My perfect Field knife

This is a Stewart Marsh handmade Bushcraft knife. 4.5 in. full tang blade, Scandanavian grind and scary sharp! First attempt at posting a pic, hope it works!

Nice looking knife

That looks like a direct copy of Ray Mears Woodlore knife. Although it's an interesting question as to wether the design is patentable. I suppose everyone coming out with their own variations on Ray's design could be considered a compliment.

This might get some of the knife nuts in a wad (and I'm one of them), but with the exception of using the latest greatest materials, there's really nothing you can do in a knife that's not a copy of something already done somewhere sometime. They are tools and form follows function.

I've dabbled in knifemaking off and on for 20 years now, and as much as I'd like to think my designs are totally unique, they're not. I've made some pretty nice knives too, more than a few of them are really decent utility/carry knives (I really should post some pics!).

Having said that, the Mears Woodlore has a nice utility shape but has a chisel grind. Chisel grinds on a knife are left or right hand, and I've always had a problem with them digging in towards the flat side. I think controlled cuts in anything deeper than the width of the bevel is difficult at best. On the other hand, they are "easier" to sharpen because you lay the whole bevel on the stone and sharpen the bevel. No guessing to holding the right angle. You should not sharpen the flat side at all, except to true the flat. You'll ruin the pretty polished finish the first time you sharpen it, and that right there would make a lot of people cringe.

Just my 2 cents. It is a nice looking knife though.

Why do you think Ray's knife is a chisel grind? Looking at his book, it's a flat grind, much like the one in post above. And they both look like damned effective field knives.

Thought I might have remembered wrong, so I just googled and read a description, "full tang blade with single bevel". That gives you a cross section like a chisel, hence chisel grind. That's also why I refered to sharpening them correctly. You sharpen them just like a chisel, the whole bevel to the stone, just like a chisel. Very small secondary bevel. Just enough to remove wire edge. So your pretty knife isn't so pretty after you sharpen it, if that matters to you.

It's also a flat grind, not concave or hollow grind which is most common grind on knives because it's easiest and, IMHO not a very good grind profile either on a utility type knife. Flat or convex (like an apple seed) will hold a sharp edge much longer all other things being equal.

Also, as an example of it "digging in" and being hard to get controlled cuts: take a 2 x 4 and cut two stakes. One with a single bevel cut and one with two bevels. Now try to drive both stakes straight into the ground. You just can't drive the single bevel stake straight. You'll be trying to compensate by kind of hitting sideways and you still can't do it. The knife will do the same thing when cutting anything thick.

But.....like everything else, it's a matter of personal preference. Ray Mears has gotten used to it and finds it works well for him. I would never argue with that man. Drop that rascal anywhere in the world and in 15 minutes he'll have a roaring fire and a 4 star shelter with his knife and a shoe lace. He'll walk out of a desert survival situation having GAINED weight!

FYI, this is a single bevel, both sides ground equally. The Ray Mears Woodlore is also that type grind.
As for copying a design, that orignally was an Alan Wood design, Ray changed it to suit his taste somewhat and had his logo implanted on the blade. The Woodlore knife has been on back order for a long time now, not accepting orders either. There are several UK knifemakers with exact duplicate design knives and selling them as fast as they can make them. There is a demand and knifemakers are filling the void.
I have plenty of knives and until I owned a few with a Scandanavian grind, I didn't give them much thought. Now I see the advantage of the bevel and it can sure be sharpened easily. As far as the term single grind goes, that means there is one bevel to the point, where a knife like a Buck or Cold Steel had a double bevel, two angles from the blade to form the edge, instead of one...single grind is a proper term. The Bushcraft style knives do not have a "chisel grind" that would be one side beveled. Knives primarliy always have 2 sides beveled, single or double grind. Here is the opposite side

Ah, my mistake then. Maybe slight difference in terminology use from U.S. and European. Single grind with single bevel discribes a chisel. In the late 80's a mini trend in the knife world was chisel ground blades. Just hated them. Anyway, nice looking blade.

Looks like the "Woodlore", to give the knife type a generic name, is going to be the definitive design for a bush knife. The not accepting orders bit is a good thing. It means that you won't be fobbed off with a mass produced copy.

I have a kellem which is like this one in many way, very comfordable in the hand.
Do you know what kind of steel it is?

The Woodlore knife like this is back ordered for five years and cost over $530 not including shipping! Ouch

A five year wait?
I don't think so man.
Time to move on, and find another...

al

I know they're back ordered but that can't be right...5 years?

