalcolmPL]

Fire hardening makes wood more brittle, so there isn’t much point for certain applications.

[@polydactylproductions6787]

@@MalcolmPL Thanks for replying man. Again, love the channel.

[@Paulsinke]

thanks this is exactly what i was looking for

[@yourhighschoolenglishteach8405]

never heard you raise your voice before

[@mathewsmith4476]

Awesome

[@MalcolmPL]

Cheers.

[@ianhowick]

Has anyone told you how much you sound like Sam Monella? but serously, good stuf

[@MalcolmPL]

In that both our voices are simultaneously high and low pitched.

[@ianhowick]

@@MalcolmPL That, cadence, as well as some of the jokes and references made in other videos

[@daveburklund2295]

Hey, Malcolm, do you make these to sell or can I commission one?

[@ethanstang9941]

Where would you fin the kind of steel for the body of the head of the tomahawk?

[@MalcolmPL]

If you're not adverse to spending a few dollars, Most cities have a metal supply store for welders and the like. Mild steel bar stock isn't that expensive. Aside from that, you can often find a lot of cheap scrap at yard sales. You could also go talk to someone at a scrap metal recycling place. Some of them are happy to sell for cheap. Though some are not. If you want metal for free you need to go for a lot of walks in the country or in industrial districts. I've found all sorts of things by the side of the road. One option is to go out by the rail tracks and look for spikes to flatten. When they do maintenance, they just throw the old spikes on the ground. Something else you can do is save up worthless bits of metal like bent nails and galvanized steel panels, and then go trade them at a metal donation bin for a similar weight of good metal.

[@ethanstang9941]

@@MalcolmPL sounds like a plan of action.

[@NK-ne9uf]

Where do I get wire like that? What gauge is it?

[@MalcolmPL]

Your local farm supply store will sell coils of fencing wire, I think this stuff was 18 gauge, you don’t want 14 or thicker as it is too hard to tighten, you don’t want thinner than 20 or it will burn through. You also don't want galvanized wire as the fumes when heated are mildly toxic.

[@davidrainwater6715]

Why is “historical steel” easier to weld? Sorry new here.

[@MalcolmPL]

Historical steel contains a significant amount of silica impurities from the less efficient smelting process. These impurities act as flux when welding, reducing the buildup of forge scale and allowing for cleaner welds.

[@Ivegotwormsinme]

Have you discussed at all first nations blacksmithing? If there's a video in your catalogue of content, could you direct me to it? If not, would that be something you'd be willing to make a video on or at the very least, delve into it in one of your compilation "I wanted to talk about this but I don't have a whole lot to say" videos?

[@MalcolmPL]

I think the most I've mentioned is in my, "a brief overview of tomahawks" video. I don't really have a video's worth to say on the subject. Sedentary peoples in the east sent out young men to apprentice among the colonists and bring back the skill to the villages. By the late sixteen hundreds most Iroquoian villages would have a smith. As far as I know no unique metalworking styles came out of this, people seem to have learned the colonial style and mostly stuck with it. Among nomadic people like in the plains, metalworking never became very sophisticated, probably because it's hard to lug around a half ton of equipment if you're moving several times a year. People learned how to grind arrowheads and simple blades out of saws and scrap. A truly unique tradition did develop in the sedentary/semisedentary peoples of the north west, Dene, Haida, etc. Here iron and tools arrived well in advance of the colonists, so having no one convenient to apprentice under, people had to come up with their own methods and styles. The inuit have an entirely independant ironworking tradition, because the atmosphere is thinner up north, meteors are able to reach the surface intact more frequently, the Inuit would chip of pieces and cold forge them into blades.