07 February, 2016

Hang the Cold Steel Trench Hawk From Your BELT!

     Who else bought a Cold Steel Trench Hawk and then you got it and unboxed it and said "Great, now what do I do, just walk through the woods with this thing in my hand all day?"  That's exactly how I felt for a very long time.  Here's a picture of how the hawk ships from Cold Steel.  It has a great sheath to protect you from all the sharp edges and spikes, but there is no belt loop provided.  The rear spike is protected and the front cutting edge is enclosed, but if you want to get the hawk out of the sheath, you have to hold the hawk with one hand, and unsnap and remove the sheath with the other hand.  So on the one hand, I feel like this sheath is ingenious in how it manages to make a double-edge tomahawk safe to carry through the bush, but then on the other hand I feel like the sheath is useless, since I can't attach it to my belt or deploy the hawk with one hand. 

     I kept feeling like there must be some way to get this thing to hang from my belt so that I could easily access the tomahawk.  At the very least, I wanted to be able to hang in from a pack somehow.  The idea of having to pack my tomahawk away inside my back just didn't seem like a very practical option 100% of the time.
A search of the web yielded few results, but I did find a couple Trench Hawk owners out there who had modified their sheaths.  The 2 biggest influences on my design were both found on YouTube, and I'll post links to their videos at the end of the page.

Long story short, I was looking for something simpler.  Everyone was putting belt loops on their sheath, but they were having to drill holes in the sheath, and add hardware like nuts, bolts, washers, etc.  I wanted something that would not add moving pieces or alter the existing sheath.

Here's what I came up with:
If you're reading this page, you probably are a big fan of paracord, just like me.  550 cord is just about the best rope you could have for any given situation, especially if you have size and weight concerns in a back-country pack.  But we already know that so I'll cut to the chase.
I thought "Hey, since the sheath comes with these holes in it that happen to fit 550 cord, why not just get creative with that and make some belt loops?"  So I started with 2 very long pieces of paracord and put a loop through 2 of the holes on the front of the sheath by the cutting edge.  I then started knotting them together just as you would make a bracelet out of paracord or hemp.  Here's the overview image:


You can see where I started with one cord in the front hole and one cord in the hole behind it.  At first I was just knotting one piece of cord, but when I reached the second hole, I started making the bracelet knot.  Here's a view of what I'm talking about:


From there you need to stop when you get to where you need the belt loops.  You will make each belt loop out of two pieces of 550 cord.  You can see here how the main cords wrap around the belt loop cords and secure them quite tightly (same belt loop seen from both sides):



Here's a videos of a brief explanation of the construction, and then I show you how easy it is to deploy the hawk when you need it.



You can also see this video, it was a lot of help to me when I was trying to figure out how I would make my own belt carry system for the Trench Hawk.

https://youtu.be/F3Bnt6c5jFk


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