About Your Shrew Hawk Both the Shrew Hawk and the Shrew Special Edition Hawk are made using the same processes that have been employed in axe manufacture for over 1,000 years, since before Viking times. The cutting edges are made from high-carbon steel, while the remainder of each head is made of milder steel. The axe body and cutting edge are fire welded together under a power hammer, and they are fused into one piece in the process. The heads are then ground to shape, and each is annealed to relieve forging stresses. The final steps involve hardening and torch-tempering each head twice to a pigeon blue color. This allows the hawk to retain its sharp edge through repeated uses but also allows the edge to be easily brought back to “factory sharpness” with a file and stone as edge wear occurs.These are hand-made tools and as such each has its own slight variations. You might find the tear-drop eye varying a few degrees from the axis of the blade or that the cutting edge of the blade is slightly canted a few degrees from vertical. You might see a thin line on each side of the blade revealing where the edge steel was welded into the head. There may be small areas on the head that show the rough finish from the forging process. In today’s world of mass produced cookie cutter sameness, such variations might easily be considered imperfections and an indication that your Shrew Hawk is flawed. Rest assured that these variations are NOT imperfections, but are rather simply are part of the process of making these hawks individually in “the old way”. Although these manufacturing methods have been proven effective for more than a millennium, any hardened tool can fail depending on how it is used. We warrant our hawks against any defects in either materials or workmanship, but we caution the purchaser against using our axes for chopping objects with hard surfaces such as large animal bones, rocks, or other steel items. An errant blow that lands the hawk’s edge against any such material might result in a chipped blade which could injure the user and also render the tool unusable. Though our axes have successfully endured such treatment in the past, we cannot guarantee that they always will. We thank you for your purchase and know you will be more than pleased with the quality and workmanship of our Shrew Hawk and/or the Shrew Special Edition Hawk. With proper care, you can look forward to a lifetime of service.Carlton Matteo, Blacksmith