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DEK1

Lorien said:
I don't know much about knife fighting and certainly can claim no experience whatsoever, but this handle was also, (maybe primarily) designed to be wielded with the edge in, in that ice pick grip.

If the average person is defending their self with a knife, chances are pretty good they're already overwhelmed and their attacker is on them by the time they can get a knife out. In my experiments, holding the knife this way is quite damaging close in. With the edge inside the arc your arm makes in the stabbing movement, there is also cutting.

With the edge out, it strikes me that you'd be able to lever the handle with your thumb against an attacker's arm or leg or whatever, locking it in place. That was my thinking when imagining how the handle should work.
Obviously, if you have the presence of mind to perform these movements under duress then you know what you're doing, and I hope this knife works for that because I can't verify myself that it would. Always thought it would be great getting one in the hands of Doug Marcaida for his critique.

I think most people who design 'fighting' knives have never fought someone with a knife, so we just have to research things and think them through as best we can.
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This is really interesting. I am no expert but I do know that one thing people overlook in actual weapon fighting is retention. Karambits have a mall ninja-ish reputation but a real one with a ring you put your finger through when drawn with a non-dominant hand is going to savagely cut anyone on top of you and be very hard to drop even with adrenaline coursing through you. Silat training aside, as something to encourage someone to get off you it is an excellent design which is why some police will carry one on their duty belt.

If you’re untrained and you fight with a weapon, your grip will do funny things like you’ll squeeze the handle extremely hard and your grip will become brittle because you don’t have the flexibility to readjust quickly while at the same time your muscles can’t squeeze that long without building crazy lactic acid. One of the few overlaps between fencing and kendo is that they both teach you to hold a weapon “like holding a live bird.” What’s interesting though is that both styles have this concept that you’ll be starting with some distance or at least without beginning in a grapple.

I don’t know where I’m going with this but grips are really interesting. It’s always cool to see how the concept of usage affects the design of a weapon. When I was a fencer I used to use child-sized visconti grip on my epees. Totally useless outside of the confines of a duellish fight but if you need to put a small piercing tip where it needs to go they were exceptional, at least for me. We all had to learn for almost three years on a french grip though, which is basically just a post with a slight curve in it. In Kendo, however, because the attacks are meant to cut and there is such a stress on continuity of tradition you don’t see anything so bizarre in the handles. Every shinai is basically the same except for the carbon fiber monstrosities and even those are just oval, like a katana, instead *of round.

*edit: of not or
 
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Lorien is a very good knife designer. He's one of the best in the industry and I think he will be recognized as such. Also, he and I collaborate well together. We're both subject matter experts on different areas of knife design and we both have different kinds of design backgrounds and different kinds of experience using and designing knives and tools.

It isn't a secret, but it might not be common knowledge either, but I was making knives before I met Lorien and I have a degree in product design and I worked designing a bunch of consumer and commercial products including a bunch of surgical tools before I went headlong into specializing in knives. Strictly speaking I don't need anybody's help designing knives. I like to partner with Lorien because together we make something better than either one of us individually would have come up with. It is a collaboration. This is particularly true on choppers where he has more real first hand experience using and designing choppers than anyone else I know. However it is less of the case when designing weapons. Our bike riding Canadian trail builder friend makes no claims about being a high-speed-low-drag-tactical-weapons-kill-you-in-your-sleep-badass. He's actually very friendly and hardly cuts anybody ever.

His EDC design was very successful. It was also utilized by one of our customers in a self defense role which is what started the conversation about developing an edc style knife made to be a weapon. I liked like his overall concept and I also liked a lot of the details, which were incorporated into the final design, but there were also a number of changes made to optimize the design for use as a weapon.

Like most people here, I have never killed anyone and I have never used a knife in a knife fight. I have also never snaked an endoscope into someone's gallbladder and used a biopsy forceps snare, but I've collaborated with professionals who have in order to develop effective tools of that nature that have won industry awards. My role here is to collaborate with knowledgeable people to develop the tools. My collaborations with professional soldiers (who have a better understanding of the use of knives as a weapon) have shown me how knives are used in a real modern knife fighting context and have helped me develop knife designs for use in that role. Just like a modern combat knife, where the knife is a secondary weapon, the DEK1 is designed to be a compact and practical to carry EDC cutting tool that incorporates design elements in the grip to facilitate specific hand grips that most combat soldiers are trained to use if a knife is used in a conflict. An icepick grip, where the knife is held tip down and edge in, might be used to assassinate a sentry (I don't know) but generally speaking a professional soldier is not going to hold a knife like that.

