Bellies

Shotgun

Shotgun

Joined
Feb 3, 2006
Messages
8,250
No not our pot bellies...LOL.

I'm thinking about an EDC design for myself but I keep thinking I want to make it a wharncliffe. This knife will be mainly used for everyday tasks but I also want it to be a decent woods knife. Is there any benefit to having a belly on a knife? Seems in my use I either use the the straight part near the grip or the point. I almost never use the belly that I can think of.
 
I use the belly when I am skinning as well. The belly on a blade is more important than one may think, imo. I use it when slicing into things for food prep as well. Most used part of my knife is the upper portion of it.
 
Oh I should clarify that I don't hunt so that's not an issue for me. The only draw back I can see is when using against a cutting board but I've never carried a cutting board into the woods. The reason I ask is that different people use knives differently so maybe there's a wizbang use for a belly that I can't foresee.
 
I don't hunt (or skin) so belly isn't important to me either. I prefer a straight cutting edge with just a little rise toward the tip. Look at the blade of the Benchmade 940, and you'll get the idea. Belly does have it's place besides skinning, though. You can't easily scrape with a pure wharncliff. Chopping onions and such would be difficult with a wharncliff as well. Who only carries one knife, though??? :)
 
Shotgun said:
I'm thinking about an EDC design for myself but I keep thinking I want to make it a wharncliffe. This knife will be mainly used for everyday tasks but I also want it to be a decent woods knife. Is there any benefit to having a belly on a knife? Seems in my use I either use the the straight part near the grip or the point. I almost never use the belly that I can think of.
Click to expand...

Good Idea.

I think many designs miss the point, and that is the pun.

For an EDC sized knife, all you really need is a small curve and an acute point.

I would love to see what you come up with! I would share one of my designs, but I am not quite there yet.

Best,
Marion
 
The belly is used in draw cuts and it also aids in piercing. The knife also cuts better when the edge is presented at an angle, which is the basis of the Nepalese khukuri design if im not mistaken.
 
BChou-E29 said:
The belly is used in draw cuts and it also aids in piercing. The knife also cuts better when the edge is presented at an angle, which is the basis of the Nepalese khukuri design if im not mistaken.
Click to expand...

I think (and I could be wrong) that the khukuri is more to do with shifting the weight towards the front of the knife, so that the front end can work for chopping and simmilar work while being somewhat lighter than a comparable straight chopping blade.
 
Belly adds more useable knife edge to a blade. If you run a piece of string along the edge of the knife and measure it, it will be longer than the length of the knife. Big belly is a great way to add more slicing performance to a small package, which is great for EDC knives. The longer cutting edge aids in just about everything-cutting cordage, tape, paper-just about every material you'd have to cut on a daily basis. Meal prep, carving, all sorts of trail applications are handy to have a big belly for. It's one of the main things I look for in blade design-a big belly with a useable point.
 
i tend to prefer blades with a belly as well... it far more useful than most folks think...
 
The belly helps with things like troughing too...making spoons and bowls and stuff.
 
scan0032.jpg

I traced the most useless blade I own, the Byrd Raven (just about NO belly, lots of useless steel that doesn't reinforce the strength of the blade and only serves to accomadate the spydie/byrd hole, typical spyderco design) and drew up a blade with lots of belly and a useable point-squeezing MUCH more knife into the same package.
 
Belly is good when you want a shallow cut when slicing thin materials along the length of the edge, or a deeper one when chopping harder materials that envelope a significant portion of the edge-like an axe.
It gives greater control by directing the force of the cut into a small area.
At the same time, it degrades slicing in tougher materials(by contrast, a recurved, or straight edge presented at an angle, forces the material into the edge), because it pushes the edge away from the cut.
Whether more belly is good or bad depends entirely on what you want the blade to do.
 
Lot of the knives in Thailand have plenty of belly. Lots of them used in the kitchen, then five minutes later in the garden
 
By way of comparison i can illustrate the value of belly in a knife for me.

I have a CRKT "Ed Halligan" K.I.S.S. neck-knife with a chisel-grind Tanto point. This design is OK for piercing tasks - the edge is comprised of a straight angle then makes a sharp (approx.) 45-degree angle back up toward the spine forming a point.

The knife has absolutely no belly. It is fine as a possible spear, but otherwise has proved itself terrible for slicing/cutting tasks other than rope or cord. It is in the "never will be used" drawer. I keep very few items like this, but this was a gift from a friend.

By contrast - all my kitchen knives have great belly and cut/slice like crazy. Both my Trailmaster and Buck Paklite have belly - moreso the Buck - and both slice like mad.

So, yea belly is essential for a knife imho.
 
Bellied-blades are useful for lifting food out of a pan, give you more surface to make a flat cut, and as others have said, can give you more leverage as you slice down and up, lifting up one surface.

I just wish I had an image of what I mean. :)
 
The straight edge wharncliffe is a great utility design in itself but a small amount of belly adds to the versitility of the design. That is what I've done with my WUK design. Brought the point up a 1/4". I've been using this design almost daily for 6 months and it has become my favorite for EDC.
Scott
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top