Tomahawk carrying

[ddoyle]

it's clamped tightly against your lower back,

Blade- spinal column- really spence have you never walked down a wet/muddy/icey hill before and felt the force that rocks your tail bone when your feet decide to levitate.

I managed to break a rib with the very blunt handle of sheath knife during a fall and not learning the lesson let my son carry a few arrows in a homemade quiver on his belt when he was a kid. A cheap plastic nock will penetrate a couple layers of winter fabric and alot skin when properly motivate by gravity.......... Some old heavy set guy landing on the pokey part of a hawk is likley to not walk again or to be visiting the dialysis girls every few days for life.

 

[ghostdncr]

Like Spence, I've been carrying mine uncovered and slipped through my belt/sash in the small of my back, edge to my right, for years without incident. Not because there haven't been incidents because there's been plenty! I know there's an unprotected edged tool/weapon on my belt, and tend to carry myself accordingly. I believe this is what's referred to as "being on your own hook." I would never suggest someone is somehow period INcorrect for carrying such a tool with the edge protected. If one feels the need to do so, they will have my full support. Personally, I'd rather be on my own hook.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Make no mistake your just as likely to die today from an infection!

Well if you take all types of infection, that might be true, but even then that statement is doubtful.
:hmm:

Topical, triple antibiotic ointments, couple with oral and intravenous antibiotics has greatly reduced the chance of death from infection from a mere flesh wound, which is what we're focused upon.

People today don't regularly die of "blood poisoning", and cellulitis from a person scratching skin reacting to poison ivy can be cured without much actual threat to the patient, when in colonial times both could be quite fatal. I had to take two of my brother Marine Officers to the sick bay and leave them overnight with poison ivy cellulitis in the 1980's (city fellers :shake

While people often develop an excellent resistance to the bacteria where they were born, and in the past folks often lived entire lives within 20 miles of the location where they were born, travelling twice that distance or farther, and you have a different set of potential pathogens that you bring to into the area for the folks that live there, as well as are waiting for you when you arrive. :wink: Evidence of this is found when examining remains from Ancient Egypt where skull surgery was performed and the bone healing indicated the person survived, as well as from similar surgery preformed in African jungle areas, where the patient is alive and well today. Not to mention the evidence of diseases left behind by passing armies of men, not from the local area, where the army bivouacked, and yet the army itself staying relatively healthy..., or sometimes not. :shocked2:

George wrote:
so I never understood how you were supposed to get a cut on the back.

I've only seen one guy in more than 20 years get a cut on his back from a 'hawk. He fell off a fort wall and landed on his back. NOW I have seen folks wearing the hawk in their sash behind the back, sit, or otherwise hit the handle of the 'hawk, which moved it from the center of the back toward their left side, or they simply carried it more on their left, rear hip than centered. Then when reaching backwards to the bare blade, they've cut their hand pretty good.

LD

 

[George]

NOW I have seen folks wearing the hawk in their sash behind the back, sit, or otherwise hit the handle of the 'hawk, which moved it from the center of the back toward their left side, or they simply carried it more on their left, rear hip than centered. Then when reaching backwards to the bare blade, they've cut their hand pretty good.

It's not for everyone. We should each stay within our natural talents. :grin:

Spence

 

[Rifleman1776]

Like Spence, I've been carrying mine uncovered and slipped through my belt/sash in the small of my back, edge to my right, for years without incident. Not because there haven't been incidents because there's been plenty! I know there's an unprotected edged tool/weapon on my belt, and tend to carry myself accordingly. I believe this is what's referred to as "being on your own hook." I would never suggest someone is somehow period INcorrect for carrying such a tool with the edge protected. If one feels the need to do so, they will have my full support. Personally, I'd rather be on my own hook.

As I said in an earlier post, I have a small scar on my back in the kidney/spine area from carrying my hawk in that manner. Didn't take much of an 'oops' to cut me. A more serious fall would have resulted in very severe injury. Ain't worth the pc/hc to be safe.

 

[ddoyle]

Maybe the middle ground is that during a reenacting event near a paved road it is pretty low risk to 'be on your own hook' but if you are really on your 'own hook' i.e not surrounded by folks that will help you and coping with some uncontralables then it might be prudent to be more cautious then may be required.

