Cold Steel Trail Hawk 18

Firstly, I'm stunned, as always, by HH's service and delivery speed! First class. Okay, now, a few words of advice with this item. Not an out of the box ready to go axe. Loose head, splittery handle, etc. This is a piece of kit that you should expect a bit of work on. Instead of buying this as a 100% ready to rock n roll 'hawk, think of it as a project 'hawk. If you see it as that, you have a 5* base to start work with. Remove the head, reshape the hickory top, and then reseat the head. You can add the little screw back, but if you've done a good job with the handle, you shouldn't need to. Sand down the hickory handle, a little oil to get it protected and nice. If you want to go for that Native American feel, a little emory on the head to remove the black coating. Sharpen up the blade if you so desire...I did. Because it is sold (and advertised by Cold Steel) as a ready to go tomahawk, plus because of the effort required to get it into a ready to use state, it only gets 3*.

Bought this a few weeks back, right off the bat it didn't quite do it for me and the head wobbled a lot, after some hard use on my DofE camp the head soon seated nicely, when I got back I removed the set screw, stripped the paint, forced a patina, sanded the handle and stained it walnut, then I put in a lanyard tube and a nice thong lanyard and added an OD green paracord Turks head over strike protector. Then a nice convex edge finished the axe of nicely. Lastly I purchased a custom sheath from Broncho custom crafts to put the icing on the cake so to speak. Now it's one fine tool that I am proud to have in my collection. If you want to see what this looks like ill be posting a video on my youtube channel MakingTheCut97. As always great service from Heinnie!

Firstly, incredible service from Heinnie; told it was out of stock, due in within 7 - 14 days, arrived the day after. Amazing. Secondly the hawk; overall, pretty good. Good length to the handle and it's a decent bit of hickory. The head's a good weight and the feel of the tool is nice. Not too heavy but substantial enough to get the job done. The head was slightly loose when it arrived and held on by an odd grub-screw arrangement but a few minutes recarving the end of the handle sorted this out. The blade also came with an amateurish secondary bevel but this was ground out on the waterstone pretty quickly. All in all, this is a nice piece of kit and for the money you can't go wrong. Last words to Heinnie; outstanding service.

Delivered next day parcelled up very well. Did the usual mods i.e. varnished handle, polished axe head - looks very nice would like to do another one.

Great delivery service from Heinnie. The Trail Hawk however was quite a disappointment in regards to quality control. Unwrapped the hawk and the head slipped straight off the handle hitting the floor before I could catch it. Thought it may just be a loose fixing grub screw. Looked at the handle to find that the grub screw was fully embedded into the haft. The handle was ultimately ill fitting to the head. (Come on Cold Steel, you're meant to be one of the best knife maker's worldwide) Thought about sending it back to Heinnie for a replacement, but by the time the return/replacement would have taken place I could sort it out myself. Had to reshape the top portion of the haft and re'seat the grub screw to get a firm fit. Not happy about having to mess around sorting the issue because some negligent employee at Cold Steel can't judge the good from the bad.