Hi all Well here are a couple of my perfect knives that I finished up today the They were made out of 0-1 steel
and are 1/8 of an inch thick flat ground the wider one is
what I call the pathfinder and the other one that has more
of a sharper point is called the kelly knife after a friend
of mine who is an avid outdoors man and lives as simple
of a life that I know of. That song that a country boy can
survive was talking about him He really has an old 1970
something 4 wheel drive truck a shot gun, 22 rifle and a
3006 rifle he hunts fishes and lives out in the sticks
on a few acers of land, has a big garden to help keep food in his belly and that of his girl friend. He literaly makes less
than 30 dollars a day after taxes and childsupport and his girl friend makes a about 50 dollars a day after taxes. So for them
it would be just a dream to be able to afford a knife that cost
that much and has a waiting period that long. Well I opened my
knife making shop a little over amonth ago and asked Kelly one day what would his perfect survival knife be if he could have one made to his specs. Here is his specs for his perfect knife a 5 inchs long, thin blade, with a blade of 1" wide with 3" of strait blade with the last 2 inchs curved and going into a good sharp point. and real rounded comfy handle and no guard so I drew what I am calling the kelly knife now. I put a little depresstion in the handle as you can see instead of a guard and with a orange handle so it is easy to see it. He liked what I drew up and after a little disscution on the blade thickness 7/64 of an inch was chosen. With a big grin on his face he asked how much I said well with the supplies it would cost about
30 dollars that is blade steel,G-10 Orange scales and parts that go with it, the grinding belts, leather for the sheath the whole thing. Plus my time at $10.00 an hour would cost about $90.00.
I could see the grin leave his face and the "well I really can
not afford that." I said I know but you have chickens and I like eggs ( they sell eggs to help pay the bills) long story short we came up with an agreement ( on eggs) Kelly got his knife and I will be eating fresh farm eggs for a while. This knife I like so much that I have made more and just made and finished one today. His knife is basicly a mora type knife with a full tang
and little thicker blade. I battoned it through a 2.5 inch seasoned mulberry branch and then wittled up some fuzz sticks.
I carved and carved and never did get any hot spots this the best knife I have ever used for field craft. ( I have posted before that I was battoning through some seasoned mulberry with a rat-7 in D-2 steel and it broke out a piece of the blade. Kellys knife is 7/64 inchs thick and did not break I was like
this is cool. Well here are some pics
Here are the fuzz sticks.


Here is the knife that I made for Kelly



Then here is what I finished today. I made both of these out of 0-1 and 1/8th inch thick steel just for fun. They both cut great. This Kelly knife has 4.5" blade and a 4 and 1/8th inch handle and I did a viniger patina on my kelly knife.
The Pathfinder has a 5" Blade and a 5" handle.




Take care all,
Bryan

Breeden knives
e-mail tacklebreeden@yahoo.com or 402-300-0058

Yeah! Great minds think alike!

My EDC is an Al Mar SERE 2000. I also own the Al Mar SERE Operator in S30V (versus the 154 CM version) for field carry. I also frequently carry my Buck Strider 110...it is a HEFTY chunk of steel.

I used to carry a BK-7 in the field as well. I removed the plastic handles and replaced with paracord.

Another knife that I wish I had never sold was my Strider HT. That would be a top choice for me as well.

Hacksaw,

Is that a Freeman?

Yes it is. It's like the normal Freeman Hunter but has a coated blade, cocobolo scales, and it's S30V. Only ever seen it at Cabela's.

I noticed that Amazon suddenly had the S30V. I was thinking about upgrading to it, but I am happy enough with the regular Freeman. Plus, I just got the LMF II and my wife says enough with the knives
The Freeman is a great knife.

I don't have a Cabela's here in OKC. We have a BassPro. They only carry the wood-handled ones. I was attracted to the knife in general. It looked like it had a nice heft to it.

Thanks for the feedback.

The balance is really good and it's comfortable that I feel I could use it for a very long time without fatigue or any issues. The blade is a good size, about one palm width, and I think it's a very good looking knife.

I only have 2 complaints. The leather sheath is merely OK and it's not ambidexterous. I'm trying to source a local who can do kydex to make a neck sheath for it. In the mean time I chopped mine up to make a make shift sheath...which is actually a funny story. I used the knife to cut the sheath and I was able to push cut the thick, well tanned leather so easily I almost turned to a duller knife for fear of slicing through all the layers by accident...narrowing the bevel from factory no doubt helped a great deal with that one.

The other issue is how hard it is to sharpen...which I admit is a little dumb. I'm not sure how the S30V is heat treated because Gerber is usually pretty secretive about that but it's a very hard and/or tough knife. It took me for ever to back bevel it to my liking...there were times when I thought my Sharpmaker would wear down before the bevel did...in the end I didn't even use the sharpmaker to finish the job. I gave up after quite a few hundred passes. The flip side of that, of course, is that so far I've only sharpened it that one time and it's held a fantastic edge since with little more than a couple of very quick hones. I haven't noticed any of the mythical chipping that S30V is supposedly bad for in some knives.

One other thing of note: When I sharpened mine I beveled the tip quite a bit so that it doesn't come to such a pin point anymore. The way the blade is beveled it's on the thin side at the point already so I wanted to prevent the tip from breaking off during use. I don't stab anyhow.

Hi Widget,


The Stewart Marsh handmade Bushcraft knife looks really nice, somewhat like Ray Mears Woodlore knife.

Here's a picture of my Helle Odel. It makes a nice bushcraft knife as well.

Thanks.