I have their Rifleman's 'hawk.  As I use it as a camp ax, I pretty much left it as it was.  The plastic crap coating wears off quickly.  It is pretty heavy for a 'hawk, if I walk any where, it stays back at camp.  I like yours, have you used it as a hammer for tent stakes or something similar?  Bill

I have the trial hawk and use it for evey thing when i am in the woods and the hammer end works great and still looks new after a lot of use but i have to say i like my hand forged one i have better it holds a much better egde and for a longer time

I also have the trail hawk and I love it for it simplicity and it versitility the only big mods I made  to mine was taking out the set screw, the screw limits your versitility because it dissables you from taking the head off quickly and easily without an alan wrench. The second mod I made was flating the top of the hawk a little to allow me to get sparks off a fire steel. You have probably already seen this vid but I will post it for others anyway  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pvv97vPLHk .

I have also succesfully used the hammer poll end for hammering in standard sized galvonized nails.

slingingrat wrote on Oct 23^rd, 2010 at 3:06am:

Simple; you boil a 50/50 mix of water and vingar (enough to submerge the head in) and dip the head in and leave it until it's your desired shade, which should only take a few minutes or so.

Jabames wrote on Oct 27^th, 2010 at 11:37pm:

It's not a coating, the vinegar makes the metal of the head pit and patina with blue and/or brown rust.

Donnerschlag wrote on Oct 28^th, 2010 at 2:08pm:

When I say blue and/or brown rust I don't mean that the head rusts. I mean you are "browning" the axe head the way gun barrels were preserved before gun bluing was invented. It forms magnetite sometimes but usually a mix of magnetite and rust (called brown rust or browning) which acts like magnetite when oiled, but can rust a little faster than pure magnetite when water is added. Brown rust is not red rust. The color of "browning" ranges from grey to blue to red-brown depending on the acidity of the solution used and how long the iron is left in the acid solution. The way it's usually done is to dip iron into lemon juice, let it really rust, boil it to convert some of the rust to magnetite and brush off the excess magnetite powder with a wire brush. I used to treat my knives this way before I found this stuff called "Moly-Fusion." It creates a molybdenum trioxide patina instead of a ferrous patina which is hydrophobic without oil and has a really high mohs hardness.

my cs frontier hawk came,  its awesome it looks like a viking axe almost;  I now have the basic weapons of a viking,  a spear,  axe and knife