Right now the Ray Mears online store has no ETA for regular woodlore knives but for the limited edition knives their claming up to 9 months wait. The only went on pre-order last month.

http://www.raymears.com/Bushcraft_Product/612-25th%2DAnniversary%2DWoodlore%2DKnife

Pretty knife. I like the blade shape.

I still pefer at least a little bit of a finger guard on my knife. Yeah, I know some will call me a wimp, but the damage I could do to my finger(s) if my hand were to slip forward is something I choose not to risk - especially if I were in a survival situation (already under stress and possibly injured).

That's one reason I liked the Rittergrip folder - its one of the few folders that even has some kind of a finger guard.

Here's my perfect field knife:


Doug Ritter RSK Mk3

That's a good point. It's better to be safe than sorry in a survival situation. However any true bushcraft expert would likely question how you're using the knife and insist that if used properly, the knife is perfectly safe without a guard. Mora knives come with or without guards and it's generally accepted that the guard just gets in the way when it comes to doing bushcraft stuff.

My perfect field knife is the one I have that day...because the ones I leave at home can't help me. FWIW, this is the knife I most often take to the 'field':
http://images.cabelas.com/is/image/cabelas/s7_516498_imageset_02?

My perfect setup (for now) is this on my hip:

This is my field knife, I'm sure there are better out there but it's a solid, well built, stay sharp knife.

Yay! Another LMF II fan!

My RC-4. I removed the powder coating on the blade and convexed the edge. I am waiting on some orange para cord to use for a lanyard.





-JRJ

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.

It's all about them Busse knives I tell ya. A Busse knife, a gourmet butane creme brulee torch, a hundred feet of 100 lb test dacron fishing line, a tyvek hazmat suit and a ball o' pemmican and you can take on the world!

I wish Busse knives weren't so rare. I'd love to give one a spin. There's an original Battle Mistress on eBay. Only 13 bids and the highest bidder is over $1000 already.


Am_Fear_Liath_Mor: How long is the blade on that Helle? The handle looks good for big hands.

Sharing photos of knives online is like showing the children's photos in your wallet. None of them can ever be depended upon to mow the lawn.The 'Bushcraft' knife is a genius of timing and marketing. That it falls in the general parameters of a working knife, though not a working man's (or woman's) budget is of merit vs some of the other Mel Gibbon fantasy knife seconds out there. And when people realise they cannot or will not wait 5 years and a pile of money, go out and find something just as useable; a copy or simply another good knife: Then we can all get on to what counts- getting lost, wet and hungry, surviving and planning for the next chance to get lost,wet and hungry.

Hi Hacksaw,



The blade is only 9 cm long so the handle is only 10.5 cm is size, so its quite a small lightweight knife at 122 grams with the sheath. It may be to small for big hands as its overall length is only 20cm.

Yes it does, Helle knives are a fine knife for the price. I prefer the Scandanavian grind on a larger knife, so much easier to sharpen razor sharp! Cheers!

Chris, this is a brilliant statement, so true!

Sharing photos of knives online is like showing the children's photos in your wallet. None of them can ever be depended upon to mow the lawn.

What? You need to mow the lawn? Here's what I use:



... and no, my children are not allowed to drive it.

KenK, I have serious doubts that "your perfect field knife" is going to work well for most of the various camping uses a good field knife usually accomplishes.

However, you can use that front blade to build a defensive wall around your campsite pretty quickly & well. Of course, the middle blade(s) will eliminate high grass to keep snakes away.

I guess you can add many different rear blades for other jobs as well. There won't be any danger of getting a sore back or sore muscles, as you use these blades.

Just my observations.....

[quote=Am_Fear_Liath_Mor]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.


[/quote

Ray Mears is a close friend of Lars Falt. The Swedish survival instructor who wrote the book on cold weather enviroment survival. The "Woodlore" descends directly from scani knives like the one above. I personally prefer either a Mora Clipper or a Fallkniven F1. With a Cold Steel Master hunter running a close second.
Having said that they are all functional knives that have a certain spartan aesthetic to them.

But they ain't a real beauty. Unlike the lady above.

+1 LMF II fan! LOL!

al

ANY knife, no matter how long or sharp, will do a better job of mowing a lawn than either of my kids ever did!!!

Here is proof to the stated wait period for the knife I mentioned: Pretty crazy for just a knife huh?

Amazing, simply amazing...