Fiddlebacks With Stories

Mistwalker

Gold Member
Joined
Dec 22, 2007
Messages
19,017
I was just sitting here trying to think of a way to maybe generate more discussion here in the group, more lie the old days here. So I was looking throuh some of my old Fiddleback Forge images, from 10 to 14 years ago, and an idea popped into my head whn I realized some of them have cool stories to tell. So I thought I'd try this as a way to see if I could get us talking more. I'll start, and hopefull others will follow. The whole point is just to have some conversations and share some experiences with our little community of like-minded interests.

I got this Camp knife back in the winter 2012. And was just blown away with the whole thing. With the tapered tamge and the high grind, the balance and inertia development was really impressive. It was a chopping Machine, It impressed the own of every hand I put it in.
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It whittle feathers better than most exprected.
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It even became a star in a Bushcrafting knife competition it wasn't even entered in. It was used as a test knife to see if the hard, fibrous, and silica-heavy green bamboo was an unreasonable material to test with, after the first 4 or 5 knives in a row had bad failures. It was passed around to all of the testers and they all chapped through multiple sections of the green bamboo, these are just a few of the smaller pieces I gathered and put in an immage. The edge suffered no noticeable damage, and the challenge was resumed with no further failures. So, in a way this Camp saved the day when everything had come to a grinding halt.
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Then that winter it, and the EDK I paired it with, were the trusted knives I carried in strange new woods in a frozen winter wonderland, about 700 miles north of the sight of that knife challenge, when I was testing other gear for other companies.
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I don't have any Fiddles, but that camp blade looks Sweet!
Really pretty lines...
What steel? How big of the blade?
Thanks.
 
I don't have any Fiddles, but that camp blade looks Sweet!
Really pretty lines...
What steel? How big of the blade?
Thanks.
I can't remember if this one was O-1 or A-2, I think O-1 given the time frame I got it.

As for dimensions, from the FF website

Knife Specifications​

Blade Length: 6.75"
Overall Length: 12.25"
Blade Metal: A2, O1, or 3V
Handle Material: Varies knife to knife
Tang: SFT - Skeletonized Full Tang or TT - Tapered Tang
Grind: Convex

The Camp knife is indeed a beauty.
To me the is the Camp Knife at it's core. The simplicity of synthetic handle, and the ergonomics of its multi-position handle, and the full height grind just begs to be used, and man did impress when it was used. I've tried to forget a lot of the last ten years to be honest, so I don't remember who I sold it to, but whoever has it, has one heck of a knife.
 
Maybe I should do one that's less of a story, a shorter one more funny.

This was a quick shot I set up as I was sitting at a picnic table in the Grattan Roadside Park on Belding Road, on my way home from Grand Rapids, having just stopped at Ric's Grocery and loading up on Amish milk and cream and a few other cool things, and this deli sandwich and a plastic glass of wine. I was celebrating a meeting, I had been very stressed out over, with some business owners in Grand Rapids in September of 2013, having gone much MUCH better than I thought, expected, or even dared to hope. But since I had never let on to anyone other than God that I was stressed, I didn't want to let it be known afterwards either. So I made this pic my desk top for a while to keep the positive energy going.
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My wife and I do lots of outdoor activities. I had a hiking buddy that I loved and used. Well I was crossing a river and it got away somehow 😕. I reached out to Andy to see if he would build me another one. This time I wanted it out of olive wood (this has a special place in my wife and I's life) he said yes. And I had him make two, one for my wife with the blue and one for me in orange.
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My wife and I do lots of outdoor activities. I had a hiking buddy that I loved and used. Well I was crossing a river and it got away somehow 😕. I reached out to Andy to see if he would build me another one. This time I wanted it out of olive wood (this has a special place in my wife and I's life) he said yes. And I had him make two, one for my wife with the blue and one for me in orange.
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Nice brace of Fiddlebacks! I get that, I have a thing for Olive wood mysekf. I have a few knives handled in Olive wood, a couple of prayer crosses of it also
 
I am fortunate to have many of what I think of as "hiking buddies", though most have not seen much notable exploits beyond hunting for fatwood, carving wood, fire starting, camp cookery...backyard fire making.

The Monarch might be my personal favorite, and is what inspired further forays into Fiddlebacks...and the model that I've packed around the most the outside - on trail and off trail, on mountain tops and in dim forests.
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Spring Beauties
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Forget me Nots
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A mid-tech Kephart it was that hooked, bit, me first:
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One of the most comfortable and accommodating handles for me, at least, and notable for having enough handle for some use with thin gloves in the cold, but I loved the elongated spear point-ish shaped blade; minimal edge rise to the tip and less belly up in the point.

