Description
Details
Replicating a museum piece from the days of trade between the French fur trappers and the American Indians, Paul Chen's Pipe Hawk (XH2119) is fully functional both as a hatchet and a pipe, with a steel blade, bowl and mouthpiece. As in the original, a reaming pin (for clearing the smoke passage) is concelaed in the head of the end of the shaft.
Additional Info
Additional Info
| Brand | Hanwei |
|---|---|
| Specification | - Overall length: 18 1/4“ - Weight: 12oz - Thickness at Guard: .28“ Specs will vary slightly from piece to piece. |
Reviews
- Worth buying, but maybe not quite a functional hatchetReview by Dom
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First let me be clear: this is still definitely better than a wall hanger, but it’s not quite as effective as original pipe hawks were.Price Value Quality
After receiving the pipe hawk I immediately wanted to test the functionality; pipe-wise it’s as good as any, in fact the long walnut shaft and wide cavity seems to make the smoke a tad cooler than a conventional pipe or one-hitter and adds a slight smoked flavour. Then I tried to use it as a hatchet and this is where issues cropped up.
Firstly, if you’re gonna swing this with conviction, take the reaming pin out first. This issue might subside if you let a few smoke residues build up on it, but as soon as I swung the axe without a target to see how it felt, the pin came halfway out. I tried again a few times to see if I could get it completely free with one swing and I could. This might be unique to my tomahawk but either way it’s not fun to look for, especially in grass.
The next issue however, is more serious. Do NOT throw this tomahawk. It can do other, lighter hatchet/tomahawk jobs like cutting away small branches and maybe thin trees but I threw it at a log (with the grain, not across) and the shaft immediately cracked when the head struck the log (though this was easily fixed with Gorilla Glue and is now virtually unnoticeable)
Maybe this was just a dumb thing to do, but I did also try the same thing with a Hanwei Francisca and it was completely unscathed and, after looking into historical examples, the original pipe hawks seemed to have fared much better than this. They had much narrower cavities inside too though, which makes me think that if you want a truly functional pipe hawk, you could perhaps knock the cap off the top of the head (it only took a good, solid whack for me) and add something to reinforce the pipe from inside, like casting resin, metal or more hardwood.
I know all this sounds a tad negative, but the only other “pipe hawk” I’ve seen on the market is Cold Steel’s and they’ve literally removed the pipe feature as well as made it uglier in general imo. So as long as you don’t mind a semi-functional tomahawk (and downright enjoyable pipe), or a bit of creative DIY, this thing’s a great buy. Affordable too.
Oh, also I don’t know if the design has been changed or something but mine came with the same dark brown handle staining as the Hanwei Viking axes. It looked alright but I decided to sand it off. So in case anyone else gets one of these but doesn’t like the brown stain, there’s your solution. (Posted on 14/02/2021)