Here are BLADE Magazine’s Featured Knives of the Week. Browse through these articles to find the best knives available from both custom knifemakers and factory knives.
It’s nice to do something you know is right, and even better when the intentions are pure, and that’s exactly what BLADE® did four years ago with its December 2010 issue. Since then, every December issue, including the upcoming December 2013 BLADE, has been and will continue to be devoted entirely to our fighting men and women in the military.
It was an idea hatched four years ago in an editorial meeting. The staff had two questions: What could BLADE do that no other knife magazine does?; and How can we honor soldiers fighting for our freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan?
I was and am extremely proud of the fact that we’re able to set aside a single issue each year and devote it to the military. It’s the very definition of freedom. The December issue will hit newsstands and subscribers’ doorsteps on September 10th, 2013. Please look for it and help us support our troops. I can’t think of anything more honorable than that.
Anyone who has ever been to the BLADE Show will tell you that there are more production knives, handmade knives, antique knives, collectible knives, knifemakers, dealers, factories, purveyors, collectors and enthusiasts at that show than anywhere else in the world. But the BLADE Show has always been much more than that, and today it is becoming the Ultimate Knife Experience like never before.
Not only does a visit to the 2015 BLADE Show, June 5-7 at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Marietta, Georgia, afford you the opportunity to go to the show, but the chance to attend BLADE U or BLADE University classes covering everything from grinding a knife blade to engraving, choosing a survival knife, knife design and function, using 3D CAD/CAM Software in knife design and much, much more.
Visitors are invited to attend the American Bladesmith Society knife auction, see a glass showcase filled with the Blade Magazine Knife-Of-The-Year® Award entries from all the major knife companies around the world, witness the BLADE Show World Championship Cutting Competition hosted by BladeSports International, view knife displays, see BLADE Show demonstrations covering knife throwing, testing, forging, hand-to-hand-combat and a host of other subjects and even see Japanese sword demonstrations.
Afterwards, enjoy a nice meal and a cool drink at the host hotel, including the infamous ” The Pit” sunken bar—the Renaissance Waverly Hotel in Marietta.
Join us at the BLADE Show and enjoy the Ultimate Knife Experience!
A Portable Hunting Field Kit That’s Small Enough To Fit Into Your Pack And Strong Enough To Process The Spoils Of Your Hunt.
Hunting is hard. Anything that can help make the work of processing an animal easier is worth its weight in gold, and the new Click N Cut Hunting Kit from Cold Steel is 24 karat.
The kit comes with a textured handle and five interchangeable blades. It starts with a relatively standard four-inch general purpose blade which turns it into a fixed-blade knife. Additionally, there is a thing five-inch boning blade.
Where the kit really earns its stripes is with the additional attachments. A six-inch bone saw allows you to keep your hunt in manageable pieces for transport home. The four-inch skinning blade and gut hook is long enough to let you quickly skin an animal while still being strong enough to stand up to the rigors of use.
The last piece is a 3.5-inch caper blade perfect for skinning the heads of animals and acting as a perfect last tool to round out the set. The Click N Cut is the type of hunting kit that you’ll be grateful to have in your pack because it’s small, it’s tough, and it’s priced fairly.
MSRP: $99.99
Editor’s Note: This article was written by Mike Ableson.
GiantMouse Has Taken A Big Step With Their New Fixed Blade. The GMF4 Is The Company’s Biggest Blade Ever And First Camp-Style Knife.
It’s a new era for GiantMouse. The company has stepped into the world of camp knives with the new GMF4. The knife is the company’s largest blade ever and comes in multiple finishes.
The star of the show is the blade. The N690 blade is 5.65 inches long, and the overall length is 10.45 inches. The steel has a flat grind and comes in two finishes: a traditional stonewash and a PVD stonewash. The PVD version is married to a Double Black Canvas Micarta handle, and the traditional blade is meted to a Double Red Canvas Micarta handle.
The handle is sturdy. The high flat saber grind is razor sharp, and the jimping helps stabilize it when cutting. There’s been a lot of thought put into the construction of this knife. A prime example of that is the lanyard hole.
Designed for outdoorsmen and campers, the lanyard hole is placed on the front of the knife so if a branch sneaks in there and pulls at the knife, it will be pulled forward and out of your hand rather than potentially snapping back and slicing you open.
