Hey everyone, Nick here! Today I'm going to be making another forge
welded rasp tomahawk. This time I'm going to be using the whole
rasp instead of just half. With the cutoff wheel on my angle grinder
I cut off the tang on the rasp and then flip it around and cut off a 3-inch piece from
the end. We're going to be using this three inch piece
later on by forge welding it back into the tomahawk so we get a little more body in the
edge and we can draw it out a little bit more. Now that I have my pieces I fire up the forge
and let it come up to temperature. Once it's preheated I put the rasp in and
let it come up to an orange heat. Now we can start forging. I start by forging out what will become the
eye of the tomahawk. Just like the smaller tomahawks I made, I'm
forging it down into an elongated u-shape and making sure to only work from one side. That way I put a natural taper into it. The only difference is that instead of really
bringing it down really narrow I'm only forging it down to about an inch or so. So once both halves are equal I put it back
in the forge and then fold it in half. Once it's folded down to about an inch and
a quarter I drive in a piece of one-inch pipe which is a 1 and 1/2 inch outside diameter
and then use it as a drift to form the beginning of the eye. I do most of my hammering near the eye so
that it ends up well-defined and there's a nice slot for the bit to be welded in to. Now it's time to work on the bit I take the
three inch piece of rasp and upset and flatten out the top .This will become the cutting
edge of the axe. Then I flip it over and start forging in a
taper, with the base being thinner than the edge of the insert. This way when I forge weld there isn't a hard
crease . Instead there's a nice gradual transition. Next I heat up the main body of the axe and
apply borax. I’m using store-bought borax as a flux and
it helps to clean the metal it also serves as a barrier to help keep excess oxidation
down. Then I heat it up again and insert the bit. Once I've got the bit in place I apply more
flux and then put it back into the forge. I turn up the gas of my forge to help with
oxidation and then bring it up to a welding or yellow nearing white heat. Once a mild steel rod will stick to it I bring
it back to the anvil and set the weld with a few strong taps to tack the layers together. Then I do a second heat to consolidate everything
and make sure that the weld sticks. Now that it seems solid I start drawing out
the edge of the axe. I switch to a cross peen hammer so that I
can really stretch out the edge because I'm trying to end up with at least a four inch
cutting edge on this tomahawk. Once the edge is drawn out I put the 1 inch
pipe back into the eye and then use it to hold the axe while I true it up and make sure
everything is straight. I decided to grind off any of the excess so
that when I go to the next step of refining with forging I'm not splitting open any of
the welds, also known as delamination. Here's the axe head after rough cutting and
grinding. I'm pretty happy with the weld so far now
it's time to put it back into the forge and refine the shape. I'm hammering from the bottom of the axe head
so that I can drop the top down to give it something of a small beard. Nothing too extreme, but I wanted it to have
a little more of a downward hook at the end. I go back to the cross peen and finish drawing
out the edge to end up with a four-inch blade which is what I was going for. After hammering out all of the marks from
the cross peen I put the axe head back on the one inch pipe and then straighten an true
up the alignment of socket and blade and finish it off. Make sure that everything is nice and even
and that the head is centered on the handle. So here's the tomahawk head after forging. Then I clamp it up again and use the angle
grinder to clean up the profile. Then switch to a 120 grit flap sanding disc
and clean off any scale and any of the really heavy forging marks. So here's the axe head after sanding now it's
time for heat treatment. I take it back to my forge, this time making
sure I only heat up the edge and I don't want to overheat it. Once it no longer sticks to a magnet I dunk
it into a container of canola oil to quench the edge. I leave it in until most of the glow is gone
then I use a file to clean off the edge. I check the edge until I get the tempering
colors I want and then dunk the edge to stop the tempering process. So here's the axe head hardened and tempered. Now with the wire brush I clean off any of
the excess scale and for some reason not all of the scale came off and I ended up with
the ghost of a temper line. You might be able to see it in this part of
the video. Now for the handle I decided to use a piece
of oak square stock that I had lying around. Since the eye of the axe is round I turn the
piece of oak down on my lathe so that the axe would fit nicely onto the handle. I use a mallet to seat it and now the tomahawk
is finished. And here's one of the half rasp tomahawks
I made. You can see it's a lot smaller than this one
a lot lighter too. So now it's time to see how this bigger tomahawk
throws. If you're wondering why my target stump looks
funny is because the first throw I did with this tomahawk actually split it in two so
I think it's time for me to get a new target. Here's my wife hitting the target at 10 yards
and here it is all finished up! If you enjoyed this video be sure to check
out my channel for other videos and I've also written several books including one on knife
making and I'll put links in the description below. So as always thanks for watching and I'll
see you guys next time bye.