Conversation with Shiva Ki

Jimmy,
Leaving now to ship you the curly maple handled Spirit blade,will post when I get back.
Life IS good. :thumbup:

Doug
 
Knife enroute. :thumbup:
Got your Email Jimmy,will send one back a little later. :)

Doug
 
Jimmy Fikes said:
.......

Making a blade similar to the Spirit blade will kill two birds with one stone... IF my blade doesn't break when Doug whacks the pine knots, when I get it back I can send it off to a certain Romainian Relic currently living the good life in France. (Are you reading this, Dog Face??? ;) )

......

Jimmy
Click to expand...

Romanian Relic beats Fat Ugly Relic any time :D :p
 
Jimmy,

You should prepare for those tests instead of lurking arround here all day long ;)
 
flava said:
Jimmy,

You should prepare for those tests instead of lurking arround here all day long ;)
Click to expand...

Yes! You're absolute correct! I will immediately begin to wire up bales of $100 bills to mail off to Doug. Not that I would ever expect any testing to be slanted in my favor, of course!!:p

Smallest Spirit Fikes:grumpy:
 
Jimmy Fikes said:
Hi, Gary...

Oley finally took his meds, so this is Jimmy back at the keyboard. :p

Nice work you did polishing out that hamon, buddy. I think you need to hire on as polisher... not to mention sheathmaker. VERY nice sheath. :thumbup:

Jimmy
Click to expand...

Thanks Jimmy, I actually just put in a piece of deer skin which is spongy material
along the spine side of the handle so when you insert the knife the deer skin
will expand against it and help retain the knife in the sheath more secure
since there are no guards to try and catch, works great that way.

I'll pass on the polishing job, lol, I believe I've had my fun for a while doing that!
G2
 
Jimmy Emailed me earlier today that the small Spirit blade arrived and as we planned on doing some rope cutting,I asked him to do some 2 X 4 chops.Jimmy wrote:
And yes,I'll be happy to do 2 X 4 chops.The test should have zero chance of harming the blade if I avoid knots...which I will.And what I'd like is for you to do some of your own testing when I send Shiva's blade back along with my interpretation of it...including your own 2 X 4 chopping.Whenever possible do your own testing and draw your own conclusions.

Doug
 
Cool!:cool:

Be interested in the feedback, since I am so lame in getting my own testing done!

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
Perhaps Jimmy will just post in his comments?
G2
 
Hi, Gary

I haven't really done much yet with Doug's knife except for a couple of simple tests for sharpness comparing Shiva's blade to a tanto I've just finished up, but I have written reams to Doug, it seems. :) As I told Doug, he's welcomed to post any of my blather he chooses. An easy way to do it is just to copy the text of the emails I've sent and past them in the message box here... deleting anything he feels is inappropriate. If Doug doesn't figure out how to get my *opinions* (and you know what they say about those!!!) posted, he can let me know and I'll do it.

I have just started a knife with a blade shape similar to the Shiva Small Spirit blade so that I can test the blades side by side in the rope cutting and 2 X 4 chopping. I wanted something of a similar size and weight so that I'm not comparing apples to oranges. Handles on the two knives will be totally different since I'll do my usual full tang / cord wrap thing. I have company coming for a few days, so I have no idea when the blade will be finished... only that it will be finished as soon as possible.

Will post when I have something worth posting. No, wait. If I did that I'd never post again. ;)

Email headed your way soon, Gary.

Jimmy
 
Company! better get your Good coveralls on now! :)
If you use email from BladeForums, it don't work
send it to chiseledge@yahoo.com or I won't see it...
Thanks!
G2
 
from email Jimmy Fikes to Leatherbird:
Hi, Doug...

Just wanted to let you know that the Shiva arrived today. Seems it made it though the perils of USPS delivery with no damage. I looked it over good and the only thing that looks like a blemish is a little scratch / indentation on the top side of the handle... perhaps half inch from the guard. All looks fine otherwise.

Thought I would give you some initial impressions... will write more fully a bit later. I like the knife overall. Blade shape is good, as is the shape of the handle. Feels good in the hand.... light overall feel, but a tad blade heavy for a knife of this size. The blade heavy feel would make it better for chopping that it might otherwise be at this blade length / width / thickness, so feeling a bit blade heavy is not necessairly a bad thing.