No stone has been left unturned with this knife, and it will serve any and all campers well for a very long time.
Drawknives Are A Woodworker’s Best Friend And One Of Many Unique Knives Craftsmen Use Regularly
Knives take on many shapes and sizes. As tools, their designs sometimes focus on specific tasks. In the case of the drawknife, it is designed for woodworking. Drawknives have been found to date back to the Viking era more than a millennium ago.
The design itself takes many different shapes for a variety of purposes. At times, it is not referred to as a drawknife but, at first glance, you can see the relationship and how a number of tools can be considered part of the same family. As with any tool, different cultures have different interpretations of how the tool should be designed.
What Is A Drawknife?
A drawknife is a single-beveled blade placed between two handles. The tool gets its name from how it is used. You simply grab both handles and draw the knife towards you bevel up. Controlling the angle that the blade enters the wood will control the depth of cut. A steep angle will get you a deeper, more aggressive cut but will also require more effort.
Lowering the angle makes for a shallower cut and also gives you a finer finish as the material is removed less aggressively. Some designs have long handles on plane with the blade. Other designs have the handle tight in and below the plane of the blade. No matter where the handles are, the action is the same but the point of control changes.
Top row, from left: a German-style drawknife made in Western Germany, Mora push knife, English-style drawknife, Flexcut 5-inch drawknife and a cooper’s knife. Bottom row, same order: Round drawknife and a chair maker’s scorp.
How To Use A Drawknife
When working with a narrow stock up to two inches wide, it’s easy enough to draw the knife straight back toward you. On wider stock, it is better to skew the knife. Skewing the knife provides a leading edge and causes less resistance during the cut. When working with hardwoods you want to keep the cut light, as the dense grain provides more resistance and bogs the knife down.
If you skew the knife and work the corners it is easy to remove long curls.
Even when working a flat when skewing the drawknife blade you can get some beautiful shavings.
Learning to use a drawknife properly is a bit like working a puzzle. The easiest way to make a cut is to work the facets of the material. For instance, say we are working on a piece that is square. To shape the piece to the required size it is easier to work the corners down, creating more corners until you get to your desired shape. By working the flats, you must use more energy and struggle to make a cut.
When first using a drawknife, the tendency is to use your arms to power the tool. Instead, use your back muscles, which are larger and less likely to fatigue quickly. Draw the knife back as if you were using the same muscle for rowing. If done right, it should feel like your shoulder blades are trying to meet in the middle of your back. For safety’s sake, keep your elbows in tight. As you draw the knife back your elbows will hit your core acting as a safety stop, preventing you from slipping and cutting yourself.
Types Of Drawknifes
A debarking knife is usually a larger style of drawknife used for extracting bark from logs. They are larger and heavier than their woodworking counterparts so that you can blast through the bark.
It has been my experience that when working green wood, the knife doesn’t need to be kept as sharp. In fact, it is somewhat more helpful to keep the knife a bit dull when cutting green wood so as to avoid diving too deep into the wood itself. On seasoned logs, because of the lack of sap between the bark and sapwood, I find it better to have the knife a bit sharper.
Woodworking drawknives come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The two main types I have used: English and German. The English style has a blade that bares a slight arch and the handles are on the same plane as the blade. German-style knives have handles that sit lower than the blade and the blade tends to be straight. The knives’ handles can vary. Most of mine have a pear-like shape. There are other styles like a round knob style, which is a ball shape.
The English style drawknife has a small but thin bevel that makes for some beautiful curls.
The German knife has a steep angle to the bevel. If used straight across a narrow piece wood, it can remove large amounts of material. At the time of the photo, the author had not finished cleaning up the blade, ergo the hammer marks in it.
Specialty styles of knives include any drawknife that is shaped to obtain a specific result. A cooper’s knife is shaped to accommodate the making of barrel staves. I also have a handle-making knife. The handle-making knife is a tight arch designed to make handles for things like brooms or garden implements. The basic shape is a half circle, so instead of trying to round a piece off by angling a number of cuts, you get a piece of wood close to size and simply let the knife shape it.
The cooper’s shave is designed to hollow out the staves of a barrel.
