If you are interested in seeing what it takes to re-handle an axe in the woods, see here. If a tool fails to do those things well, it does me little good that I can more easily re-handle it. I use axes to do a lot of chopping, splitting and carving. While that is true, it kind of misses the point, as it fails to do the tasks ordinarily assigned to the tool. In my opinion, carrying this tool in the bush rather than an axe or hatchet of comparable weight just because it may be easier to re-handle in the event you ever have to do that, is the same as using a butter knife to do your carving because you are less likely to cut yourself with it. Of course if we do that however, we remove the “versatility” from the hawk. Some manufacturers have taken to epoxying the head in place, or we could put back the screw (the head would still be loose, but will not slide up and down).

If the head is pressed onto the wood with sufficient force, similar to what you would see in the eye of an axe, it will probably hold. Now of course, there are ways to secure the head. Even after spending a significant amount of time trying to create a good friction fit, after several swing the head would come loose again. Any kind of precision is made very difficult. The head continuously comes loose during use, whether it be chopping or carving, sliding up and down the handle. Just because it is held from flying off during a swing, does not make it properly attached, much like a ducttaped loose axe head would be considered problematic. For me, this is a tool with a loose head.

I find that the ease of removal of the head on the Trail Hawk is a direct result of the head being inadequately attached. By that people usually mean that you can easily remove the head to use either as a small, very uncomfortable and inefficient knife, or to replace the handle if you ever break it somewhere deep in the woods and must do field repairs. The practical reason often given for carrying a tool like the Trail Hawk over a hatchet or axe of comparable weight is that it is more “versatile”. This, combined with a rather annoying feature which I will speak about shortly makes it very hard to use as a carving tool when compared to some other hatchets and axes. In terms of carving, the deficiency comes from the small bit, which does not offer a lot of cutting surface. The very poor head geometry explains a lot of the failures in performance with respect to chopping and splitting.

Cold steel paradox mod