Ethan Becker
Moderator
- Joined
- Sep 1, 1999
- Messages
- 3,564
I am very pleased that the New BK20 BUNDOK BOWIE is ready to ship....
The US Marine Corps derived the term "boonies" or "boondocks",during their service in the Phillipines, from the native Tagalog language.... Bundok meant mountain but, it also implied wild and remote..... The Marines even nicknamed the field shoe used during WWII and Korea Boondockers.....
I always like to share the influences that "inform" my designs and this blade has many......
I started carrying big Solingen Bowies in the woods during my early teens and I had the biggest baddest Buck as well...... At age 14 I did not "get" the convex grinds on the Solingens and the Buck General never hefted well for me.... I pretty much gave up on them and fell in lust with Kukris.....
Along the way and, in no particular order, I read an article on modding the Western V44 pattern into an inexpensive "soldiers knife"........ He straightened the clip, removed the top guard and most of the bottom, reprofiled the handle a bit and slimmed it down and the result was pretty damned cool..... I handled and used V44s from Case, Camillus and a Collins or two and I liked the heft and balance.....then I got a British Paratrooper knife... It is an abomination before the altar of the cutlery gods..... The steel would bring shame on an early Iron Age smelter powered by a campfire and fit and finish are abysmal but, I found it conceptually interesting..... The Collins Cutlery had their Type 18 adopted for use by their aviators as the V44 in Panama and Hawaii and eventually system wide...In 1942 the 2nd Marine Raider Battallion bought a thousand Collins Type 2 knives and made them famous on Makin Island, Tulagi, Guadalcanal and Bougainville and other scenic stops on their way to Tokyo Bay..... The Raiders called them the Gung-Ho knife. Other threads that I wove into the blade were what I gleaned from Jerry Fisk, Jim Crwell and many others, and an observation by the head of the US Jungle Operations Training Center in the Canal Zone that a twelve inch machete was rhe perfect survival tool.....
So the blade turned out to be eleven inches long, of 1095CV, .25 inches thick, full height ground with a beveled spine..... The edge profile makes it slicy and the beveled spine gives a nice clean exit..... It has proven to chop well and it does machete with aplomb..... If you choke up on the grip it does the little stuff and with a lanyard up on the forearm it is possible to do point work and skinning in an emergency.....
It is a versatile, dependable blade when you traverse the boonies...
Ethan
There is a quote in M.H. Cole's most excellent book "U.S. Military Knives" from a 2nd Battalion Raider, Lwell Bulger:
"The(Gung-Ho)knife was absolutely the greatest single weapon and tool we possessed"
The US Marine Corps derived the term "boonies" or "boondocks",during their service in the Phillipines, from the native Tagalog language.... Bundok meant mountain but, it also implied wild and remote..... The Marines even nicknamed the field shoe used during WWII and Korea Boondockers.....
I always like to share the influences that "inform" my designs and this blade has many......
I started carrying big Solingen Bowies in the woods during my early teens and I had the biggest baddest Buck as well...... At age 14 I did not "get" the convex grinds on the Solingens and the Buck General never hefted well for me.... I pretty much gave up on them and fell in lust with Kukris.....
Along the way and, in no particular order, I read an article on modding the Western V44 pattern into an inexpensive "soldiers knife"........ He straightened the clip, removed the top guard and most of the bottom, reprofiled the handle a bit and slimmed it down and the result was pretty damned cool..... I handled and used V44s from Case, Camillus and a Collins or two and I liked the heft and balance.....then I got a British Paratrooper knife... It is an abomination before the altar of the cutlery gods..... The steel would bring shame on an early Iron Age smelter powered by a campfire and fit and finish are abysmal but, I found it conceptually interesting..... The Collins Cutlery had their Type 18 adopted for use by their aviators as the V44 in Panama and Hawaii and eventually system wide...In 1942 the 2nd Marine Raider Battallion bought a thousand Collins Type 2 knives and made them famous on Makin Island, Tulagi, Guadalcanal and Bougainville and other scenic stops on their way to Tokyo Bay..... The Raiders called them the Gung-Ho knife. Other threads that I wove into the blade were what I gleaned from Jerry Fisk, Jim Crwell and many others, and an observation by the head of the US Jungle Operations Training Center in the Canal Zone that a twelve inch machete was rhe perfect survival tool.....
So the blade turned out to be eleven inches long, of 1095CV, .25 inches thick, full height ground with a beveled spine..... The edge profile makes it slicy and the beveled spine gives a nice clean exit..... It has proven to chop well and it does machete with aplomb..... If you choke up on the grip it does the little stuff and with a lanyard up on the forearm it is possible to do point work and skinning in an emergency.....
It is a versatile, dependable blade when you traverse the boonies...
Ethan
There is a quote in M.H. Cole's most excellent book "U.S. Military Knives" from a 2nd Battalion Raider, Lwell Bulger:
"The(Gung-Ho)knife was absolutely the greatest single weapon and tool we possessed"
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