- Joined
- Mar 10, 2010
- Messages
- 18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mFpnfpDTNQ&feature=channel_video_title
Kyley Harris is making me this absolutely amazing short sword. His designs are incredible and I've yet to come across a maker who produces knives which perform as well as his utility knives over such a wide range of tasks. I am not inexperienced with high end customs, as most people seem to automatically assume when I say this. I've handed and owned plenty of customs from the "big name" makers.
Kyley's knives may not look like they're designed for an aardvark hand (That seems to be what's in style these days), but they are amazingly good performers. A great deal of attention is given to the physics of all of his knives. Things like balance, mass distribution, center of percussion, etc are all optimized in each design. The potential given by the weight of each of Kyley's knives is optimized. Weight is never added in order to obtain better chopping performance, for example. Instead, the design of the knife is optimized to give the same performance as a heavier knife in a lighter package, or the same weight as another knife, but with more blade length. The longer the blade, the higher the velocity will be at the blade tip for a given arm velocity. Anyway, the end result of all of these considerations is incredible comfort in use due to extremely low levels of vibration being transmitted to your hand, extreme ease of maneuvering the knife and ridiculously good, optimized performance. You will be disappointed in most of your other knives after handling his.
His handles are designed to PROPERLY fit as wide a range of hand sizes as possible, unlike the vast majority of production and custom knife makers out there. The handles are designed to work well in every grip the knife will be used in. For example, his utility knives are all capable of being comfortably and safely used in essentially every possible grip. This allows the user to let the knife do the work for them by using grips like the chest lever grip. The fighters, like this Warrior 2, are completely designed around the fighting application and there is nothing superficial added to them. There are no curves for the sake of curves like you see so often on knives these days. Every aspect of the knife has a function.
Kyley also uses zero convex grinds on all of his knives. I'm finding that this type of grind outperforms all others in nearly every way. The exception being specialty grinds for specialty applications. But for all around work, I've yet to find a grind that outperforms a zero convex grind. I've got zero flat chisel grinds, single sided hollow grinds, full flat v grinds, saber v grinds, hollow v grinds, "scandi" grinds, etc. None of them perform as well as a zero convex over a wide range of cutting media. The zero convex also holds an edge better than any of these other grinds for a given steel and a given edge angle.
Yeah, many people will say I'm making tall claims. But until you experience a cKc knife, you simply will not be able to understand just how good knife performance, efficiency and comfort can get. There are knives like Phil Wilson's, which can perform very well, but they are also extremely hard and extremely thin. Kyley's knives obtain excellent performance with more user friendly steels (Important when in the field) and much stronger edges. The entire knife will be stronger than a knife like a Phil Wilson fillet knife, as even Wilson himself states that his super thin fillet knives should not contact bone, for example. The zero convex grind will allow a stronger edge than a similar performing flat grind with a secondary bevel. Kyley's zero convex edges are also far more easy to maintain than knives with secondary bevels in my experience.
Kyley Harris is making me this absolutely amazing short sword. His designs are incredible and I've yet to come across a maker who produces knives which perform as well as his utility knives over such a wide range of tasks. I am not inexperienced with high end customs, as most people seem to automatically assume when I say this. I've handed and owned plenty of customs from the "big name" makers.
Kyley's knives may not look like they're designed for an aardvark hand (That seems to be what's in style these days), but they are amazingly good performers. A great deal of attention is given to the physics of all of his knives. Things like balance, mass distribution, center of percussion, etc are all optimized in each design. The potential given by the weight of each of Kyley's knives is optimized. Weight is never added in order to obtain better chopping performance, for example. Instead, the design of the knife is optimized to give the same performance as a heavier knife in a lighter package, or the same weight as another knife, but with more blade length. The longer the blade, the higher the velocity will be at the blade tip for a given arm velocity. Anyway, the end result of all of these considerations is incredible comfort in use due to extremely low levels of vibration being transmitted to your hand, extreme ease of maneuvering the knife and ridiculously good, optimized performance. You will be disappointed in most of your other knives after handling his.
His handles are designed to PROPERLY fit as wide a range of hand sizes as possible, unlike the vast majority of production and custom knife makers out there. The handles are designed to work well in every grip the knife will be used in. For example, his utility knives are all capable of being comfortably and safely used in essentially every possible grip. This allows the user to let the knife do the work for them by using grips like the chest lever grip. The fighters, like this Warrior 2, are completely designed around the fighting application and there is nothing superficial added to them. There are no curves for the sake of curves like you see so often on knives these days. Every aspect of the knife has a function.
Kyley also uses zero convex grinds on all of his knives. I'm finding that this type of grind outperforms all others in nearly every way. The exception being specialty grinds for specialty applications. But for all around work, I've yet to find a grind that outperforms a zero convex grind. I've got zero flat chisel grinds, single sided hollow grinds, full flat v grinds, saber v grinds, hollow v grinds, "scandi" grinds, etc. None of them perform as well as a zero convex over a wide range of cutting media. The zero convex also holds an edge better than any of these other grinds for a given steel and a given edge angle.
Yeah, many people will say I'm making tall claims. But until you experience a cKc knife, you simply will not be able to understand just how good knife performance, efficiency and comfort can get. There are knives like Phil Wilson's, which can perform very well, but they are also extremely hard and extremely thin. Kyley's knives obtain excellent performance with more user friendly steels (Important when in the field) and much stronger edges. The entire knife will be stronger than a knife like a Phil Wilson fillet knife, as even Wilson himself states that his super thin fillet knives should not contact bone, for example. The zero convex grind will allow a stronger edge than a similar performing flat grind with a secondary bevel. Kyley's zero convex edges are also far more easy to maintain than knives with secondary bevels in my experience.
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