AFAustin
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2004
- Messages
- 2,503
First of all, on this Memorial Day, thank you to our veterans, and to those currently serving, for all they have done on our behalf. I have the luxury of enjoying a day off and playing with knives today because of your many sacrifices.
A while back, I bought a GEC #73 trapper (2007) from fellow forum member tonystl. It is a beautiful knife and I have enjoyed it. Thanks again, Tony. What really grabbed my attention initially was the goldenrod micarta---it is smooth, deep, and gorgeous to my eye.
This was also my first experience with GEC's 440C and I wondered if I could get as nice an edge on it as with GEC's excellent 1095, which is always a pleasure to sharpen. I have found the 440C to take a bit more time to sharpen but have had very good results with this one and I'm pleased on that score as well.
The one thing I didn't like about this knife was the spey blade. To each his own, but I've just never liked the look of the GEC speys and in particular how they swell out through the belly and tip. Having a longstanding problem of not knowing when to leave well enough alone, I undertook a small mod yesterday. I have a Work Sharp Ken Onion, with a wide selection of belts, and it's a great tool for small projects like this. After a couple of hours, with lots of grind-check-grind-check, and a full belt progression, I had what I wanted---a somewhat smaller blade whose shape is sort of a downturned spear, or maybe better described as a cross between a spear and a sheepsfoot ("spearfoot"? "sheepspear"?). I've always liked this shape of blade in that it provides most of the benefit of a sheepsfoot or wharnie's straight cutting surface, with just enough belly to allow for a little rocking motion if cutting on a board.
Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out and thought I'd share it.
Thanks for reading and looking.
Andrew
I should've taken a "before" pic but didn't think about it at the time. But I did find Tony's pic from the original sales thread and so here is
"Before":
And "After":
A while back, I bought a GEC #73 trapper (2007) from fellow forum member tonystl. It is a beautiful knife and I have enjoyed it. Thanks again, Tony. What really grabbed my attention initially was the goldenrod micarta---it is smooth, deep, and gorgeous to my eye.
This was also my first experience with GEC's 440C and I wondered if I could get as nice an edge on it as with GEC's excellent 1095, which is always a pleasure to sharpen. I have found the 440C to take a bit more time to sharpen but have had very good results with this one and I'm pleased on that score as well.
The one thing I didn't like about this knife was the spey blade. To each his own, but I've just never liked the look of the GEC speys and in particular how they swell out through the belly and tip. Having a longstanding problem of not knowing when to leave well enough alone, I undertook a small mod yesterday. I have a Work Sharp Ken Onion, with a wide selection of belts, and it's a great tool for small projects like this. After a couple of hours, with lots of grind-check-grind-check, and a full belt progression, I had what I wanted---a somewhat smaller blade whose shape is sort of a downturned spear, or maybe better described as a cross between a spear and a sheepsfoot ("spearfoot"? "sheepspear"?). I've always liked this shape of blade in that it provides most of the benefit of a sheepsfoot or wharnie's straight cutting surface, with just enough belly to allow for a little rocking motion if cutting on a board.
Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out and thought I'd share it.
Thanks for reading and looking.
Andrew
I should've taken a "before" pic but didn't think about it at the time. But I did find Tony's pic from the original sales thread and so here is
"Before":
And "After":