I have no idea what Shiva told you about the blade steel / steel finish / edging method or anything else, but I'll tell you what I either strongly suspect or know for a fact. I would guess the blade is 1095 considering how well Shiva's work is supposed to hold an edge. It could be lower in carbon content in the 10XX series, but I doubt it. There's a slim chance it could be 5160, but I doubt that for a number of reasons. Two of them would be (again) reputed edgeholding and the width of the partially hardened line of steel between the hardened and unhardened portions of the blade. The color of the finish looks exactly like one of my 1095 blades prior to removing the dark oxide. I would be willing to wager that this particular blade was *not* hardened with the use of a clay coating, although a lot of Shiva's work obviously is. I say this because of the width of the hardened area of the edge and the shape of the hamon. Simply put, 1095 is a shallow hardening steel... and if you'll note, the thicker areas of the blade are those which are not hardened. The only relatively thick area of the blade that hardened is just where the edge ends and the ricasso begins... the part of the ricasso nearest the edge. This would be explained because that area commonly picks up heat pretty fast, either in a coal / charcoal fire or a gas forge... and most likely is the first thick area that goes into the quench medium.

The blade has a very good distal taper... not too much, not too little... for a fighter. I think point strength should be adequate for most uses. As I said, I like the blade overall, but there are a number of things which I do not like. I'll avoid fit and finish issues altogether since that area of knifemaking can be argued about 'til doomsday without anyone changing their opinion. I'll just say that the fit and finish of blade / guard / handle would not deter me from buying the knife if I were chosing a knife only on it's functional aspects... and in fact I like the overall roughness of the piece (call it homespun / made for use / battle ready / brutal... or whatever fits for you). But there are some issues with the blade that would interfere with function as I define the work. I do not like the way the edge was applied, nor the fact that the blade is very thick just behind the edge... and I do not like the recurved area of the blade. 'Cutting ability' and 'sharpness' are two very different critters even though you'd never know it from reading many of the posts on BladeForums. Hate to say that, but it's true... even though I think the guys there are, for the most part, very good people. And that's not really a harsh judgement considering that MANY knifemakers have no clue about it all either.

Let me see if I can explain what I'm talking about. The edge that Shiva puts on a knife is what is normally referred to as 'agressive'... and it is. It's aggressive because of the 'teeth' left on the edge by the grit on the belt that was used to edge the blade.. and a fairly coarse belt, at that. In short, Shiva's blade is a fine toothed saw. This sort of edge will shave... cut paper... cut rope... cut almost anything that is comprised of individual 'strands', or is in itself a thin material. But the thickness of the blade just behind the edge would be a pretty serious impediment to best cutting if the blade were used on a material that did not easily yeild and move away from the blade as the blade moves through the material.

Examples to illustrate what I mean could be rope (let's say hanging rope just for the hell of it) and a 2 X 4. When cutting rope the very edge of the knife does the cutting of individual strands of rope which are then pulled away from the blade by the tension on the stands of fiber (remember that the rope is made of twisted strands which are under tension even if the rope were just lying on a table). Individual strands are cut when they are presented to the edge as the knife passes through the rope, but the ends of the strands do not press against the rope with any serious friction and will not slow the blade down or present a need for much force to be applied to the blade to keep it moving.

Wood does not react in the same way when being cut. A sharp edge on a thin blade will outcut an equally sharp edge on a thicker blade every time... assuming same steels, same heat-treat. Even a dull paring knife keeps on cutting those veggies because it doesn't have to 'wedge' the vegetables apart in the same way a thicker blade would. Shiva's blade should do fine as a 'whittler' because the wood would curl away from the edge. I don't think the chopping ability will be nearly as high as the whittling ability because the thickness of the blade behind the edge would wedge into the wood, seriously retarding the cut. My guess would be (and as I said, I think the photos of Beaucant cutting rope were not staged) Shiva's blade will cut rope just fine, but is not going to fare as well in cutting the 2 X 4 for the reasons stated.

But... it seems to me that the primary purpose of this knife is as a 'fighter'... so whether or not it cuts a 2 X 4 as quickly and easily as a knife with a different blade / edge geometry means very little. I should also add that a 'belted edge' is a very good thing however long it lasts before it needs sharpening. And some knives I simply have not been able to sharpen any other way. Good example would be a kitchen knife I have from David Boye. David sent me a number of blades to test for him that were out of his (back then) new dendritic stainless. In return for the testing, he let me keeps the knives that didn't get crunched / broken / blown apart in the tests. David's blades had an edge very similar to that on the Shiva... and there was not a dimes worth of difference in sharpness between David's work and Shiva's. After the tests were over and I'd written David to give him my thoughts on the dendritic steel, I tried re-edging the blades using my normal technique. No luck. No luck with stones / hones of any kind, including water stones. But when I went to a 60 grit belt and buffed off the wire edge left by the belt... there was once again 'sharpness'. I do love sharpness!! And to this day, the belt is still the only way I've been able to edge the Boye dendritic. David's knives are to impact sensitive for me in the larger sizes, but his work nevertheless has my utmost respect. If I were in the market for a kitchen knife, or knew anyone who was... and they wanted 'pretty' as well as sharp... I would (and have) given David's work my recommendation without reservation. Of course, I'd also resharpen their knives on my belt grinder when they got dull. LOL