By way of further explaination to my paranoia I was on a Parade ground where 5 cadets went down with heat stroke with bayonets fixed. 30 years later it seems almost comical but at the time it made a mess.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

It's not for everyone. We should each stay within our natural talents.

Accident's happen. There's a group of Native American reenactors who all call me One Thumb since for many years it wasn't a question of whether or not I would cut one of my thumbs pretty well, it was simply when during the living history event that I would cut one.


On the other hand all that past experience means I'm pretty expert on dressing serious cuts to fingers and thumbs without needing sutures, and these days I treat others for lacerations at events more often than I treat myself. So there is a silver lining to almost every situation. :haha:

LD

 

[George]

Accident's happen. There's a group of Native American reenactors who all call me One Thumb since for many years it wasn't a question of whether or not I would cut one of my thumbs pretty well, it was simply when during the living history event that I would cut one.

I would recommend you not even consider carrying a naked tomahawk. :wink:

Spence

 

[Loyalist Dave]

:rotf: :bow:

EXACTLY!

:rotf:

OH and folks can get upset when you're bleeding pretty good and getting the blood on their gear. :haha:

LD

 

[Robert Egler]

Mostly, when you see period images of frontiersmen with axes/tomahawks (which is all too rare anyway), the axe is simply thrust through the belt... which I think is crazy, but apparently they did it.

It works. I've been doing it that way for many years without a single problem. At least its HC/PC. :grin:

Spence

I carry my hawk at the 8 o'clock position, in a frog, not through my belt. Through the belt is uncomfortable. If I don't have a cover on it I WILL cut my arm.

 

[Claude Mathis]

Like Spence, I've been carrying mine uncovered and slipped through my belt/sash in the small of my back, edge to my right, for years without incident.

Me too. I ride a Harley every day - falling on my tomahawk is the least of my worries. :wink:

 

[Ron LaClair]

This is how a hawk was carried on the Lewis and Clark expedition

 

[Rifleman1776]

I have always thought the risk of carrying a hawk in your belt is a lot less than some would have you believe. it's clamped tightly against your lower back, and if it rotated at all it would be so the cutting edge rotated away from you, not into your body, so I never understood how you were supposed to get a cut on the back.

Tell that to the scar over my right kidney.

 

[George]

There is probably some difference in the way we carry a hawk in our belts. My way has worked for me so far, but who knows what tomorrow may bring. I wouldn't recommend you try it again.

Spence

 

[spudnut]

I made one with a strap ,but with a shooting pouch and horn and sometimes a canteen it gets to be a bit too much

 

[spudnut]

I don't notice it much through my belt ,till I sit down, I just wrap the blade with a strip of linen cloth

 

[George]

The Pennsylvania Gazette
October 6, 1763
WILLIAMSBURGH, September 16”¦. "on his discharging his piece, he was attacked by several Indians at once; the first that made up to him he knocked down with his gun, but the savages wresting it out of his hand, he knocked down another with a tomahawk, which he carried under his belt."

Notice that it doesn't say he carried it over his shoulder or on his shot pouch, but "under his belt".

It doesn't say he unbuttoned his tomahawk case and removed the hawk, but considering what was going on at the moment, I rather doubt it. I would guess he snatched the bare hawk from his belt ready for action, and having it ready in an instant was the reason he carried it that way.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :grin:

Spence

 

[tenngun]

Accidents can always happen, so a safety like
Rifelmans speaks of is not out of line. I note that in Drawings I have seen it’s bare and just stuck in the belt.
Some years ago I bought a copper flask from backwoods tin and copper. It was an excel ant piece of work. I had it filled with pyrates brand rum, and fine rum it is. I put it in my shooting pouch on a trek, so I knew it wouldn’t leak at the cork. My tomahawk was just stuck in by belt behind me. A snap sack carried my sundries.
I slipped going down a rocky trail, and sat down hard. All was fine and good except my shooting pouch was edged under my hip. And my rear was saved from a rock by that brave flask. The spout was bent and the solder broke at the seam. My rum was lost.
My hawk didn’t hurt me but My gallery flask was lost.

 

[Rifleman1776]

My rum was lost.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Why is the Rum Always, Gone?

LD