The Fighting Tomahawk: An Illustrated Guide to Using the Tomahawk and Long Knife as Weapons by Dwight C. McLemore
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Book Reviews of The Fighting Tomahawk: An Illustrated Guide to Using the Tomahawk and Long Knife as Weapons
Book Review: Finally a book on close fighting with a Tomahawk!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Fighting Tomahawk is a unique book as it focuses on close fighting instead of the usual throwing of the Tomahawk. This is a must for any person interested in Hand to Hand combat, Frontier fighting, the Historical Old West or Western Martial Arts in general. With only two movies that I know of: The Last of the Mohicans with Daniel Day Lewis and The Patriot with Mel Gibson that show actual realistic close quarter fighting with a 'Hawk it is about time a book was written that taught this to the aspiring Tomahawk fighter.
Having trained with Mr. McLemore I can definately say his concepts work AND WORK WELL! I can't recommend this book enough! The concepts in this book could easily be applied to all sorts of weapons (hachets, hammers, crowbars, etc). So whatever your reason for buying any martial arts books make sure this book is on your shelf. Don't leave an empty space in your knowledge!
Book Review: Save your money & apply some basic Escrima principles...
Summary: 2 Stars
If you have so much as a passing familiarity with the concepts of escrima (specifically doce pares), arnis, or any of the other assorted filipino spin-offs, you'll likely want to save your money, get yourself a tomahawk and apply what you already know.
For those of you with none of the above mentioned knowledge, you're not too far behind the rest of the group; many of the techniques here seem to be pirated from basic escrima/ stick fighting books (such as M. Hatsumi's classic, which admittedly, isn't all that great either, from a practical standpoint, but I digress...).
The redeeming factor (if there may be said to be one) is the artwork with which the author illustrates the techniques described. Even this though is somewhat insufficient as the author seems more concerned carefully detailing the buckskin fringes on his models' period clothing than with fully demonstrating even the most pedestrian techniques.
The brief section on history and usage seems to be passably accurate, but, much in the same vein as the later techniques, is largely based on the author's own educated (most of the time) guesses, and a healthy helping of practical speculation.
Essentially, if you have any understanding of basic prinicples of movement and timing, or more essentially, reflexes that better those of an invalid, you can not only understand what you find here, but likely improve on it, all without spending $35+
If this sort of thing interests you, I would advise you to study escrima or arnis and get yourself a tomahawk to apply the techniques with; you'll be miles ahead of this guy, still have your money, and the only thing you'll be missing out on are a handful of conceptualized line drawings.