My personal opinion on this hawk?
A piece of decorator cr*p! It will look good hanging on the wall, or stuck through your belt/sash while strutting around to "impress" your friends. As a "working" tool, it will be barely functional.
First, the blade is fairly narrow/short.
Second, that pipe bowl interferes with using it as a hammer, and the weight does not properly offset the weight of the blade on the other side for good balance.
Third, that drilled handle/stem is weaker because it has that hole through it.
Fourth, if you use it much for chopping, that head will shift on the handle and the holes for smoking it will not properly line up.
Fifth, the overall weight of the head limits any use to light chopping.
Yes, they look nice and ... cool. But for utility use are poor.
The classic tomahawk head was made by wrapping a flat bar of iron around and welding it back onto itself. The "eye" for the handle was then drifted out to size on a mandrel that tapered slightly and had something of a teardrop shape. The blade was then flared out, trued up, and sharpened. Axes of those early days were made the same way, just with larger chunks of iron.
They had no heavy/flat hammer "pole" on the back of the eye. So the majority of the weight was on the blade side of the handle, and that makes it a whole lot harder to control and use for chopping. It's a classic design/shape that goes well on back into the middle ages, but the "American" pattern quickly changed that. The American pattern is basically the modern axe/hatchet shape/style - with little variations based more on the company that made it than as a "pattern". It put that heavy hammer pole on the back of the head - to balance out the weight of the blade. This made the whole axe/hawk far easier to use and learn to use well - without years of experience. It also offered you the option to use it as a hammer for whatever tasks you had - like pounding in tent stakes.
So now days, most people would be better off getting a classic "poled" axe or hawk. Those GP ones (or those made by Cegga) that I have seen are pretty much what I would recommend for shape/style. They have that "balanced" head for ease of use and learning, and that hammer pole for all those other non-chopping tasks.
Of course, this is just my humble opinion. Take it as such.
Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands
p.s. There is so much stuff "attributed" to the Lewis and Clarke Expedition that it would have taken them several boats to drag it all along. Almost nothing has remained of original items with good documentation to show the shape/style of the stuff they took along on the trip. And the written records usually just list the name of an item without any description of it. So the style/shape of the hawk or axe heads or trade knives they took along is something that must be ... interpreted ... from similar items in the areas where they were originally bought. As an example, the "official" hawk head of the anniversary trip made from 2003 to 2007 looks far more like a Medieval battle axe than what they probably would have taken along. "Money" politics made the final decision instead of good historical research. So no actual Pipe Hawk remains for anyone to use as a pattern to make modern copies of. The rest is just ... conjecture.
