Cold Steel Trench Hawk

My Tomahawk showed up a couple days ago, and here's some photos and initial impressions of the beast.

I managed to snag a Cold Steel Trench Hawk the other day from an Amazon seller.  This particular tomahawk tends to sell out quickly, and it's pretty understandable.  First off, it's relatively inexpensive.  I paid less than $40, and got free shipping to boot.  Compared to the hundreds of dollars some modern "combat" tomahawks are going for, it's a steal.  Secondly, it is a good looking piece.

The head is the shape I've been looking for, with enough of a beard to hook things and a good hefty spike on the back.  I look at a tomahawk as more of a breaching tool and extreme last line of defense (ie., my rifle's out, I dropped my pistol, and the zombies are still coming...)

The steel is a quarter inch thick, and wedged into the handle and held in place with two hex bolts.

It's not too heavy either, and has a fairly decent balance point (at least to my untrained hands.)  The blade is sharp enough out of the box for basic choppy business, but I'll probably put a decent polish on it just because I like my axes sharp.

The handle is textured, but it could be a little grabbier.  This could be easily fixed by some judicious use of a soldering iron or grip tape, but I'll probably go for a clean 550 chord wrap.  I may hit it with some tan krylon as well, not so much for the tacticool thing, but to keep it cool in the sun.

Cold Steel does have replacement handles listed on their website for about $7 a piece, a nice thing to keep in mind, and a great thing to have on hand if you're in a hot dusty place on the other side of the world (if I take it on my next deployment I'm sure I'll have at least two stashed in a footlocker at least.

The sheath is rather ingenious in how it securely stays in place covering the blade and the spike, and simply hinges away after undoing a single snap.  The downside is it's simply a blade cover, and has no mounting points or loops to attach it to any gear.  There is, however, enough clearance between the center section and the blade that you could potentially thread some webbing through there and rig something up, and I'm contemplating hard mounting some sort of Molle friendly system in that spot (plenty of room for some Chicago screws.)

Overall, so far I'm more than pleased with the purchase.  If you're looking for a basic entry level "combat" tomahawk, the Cold Steel Trench Hawk is a great place to start.