Competition knives?

MVF

MVF

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Sep 2, 2005
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I'm not sure if this belongs here, in general discussion, or in Custom knives, but here goes-

I've been seeing lots of good comments about the "Competition knife" being offered by A.G. Russell, but I've never seen anyone talk about having ordered a competition knife from a maker.

Based on what they need to do in the cutting competitions it seems to me that these knives would make a great camp knife- am I missing something?
 
Ray Kirk I think made a run of one of the knives he used one year in the ABS cutting competitions. I used one of his bowies, the one he used for the JS test to be specific. I would indeed be pleased to have one of his bowies for a camp knife, assuming you wanted to do a lot of heavy wood work.

-Cliff
 
MVF said:
I've been seeing lots of good comments about the "Competition knife" being offered by A.G. Russell, but I've never seen anyone talk about having ordered a competition knife from a maker.
Click to expand...

In to the Customs Forum with you, MVF! A lot of the makers who compete will make knives similar to the ones they've used.
 
I was lucky enough to pick up Bailey Bradshaw's '06 Competition Cutter,
he was too busy to get a chance to use it,although,he did allow Marshall N. and Thomas R. to practice their cutting with it in preparation for their testing and they said it cut like a beast.
Forged CPM 3V .

Doug
 
Great link- thanks hardheart, but that kind of illustrates my point- a knife that's a good chopper but also a good enough slicer for free hanging rope and water bottles sounds like an awfully good knife- is there a downside somewhere that I don't see?

That thread is 2 years old and I can't remeber seeing any posts over at the Custom forum about " Here's the competition style knife I ordered from so & so"
 
MVF said:
That thread is 2 years old and I can't remeber seeing any posts over at the Custom forum about " Here's the competition style knife I ordered from so & so"
Click to expand...
Might want to take a look in the Customs forum today. :)

Doug
 
I have a few competition-style knives myself, one from Matt Roberts, Mitch Wilkins, and one on order from another maker. I also have one from Phillip Patton that isn't technically a comp cutter, but certainly has the blade geometry to be--1/4" L6 that goes down to thinner behind the edge than you'll find on a Buck 110. The only thing that keeps it from being a comp cutter contender is that it has a heavy guard which pulls the balance back a bit.

But anyway, yes--they do make an outstanding heavy camp knife. Add that to a Bill Buxton EDC (which is the small-knife equivalent, same kind of geometry scaled down) and I don't think there's much of anything you couldn't handle. :cool:
 
Thanks Doug & t1mpani.

Cliff, I have found a couple of posts from Comp knife owners in the last few days, unfortunately, the only specs listed IIRC was that one was flat ground with a convex edge.
 
I'll have to check when I get home, Cliff--am out of town at the moment. The edge angles would be a little hard to judge, as all of them have been resharpened at this point by hand, and while I'm fairly fastidious about maintaining consistency along an edge I am just eyeballing it. My edge angles tend to run: "thin", "medium", and the very occasional "thick"--though this last is generally only on shovels and the like. ;) Actually, on the big blades like this, I tend to go with what I consider a medium edge (about 25 degrees, included, give or take) to ensure toughness since they see so much impact work. They're so thin behind their edges and the taper so gradual up the width of their blades that they still cut with extreme ease--like good chefs knives on steroids.
 
Nice to see 12/13 degrees per side listed as a medium heavy edge. No rush on the measurements, I would appreciate them whenever you get the chance. Have you compared them to a normal production bowie like the Trailmaster?

-Cliff
 
Heh, night and day with the Trailmaster--I always felt that Cold Steel either should have made it 1/4" wider to give the 5/16" thickness more room to drop down, or made the stock 1/16" thinner. Even at their chosen dimensions, however, they could have dropped the thickness behind the edge down significantly from what they do. In fact--and I should have mentioned this before--another comp cutter I have from Graham is like 3/8" at the spine, though only right at the guard as it is distal tapered to the point. Nonetheless, its thickness behind the edge is siginificantly thinner than a Trailmaster, though not as thin as the others I mentioned before. It's a bit wider, true, but principally this just comes from a more aggressive plunge to the main grind--still flat, no hollow grind here. When I get back I'll pull out the 'ol calipers and see what I find. But anyway, I'd rate the Comp Cutters' geometries as being a lot closer to the Master Hunter than the Trail Master, just to stick with Cold Steel comparisons.

I do seem to remember Bill Buxton saying that he typically goes to around 0.01" (or slightly more) on his EDCs and hunters, and that bigger blades for camp knives/bowies he takes closer to 0.02".
 
Yes, would have suspected a major difference in geometry as the Trailmaster could be from 0.030-0.050" at the edge. I was wondering how you would compare them in terms of general cutting and chopping ability.

-Cliff
 
I'm sorry Cliff, I think I'd mentally turned this thread off until I could get home to do measuring.

Well, I don't have a Trailmaster anymore, so it'd be tough to do a head to head, but I do have a Becker Brute with only a slightly modified edge, and although that's a saber grind versus the Trailmaster's high flat, the edge thickness and angles seem very similar to me. I could do a bit of a run off between that and a comparable-sized comp cutter (or as close I can get) and see what happens.

I can tell you that in all types of cutting, from chopping to scraping to kitchen work, the comp cutters are well ahead both in performance and ease of use, but instead of trying to compare something I have now to something I used a few years back, I'll wait and do some side by side stuff so that my fondness for my current tools doesn't color the memories.
 
t1mpani said:
I could do a bit of a run off between that and a comparable-sized comp cutter (or as close I can get) and see what happens.
Click to expand...

That would be interesting. I would also be curious as to how much performance is gained over such a knife from a decent production bowie which has been resharpened to a similar profile. Take a Dogfather for example and adjust the edge geometry to the same angle and now how much difference is seen?

-Cliff
 
Don't have a Dog father I'm afraid, but I how about a Battle Rat or FBM? You do just mean adjusting the edge angle, right--not the whole grind? :D
 
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