There are two specific hand grips that a modern fighter needs to accommodate. A saber grip where the knife is held across the palm and aligned with the arm to project reach, and a reverse grip where the blade is held tip down and edge out. The DEK1 does that. Try it and see. This reflects the fact that a "knife fight" in a real world situation looks nothing like the cool stylized "moves" you might see in a YouTube video or on TV, but instead looks a lot like a fist fight with grappling. These are highly trained soldiers (Shane specialized in hand to hand combat training in the Marines and Jason was a Green Beret) telling me that an individual trained in combat is not going to try to do anything flashy with a knife, they're going to throw and block punches and they're going to try to hold on to their knife without getting cut by it and 90% of the time they're going to hold it tip down and edge out.

If you'll hold your hands in a fist like you're in a fist fight, imagine where that tip is going to be pointed if you're holding it tip up. At your own face and neck. It wouldn't take much of a bump for you to cut yourself holding it that way. Tip down faces the opponent and protects your arm. Now imagine you throw a punch. If it's edge in and they block, your knife might cut your own arm. If it's edge out and they block, they will probably be cut. And if your punch misses, that blade may still connect with a nasty slash. This is why most professionals who aren't martial artists or Filipino knife experts are going to go with the reverse grip, it's simple, natural and easy to do right while under stress. My job, as a knife designer, is relatively easy then. The features that index and lock a knife into your hand needs to align with the internal and external geometry of your closed hand while held in these grips and the butt of the grip needs to accommodate your thumb over the end. Which are details that I added to the DEK1 for this use.
 
I think that Nathan and I agree that you guys need to be able to have a firm grip on your DEK, no matter how you wanna grab at it.

For me, I'm neither trained in, nor do I have any interest in knife fighting. I took some karate, was on my high school wrestling team, and way back when been beat up and vice versa a handful of times- that's about the extent of my one on one, combat type interaction. Like Nate says, I'm much happier riding my bike which is something I don't usually do with other people, and when I do there usually isn't any combat. Usually.

My original concept for DEK1 centres around my own needs, and as Nathan rightly pointed out, was inspired by the story of my EDC design being employed defensively during a dog attack. Generally, I don't think of knives as weapons. They're either utility or fantasy- as much as I love daggers, for me they serve no functional purpose whatsoever, but they engage a part of me that is whimsical in a way. You see a lot of knives on the market which are designed primarily as weapons but that can't be used for much else. Nothing wrong with that, I love cool looking stuff.

Law abiding folk rarely use knives defensively. Most people will give up their wallet or whatever and call it a day. In my case, I'd rather hand over my belongings to a mugger and walk away, than either kill someone or lie there bleeding out in the street. Fortunately, I don't live in a place where that kind of thing happens much.

The side hustle of this knife, from my perspective, reflects how I see myself using this knife as a weapon, and that refers back to the story of the dog attack. I carry my DEK1 iwb on my right side with the edge facing back. That's the most easily and quickly accessible place for it, for me. When I draw the knife this way, the edge is facing me with the tip down and no matter what happens I'm not going to cut my other arm or hand on the draw. If I ever have to use this knife for that purpose, and I hope to never have to, it's likely that whatever's trying to get at me is already at me, so I want that knife to inflict as much damage as possible close in.

I have a friend who served with JTF2, and I first met him in probably 2005. He knows a lot about fighting and grappling and all that stuff, definitely a certified badass. For the period of time when I had Bladework.ca going, we were business partners. We talked about knives a lot. My biggest lesson from him was that when a person enters the fight or flight mode, they lose some motor control, field of view narrows, heart rate increases- which makes operating any kind of weapon- especially knives- very difficult. He told me that exposing one's self to that fight or flight response is as important as weapons training. I consider mountain biking good training for that, especially the way I do it, lol.

So, when I see myself in a confrontational situation that requires me to draw my knife, I assume that I'd be doing so in a state of panic. I would draw that knife probably at the last minute, since I would want to avoid a bloody outcome, or maybe there's already a cougar on my back trying to bite my neck. In the case of an animal attack they don't care whether or not you have a knife. Brandishing a weapon when a person's involved MAY help de escalate a situation, but that is absolutely not the case with an animal. Not that I think about this stuff much, but if an attacker of any kind is on me, I be stabbing. That means repeated, fast movements using as much power as I can muster, knowing that there are often bones in the way which block the more vital systems needed to sustain life. With the edge facing my arm, as those stabs land, the edge gets drawn in as well with more chance of it sinking in deeper and doing the job that unfortunately needs done.

ALL this being said- the handle of DEK1 is very carefully designed to transfer from one kind of grip to another, so you can hold it how you like and move it around as the situation calls for it. To my way of thinking, the sheath and how you carry your knife are going to play a major role in how things unfold in a crazy situation, so my advice to DEK1 owners is to think about how they'd be using their knife the most, and have their sheath set up for that use. The more you use your knife- even for mundane purposes- the more familiar with it you'll become. To my way of thinking, knowing your knife inside out is the best way to ensure you'll be up to the task when the chips are down*.




*how's that for marketing speak?:D
 
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Lorien said:
I think that Nathan and I agree that you guys need to be able to have a firm grip on your DEK, no matter how you wanna grab at it.

