Cold Steel Trail Hawk American Hickory Handle

by Cold Steel

Product Features

• Overall Length: 22.00"
• Handle Material: American Hickory
• Blade Length: 6 1/2" (Hawk Length)
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.

Product Description

Modeled after an early frontier pattern, our Trail Hawk can do it all. It's an excellent chopper and has a functional hammer poll with a hardened face so you can drives nails, hammer in stakes, and smash or crush just about anything. Best of all it's extremely lightweight and compact so it's a cinch to tuck it under your belt or lash it to a pack or shooting bag.

Product Details

• Item Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• Shipping Advisory: This item must be shipped separately from other items in your order. Additional shipping charges will not apply.
• ASIN: B0014BMBA6
• Item model number: 90TH
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,439 in Sports & Outdoors (See Top 100 in Sports & Outdoors)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice, but there are better hawks, March 15, 2009

By 

Richard Davis "[e-mail]" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cold Steel Trail Hawk American Hickory Handle (Sports)

I have one, two things I noticed right away: the head has a drilled hole and a set screw to hold the head on the shaft. This is an expensive solution to a cheap & easy problem. This damages the grain in the handle, and requires carrying an allen wrench with the tomahawk if the handle breaks and needs a replacement. Second, it's made in Taiwan, and marked so right on the blade. No biggie, but this was one of the earlier discoveries that Cold Steel is contracting their production overseas instead of using US workers.

On to the 'hawk...bought it for light camping use. It's good, but not great. The working edge is narrow, requiring user accuracy for consistent hits, and the head's a little light for serious chopping. Unlike other Cold Steel products, the finish appears to be gloss black paint rather than the usual powder coat. It scuffs easily, but doesn't affect the function in any way. The only serious development was edge retention. I teach early US history once in a while, and I bought (what I thought) was a really cheap imported repro 18th century tomahawk from a sutler. Much to my surprise, the no-name Indian tomahawk was *far* superior to the Cold Steel product in weight, performance and edge retention. The only advantage to the CS brand is the hammer pommel, but that's it.

Closing note: this reflects my personal preferences, and not actual test data. I'm a larger person, and can swing a little more weight than an average person.

Summary: okay for the money, but there are better ones in the same price class. Also consider the heavier head model (rifleman), as the trail hawk is very light.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good one for the price, June 9, 2007

By 

Monk "C.L. Newton" (Crestview, Florida) - See all my reviews

I picked up this tomahawk just for fun. After about 30 minutes of practice I found I could make it stick almost every time. Now I am working on hitting targets. This Tomahawk is made by American Tomahawk Company, a division of Cold Steel. It is solid and sturdy and looks like it will last quite some time. For the price I think it was a good deal.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good out of the box, great with a little work..., October 25, 2010

By 

RoninUT (Utah) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cold Steel Trail Hawk American Hickory Handle (Sports)

I bought one of these last week and liked it so much I bought a second one, which arrived today.

Out of the box, these hawks come a little rough around the edges. They are firmly attached to the handles with a set screw, and they could stand to be a little sharper. That said, they do chop very well as-is. I have to trim some elm saplings back a couple times a year in my yard, and I figured I'd take the opportunity to test the trail hawk.

It worked great. The lightweight head combined with a longer handle allowed me more precise control over the chopping than a traditional hatchet would.

As for making it "great", there are a few things that can be done to really improve the hawk, if you have some time to kill.

I removed the setscrew and tapped the handle out of the head. This scraped up the handle pretty bad, because of the burr left on the eye from the forging. I took the burr off with a round file, and buffed it a bit with some emery cloth to smooth the file marks. Then I stripped the paint off the head with an aerosol spray paint stripper.

For the handle, I sanded out all of the scrapes and gouges made by removing the head, and stained the handle. This makes it look a lot nicer.

To get the head to fit the handle perfectly, gently tap the head back on and then remove it. If the fit isn't good, you will only see 2 or 3 points where the handle and head make contact. Sand the handle at those high spots until the handle is in full contact with the eye, and it will be a perfect, tight fit.