My first hand made was this Lady Finger, that coincidentally has been the only knife of mine that my wife (even the one's I've given her) has had any natural inclination to comment in admiration about it.
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Yellow Violet and Woodland Star
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Veins of resin just near the surface; a sign of what fire possibility is permeating an old Douglas Fir tree root
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I am fortunate to have many of what I think of as "hiking buddies", though most have not seen much notable exploits beyond hunting for fatwood, carving wood, fire starting, camp cookery...backyard fire making.
Those are some of the best stories though. I have several of thse with Fiddlebacks as well


A mid-tech Kephart it was that hooked, bit, me first:
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One of the most comfortable and accommodating handles for me, at least, and notable for having enough handle for some use with thin gloves in the cold, but I loved the elongated spear point-ish shaped blade; minimal edge rise to the tip and less belly up in the point.
Andy's Kephart is definitely my favorite of his new school models for the same reasons you listed. I'm in the middle of a deal to get the one I used in the trapping artical in American Survival Guide back finally.


My first hand made was this Lady Finger, that coincidentally has been the only knife of mine that my wife (even the one's I've given her) has had any natural inclination to comment in admiration about it.
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Cant say that I blame her, it's a very nice Ladyfinger. Tony M's Ladyfinger from 2009 or 10 was the first Fiddleback to catch my attention. I love the original Ladyfinger iteration handle like this and the original Bushcrafter handle the best of all of them.
 
My first Fiddleback was a wedding gift from my groomsmen. I had been eyeing them for a while but was not able to spend that kind of money on a knife at that point in my life. I plan on passing this down one day to whichever one of my boys gets married first. After getting married and experiencing double income for the first time, the collection grew pretty quickly!20241209_102737.jpg
 
My first Fiddleback was a wedding gift from my groomsmen. I had been eyeing them for a while but was not able to spend that kind of money on a knife at that point in my life. I plan on passing this down one day to whichever one of my boys gets married first. After getting married and experiencing double income for the first time, the collection grew pretty quickly!View attachment 2730862
Yes, life is much easier with a team mate helping you carry the load.
 
My first Fiddleback was a wedding gift from my groomsmen. I had been eyeing them for a while but was not able to spend that kind of money on a knife at that point in my life. I plan on passing this down one day to whichever one of my boys gets married first. After getting married and experiencing double income for the first time, the collection grew pretty quickly!View attachment 2730862
Knives and Wives - a new picture thread in "general knife discussion"....it might be a short thread, however.
 
This Recluse was my EDC fixed blade for a couple of years. And they were the first two years of me working on much more advanced herbology studies and my plant image database.
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The dark spot near the plunge line was made on a day when I was teaching my daughter about wild garlic.
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And how you can harvest from the garlic plant for nutrition twice. Once by harvesting the tips of the scapes, and then harvesting the cloves later if needed. And that if you tie a knot in the top of the stem, it can be more easily identified later, as seldom does one find patches of plant stems tied in knots though natural causes...
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At the time I tied the first stem into a knot, a big drop of liquid appeared at the end of the stem. With me liking the colors in patinas from food prep with garlc and onions, my mind said, hmmm I wonder how dark of a stain that liquid would nake on the O-1 steel.

So I squeezed the liquid onto the blade, and that dot was the answer to my question.
 
This Bush Hermit got to be the star of the show in a discussion with two young parents with a toddler and a pre-schooler, on some of the poisonous plants that were in the area, and how Datura Stramonum sounding like a baby's rattle could make it very dangerous for young children looking up at it while they shook it if the seeds fell in thier mouth, nose, or eyes.

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This Bush Hermit got to be the star of the show in a discussion with two young parents with a toddler and a pre-schooler, on some of the poisonous plants that were in the area, and how Datura Stramonum sounding like a baby's rattle could make it very dangerous for young children looking up at it while they shook it if the seeds fell in thier mouth, nose, or eyes.

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Where was this at?

I've seen Sacred Dartura in the wet creek bottoms of some desert canyons in Arizona, but I assumed (incorrectly) it was not wide spread beyond some southern boarder states.
 
Where was this at?

I've seen Sacred Dartura in the wet creek bottoms of some desert canyons in Arizona, but I assumed (incorrectly) it was not wide spread beyond some southern boarder states.
It was in a field near a campground here in Southeast Tennessee
 
My first Fiddleback Forge mid-tech Kephart.

It's not the same one I have now, but liking it so much in 2016 is the reason I bought another just like it a few months ago to do some other projects with. A friend of mine has the one that was used in these images, with a signed copy of the magazine it was in, in his collection.

Most people who know me know that Andy's Kephart is my favorite iteration of the Kephart and my favorite knife of this style. So 10 years ago when I was recruited to do a piece on primitive hunting and trapping for American Survival Guide, it was the knife I chose to use in the field for fashioning all the various trap parts and gig etc., because it's just a perfect knife for that sort of work for me.
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