I grew up in a friendly cul-de-sac in Southern Wisconsin. At the end of our neighborhood sat a polite collection of greenery, a smattering of oak trees and bramble bushes that acted as a buffer between our homes and the main street into town. Of course, calling that collection of greenery a "forest" would be like calling the Case canoe pocketknife on th is issue's cover a machete.
Still, for us neighborhood kids, that "forest" served as the perfect backdrop for sticky summer afternoons spent playing cowboys and Indians.
Those games were my introduction to the tomahawk. And although the model we passed around was nothing more than a cutout snatched from leftover plywood, it still accurately represented what the tomahawk is all about: functional usability.
While the tomahawk has been around in America for centuries, its uses and materials have never been as diversified as they are today.
Hot Hawks of Hixson
Ryan Johnson of RMJ Tactical is one of the top tomahawk makers in the country. So respected are his insights and abilities that he was recently featured on the History Channel's Modern Marvels in a special detailing the history and evolution of the hawk. (The Modern Marvels episode featuring Johnson debuted this past May 30, the first night of the BLADE Show.)
Johnson's most popular hawk model is the Talon, a tactical-spike design that reportedly has developed a devout following among soldiers fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Crafted from 4140 chrome-moly steel, the Talon is differentially heat treated, the body with a Rockwell hardness of 30 RC for toughness, the cutting edges and spike 55 RC for chopping, cutting and penetrating.
"When we make our Talons, there are several processes we go through," Johnson says. "They are laser cut, CNC machined, CNC ground, heat treated multiple times, hand ground, hand profiled and sharpened."
