Yeah, I had some mauls from the copper mines in the U.P. of Michigan that I sold... I know the feeling. And talk about beefy... holy smokes! You're right about it being tapered too much to be a maul but I don't think the beat up surfaces all the way around are because the piece was unfinished, I think some of it was probably from multi purpose "tooling". Or... maybe the guy was lazy like me and didn't finish it all the way... "ah.. that's close enough, it will work" LOL