Review: Aldi - Tomohammer

Been a while since my last post, but I have content again!

We like to shop at Aldi from time to time. They have an eclectic range and reasonable prices. They might not be a reliable place to get the same things week after week (as their range shifts with the tides) but there's always good stuff to be had to fill a pantry and add to your preps. One thing I like is the middle isles are always filled with neat items like tools, hardware and adventure-wear. Every six months or so they do a big sale and lots of their odd-ball stock goes on deep discount. At one such sale, I picked up this item; The Aldi Camp Hatchet with Hammer.

It looks like a straight-up clone of the redoubtable Mk 48 Rangerhawk, but with a hammer face replacing the spike end. The form of the Tomohammer mirrors the MK 48 almost exactly, from the geometry of the axe-face to the design of the handle. It's vital statistics are as follows: it comes with a blade pouch with Velcro strap and a strap with button snap on fastener, it weighs 605g and has a total length of 377mm. 

The head is stainless steel and appears to be either anodized or coated but the kind of steel is not listed, so I'm guessing its something like a 440C or some such. The handle material is some kind of glass reinforced polymer. More on that later. The head is fixed by a set of three screws on each side, exactly like the Mk 48, down the length of the tang of the head. The handle has a series of rings moulded into it to give gripping texture and a hole for a lanyard at the base.

It also shares the half-way point double sided knuckle up the shaft, which is a nice addition to keep but I've yet to find myself so elbow deep in gore that I've needed the haptic feedback it provides. Perhaps shoring up the beaver-dam during a storm after fending off Zombeavers. We'll see.

My original Mk 48 has taken some punishment, requiring me to regrind tips of the horns after chipping them off. Looking up close also points out the three bolts fixing the head to the shaft. The Tommohammer uses much broader headed bolts, still reset in the handle material but bigger and deeper.

One difference I noted was the jimping on the back of the beard of the axe head. Initially I wasn't very keen on this as it seemed prone to gouging my knuckles when I held the axe all choked up for fine chopping. However what did occur to me was that I could grip the whole head and use the blade much like an Inuit ulu knife, for skinning, mincing or slicing.

 As a tomahawk it worked well enough, the weight of head, length of shaft and blade geometry made for a good swing and a decent chopping power. The forward balance was much the same as that of the  Mk48 but the hammer head brings the center of mass closer to the center for a quicker turning circle. Good if you have to switch between choppy choppy and happy hammertime in a hurry, maybe to fend off the more insistent zombeavers.

Putting that hammer to the test, I used it to  reseat the nails in our rickety gate. It made short work of the timber nails, right down to the cast iron fittings, without a scratch on the strike face. I also used it to drive both steel and wrought iron tent pegs to no ill effect. As hammers go, the 40cm handle was a bit much and having an axe face was a little disconcerting but no great issue. It struck well, and had a good resonance when striking, something one comes to appreciate in a hammer if you use it long enough.

And them I went and did something dumb. I'm generally of a school of mind that says "don't throw your weapon, dummy!" but at an event I was going to there was to be an axe throwing contest, so I wanted to get some practice in. After finding a suitably remote location with a clear line od sight and a suitable target tree, I set to practicing throwing my two most closely matched tomahawks, the Mk48 Rangerhawk and the Aldi Tomohammer. I quickly got my range in and was successfully sinking blade into tree when an awkward release saw the Tommohammer striking off-true, and with a disheartening "crack" become quite permanently detatched.

You reap what you sow. I threw my tomahawk, no doubt voiding a warranty and broke it. Interestingly, testing to destruction is useful in that it showed that the internal cross section was NOT glass fiber reinforced. Just a single material polymer. Also, it broke at the point of the recessed attachment bolts. So much for bigger is better huh?

 Odds are that if I hadn't been abusing it it wouldn't have had its catastrophic failure as it did, but better like it did rather than in an alley outside of Detroit or off the coast of Mombasa.  I should be able to re-haft the head onto some nice Tasmanian oak I have kicking around or even onto the Mk48 shaft, should I irrevocably screw that one up too. All in all, it was a good piece, part chopper, part hammer but what it wasn't was quality. you get what you pay for.