Another complaint with a 'belted edge' (one put on a knife with a belt)... especially a wide belted edge on a relative thick blade... is that it's going to be very difficult to resharpen for the user. If the user maintains exactly the same angle as the belted edge he (or she) is going to be backing up the edge into material that's already marginally too thick. Sharpen it several times and you'd have a very sharp edge on what amounts to a club. This is true with many knives, but the thinner the material just behind the edge, the more times a knife can be easily and quickly sharpened without running into that 'wedging effect' in wood or other hard materials. The reason some of the best machetes are the same thickness all the way across the width of blade is that they will hold whatever cutting ability the steel and heat-treat provide for the life of the blade. The user *never* runs into the wedging I've spoken of because the metal behind the edge never gets any thicker no matter how many times the blade is sharpened.

A final thing to keep in mine about a belted edge, no matter how 'sharp' it may be to begin with is that once the teeth put on by the belt are gone... abraded away or broken off... then the edge is *totally* dead. That's not good. With what I call a 'slick' edge... the kind I put on a blade... the degradation is much, much more gradual. It can also be very easily touched up at any time with any kind of flat stone / hone... which is another strike against a recurved edge. The recurved portion is a real pain in the arse to sharpen with a flat stone.

The drawback to having thinner material directly behind the edge is the possibility of the steel bending or breaking. And that's the chance a maker takes when they grind a blade thin... but it's also why Reggie Barker wins cutting comps... or Adam Derossier... or a number of other makers... and they do it with 'real world' blades that could easily be taken into the jungle or into a battle. But thinner blade behind the edge is why heat treat and TESTING is critical on each and every such blade that comes out of a maker's shop (mine included).

I've run two very simple tests so far for sharpness (not shaving arm hair... that's so easy I don't even consider it a test) since those tests should be run before anything else is done that might degrade the sharpness of the edge. One test involved taking a cigarette paper and cupping it lengthwise. One end I hold between my thumb and forefinger. I try to cut the other end (to be precise the cut is made in the center top of the paper, not on an edge of the paper... the 'cup' is in fact inverted) with the edge of a knife. It takes an extremely keen edge to pass this little test. Shiva's blade won't even begin to bite into the paper... just pushes it out of the way. I'm currently working on a tanto that will cut the cupped paper easily... as well as a large camp knife I'm working on for another customer (Matt Lamey to be specific). The further away from the fingers the blade will bite into and cut the cupped paper, the sharper the edge. The reason is obvious, since the further from the fingers the cut is attemped, the less resistance the paper provides. The tanto will cut the cupped paper all the way on the end away from my fingers. It's not the sharpest blade I've ever made, but it's damned sharp.

The second test involves taking a single sheet of paper towel and folding it into quarters. The paper is folded in half in one direction, then folded in half again in the other direction... and then is tightly rolled up into a solid cylinder... a fairly short, solid paper rod, if you will. Cutting is done in the same manner as the cupped cigarette paper. Attempts to cut begin on the end furtherest from the fingers holding the towel. The farther away from the fingers the blade will cut, the sharper it is (or the more toothy, since the paper towels are 'fibrous' and the teeth catch easily). Shiva's blade started cutting at just about the same point as mine, but took probably twice the force to push into the towel. Sharpened on a stone or hone... and even though it would shave hair easily enough (I am sure)... I don't think Shiva's blade would cut the paper towel at all. It's too thick behind the edge and would just push the towel out of the way, tearing it in the process. But I'll reiterate by saying that in a fighting knife, whether or not Shiva's knife will pass this test has little bearing. I'll also say that there are a startlingly large number of other 'big name' knives that would not pass this test at all, as easy as it sounds. I know because I've tested them.

Gotta run for now, Doug. A million things to do and me crippled and crazy. Ugh! Let me know what kind of testing, other than cutting rope to check for edge holding, you'd like me to do.

Thanks again for sending your treasure down to me!!

All the best,

Jimmy
Click to expand...

There you go sir, received this email with a request to post it on this thread from Leatherbird.

G2
 
Good read! :thumbup:
I'll try the paper towel thing on a knife or two when I get home ;)
 
Jimmy, good tests for what you are doing and am really enjoying your review and opinions.
 
Jimmy, that was extremely informative and very well written. Content like that is not seen every day and it is appreciated.

Roger
 
Holy!!!!

I'm with Jerry Fisk--I really appreciate the time, energy, and expertise that goes into Jimmy Fikes' reviews. Please keep 'em coming.

John
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top