For me, I'm neither trained in, nor do I have any interest in knife fighting. I took some karate, was on my high school wrestling team, and way back when been beat up and vice versa a handful of times- that's about the extent of my one on one, combat type interaction. Like Nate says, I'm much happier riding my bike which is something I don't usually do with other people, and when I do there usually isn't any combat. Usually.

My original concept for DEK1 centres around my own needs, and as Nathan rightly pointed out, was inspired by the story of my EDC design being employed defensively during a dog attack. Generally, I don't think of knives as weapons. They're either utility or fantasy- as much as I love daggers, for me they serve no functional purpose whatsoever, but they engage a part of me that is whimsical in a way. You see a lot of knives on the market which are designed primarily as weapons but that can't be used for much else. Nothing wrong with that, I love cool looking stuff.

Law abiding folk rarely use knives defensively. Most people will give up their wallet or whatever and call it a day. In my case, I'd rather hand over my belongings to a mugger and walk away, than either kill someone or lie there bleeding out in the street. Fortunately, I don't live in a place where that kind of thing happens much.

The side hustle of this knife, from my perspective, reflects how I see myself using this knife as a weapon, and that refers back to the story of the dog attack. I carry my DEK1 iwb on my right side with the edge facing back. That's the most easily and quickly accessible place for it, for me. When I draw the knife this way, the edge is facing me with the tip down and no matter what happens I'm not going to cut my other arm or hand on the draw. If I ever have to use this knife for that purpose, and I hope to never have to, it's likely that whatever's trying to get at me is already at me, so I want that knife to inflict as much damage as possible close in.

I have a friend who served with JTF2, and I first met him in probably 2005. He knows a lot about fighting and grappling and all that stuff, definitely a certified badass. For the period of time when I had Bladework.ca going, we were business partners. We talked about knives a lot. My biggest lesson from him was that when a person enters the fight or flight mode, they lose some motor control, field of view narrows, heart rate increases- which makes operating any kind of weapon- especially knives- very difficult. He told me that exposing one's self to that fight or flight response is as important as weapons training. I consider mountain biking good training for that, especially the way I do it, lol.

So, when I see myself in a confrontational situation that requires me to draw my knife, I assume that I'd be doing so in a state of panic. I would draw that knife probably at the last minute, since I would want to avoid a bloody outcome, or maybe there's already a cougar on my back trying to bite my neck. In the case of an animal attack they don't care whether or not you have a knife. Brandishing a weapon when a person's involved MAY help de escalate a situation, but that is absolutely not the case with an animal. Not that I think about this stuff much, but if an attacker of any kind is on me, I be stabbing. I That means repeated, fast movements using as much power as I can muster, knowing that there are often bones in the way which block the more vital systems needed to sustain life. With the edge facing my arm, as those stabs land, the edge gets drawn in as well with more chance of it sinking in deeper and doing the job that unfortunately needs done.

ALL this being said- the handle of DEK1 is very carefully designed to transfer from one kind of grip to another, so you can hold it how you like and move it around as the situation calls for it. To my way of thinking, the sheath and how you carry your knife are going to play a major role in how things unfold in a crazy situation, so my advice to DEK1 owners is to think about how they'd be using their knife the most, and have their sheath set up for that use. The more you use your knife- even for mundane purposes- the more familiar with it you'll become. To my way of thinking, knowing your knife inside out is the best way to ensure you'll be up to the task when the chips are down*.




*how's that for marketing speak?:D
Click to expand...

My advice would be to spin your sheath 180 so that the edge is out when you draw it. But I love the looks and design of the DEK1 and can't wait to actually hold her in my hands! Thanks.
 
I like to carry edge forward and turn my hand, palm facing out, to draw in a regular saber grip, because that way you can draw the knife while you’re in a seat or with your back against a wall or the ground, whereas you need your elbow to go back past your back if you draw from a standard, edge back setup. Also, carrying edge forward lets you easily draw in reverse grip, edge out.
 
fonedork said:
I like to carry edge forward and turn my hand, palm facing out, to draw in a regular saber grip, because that way you can draw the knife while you’re in a seat or with your back against a wall or the ground, whereas you need your elbow to go back past your back if you draw from a standard, edge back setup. Also, carrying edge forward lets you easily draw in reverse grip, edge out.
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I pretty much agree. But you don't have to have your elbow go back past your back. You just stick it out to your side and bend your hand back to grab your knife handle.
 
fonedork said:
I like to carry edge forward and turn my hand, palm facing out, to draw in a regular saber grip, because that way you can draw the knife while you’re in a seat or with your back against a wall or the ground, whereas you need your elbow to go back past your back if you draw from a standard, edge back setup. Also, carrying edge forward lets you easily draw in reverse grip, edge out.
Click to expand...
I first tried out that Bagwell style draw recently and it's surprisingly natural:thumbsup:
 
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