Push Knife
The model uses the Mora push knife to clean up curls left at the bottom of a curve. With the push knife, you can work the wood in an opposite direction without repositioning the piece.
A Scandinavian invention, the push knife is similar to a drawknife in that it has a blade attached by two handles on either side. Using a push knife is different in the way that you are expected to force the edge away from your body instead of pulling it toward you. Unlike a drawknife, the handles come straight out from the sides, which allows you to either push or pull the knife. I normally use the knife in the manner that gets the job done—meaning on occasion I will draw the knife toward me rather than push.
What Is A Scorp?
Technically, scorps are not drawknives. However, in terms of looks and use you can’t help but lump them in the same family. I have a chair maker’s scorp that is designed to hollow out the seats of chairs. On older chairs is a slight depression where the person sits. A chair maker’s scorp was used to produce the shape. The tool operates just like a drawknife except it has a shorter blade with a more pronounced arch.
How To Sharpen A Drawknife
Like any other cutting tool, a drawknife must be sharpened. Perhaps the trickiest part of sharpening a drawknife is finding a way to brace it. I find dynamic sharpening the easiest way to sharpen a drawknife. I brace the knife and move the sharpening medium instead of the other way around. One way to brace the knife for sharpening is to put one handle in your armpit and hold the other handle in your off hand. Once the knife is braced this way, take a stone to it. Another way is to brace one handle on the bench, lean your chest on the other handle, and then begin sharpening. Keep in mind a drawknife must be sharp (except where noted previously) but since it is not necessarily a fine woodworking tool, don’t get carried away.
YouTuber James Wright shows you how to sharpen a drawknife using a set of sharpening stones in his shop.
Lastly, keep it oiled. Even the newer ones are not made from new high-tech steels. Most are from simple carbon stock and a light coat of oil goes a long way. Among others, Flexcut offers a contemporary drawknife.
Other Wood Carving Tools
Beyond drawknives and planes, there are many other types of wood carving knives out there that can help with some of the finer points of woodworker. Small, nimble wood carving knives like a sloyd knife or a spoon knife.
A sloyd knife is a short, sturdy blade good for small, finite carving tasks. A spoon knife, as the name suggests, is meant to carve out the concave scoop of a spoon but can be used for any other situation where you are trying to create a concave dip in the material.
There are certainly more than just these few tools to being a successful woodworker, but knowing how to use wood carving tools big or small can get you on the path to success.
Why To Use A Drawknife
Long before there was solar power, fossil fuel power, steam power, etc., there was muscle power. Humans developed the world using tools with muscle and sweat. There is something satisfying about making something by hand. The feel of a good day’s work is sometimes what the soul needs. A drawknife not only gets the job done but also gives you an accomplishment to savor.
Knifemakers have a hard enough time making a living doing what they love without added expenses. So what are the benefits of paying a professional photographer to photograph their knives for them?
The reasons to have knives photographed are many. As managing editor of BLADE Magazine, I can tell you that often when knifemakers send me images of their newest models for possible publication, the self- or friend-taken digital images are low resolution, fuzzy, with busy backgrounds or too low quality for a high-gloss, color magazine. The images might look good on a website, computer screen or printed, but once reproduced on quality magazine paper, in four color, they lose their crispness and look fuzzy.
Here are some other reasons to have your knives photographed by a pro from photographer Jim Cooper of SharpByCoop.com.
The benefit of a professional image will promote you in a number of ways:
Large clear print for your portfolio
Crisp website image for email or display
Large digital file for printing
Posted and viewed by thousands on Bladeforums, CKCA forum, and our SBC Facebook page
All files are sent to USA and International editors of knife magazines
Guaranteed: Your knives are always available to view and search on our extensive website
A professional image shows you take pride in your work
In a fascinating feature article written by Mike Haskew in the October 2015 issue of BLADE®, the point is driven home that the Asian influence is ever present in the knife industry. As Haskew notes, “From tanto-inspired blades to the temper lines, fittings and finishes that are hallmarks of the Eastern look and feel, the new designs keep coming.”
From Columbia River Knife & Tool’s Asian-influenced collaborations with Lucas Burnley, to knives with Eastern flair from CAS Iberia, United Cutlery and Condor Tool & Knife, Haskew covers a lot of ground … all the way to East Asia. See the October 2015 issue of BLADE for the full story.
