I thought I had heard it all...

george tichbourne

george tichbourne

Joined
Apr 19, 1999
Messages
3,560
Yesterday I got a phone call that caught me by surprise.

I am used to getting calls for all types of knives and I thought that I had heard just about everything until today. A fellow called asking about very large knives with the emphasis on VERY. He didn't even sound like a Texan.

It turns out that he is heading a team from the Royal Ontario Museum that had recieved a call about a dead whale washed up on a beach on the east coast (the museum has an active program to retrieve skeletons of whales for research and exhibition). He wanted the largest knives that I had for skinning out the animal. Well to make a long story short he came to the shop and we designed a full sized flensing knife, about 4 ft long for the project. My heat treater agreed to run them over the weekend so they will be ready leave with the crew on Tuesday.
 
Any chance you can get the team to do a writeup and post it, along with specs on the blades, in the Review forum?

You just never know when you'll have a dead whale in your backyard that needs skinning . . . :D
 
Sounds like a whale of a knife George. ;)

What steel did you decide to use? Love to see the finished product. Is that a four foot blade, or 4 feet OAL? If I recall correctly, the old flensing knives were over 8 feet in overall length.

Para
 
Originally posted by shootist16
I would like to see some pics of the finished product.
Click to expand...

I'll second that emotion. George, if at all possible please have Carol snap a couple of her wonderful pics for us.
 
Part of the deal is a photo of the knife in action.

The blade is only 18" X 3" sharpened false edge, with a long two handed handle. I guess if the whale has been dead on the beach for at least a week you don't really want to get too close to it. I have seen photos of the 6 footers but I don't know how they would handle in the hands of relative amateurs.

When the blades come back from the heat treater in the morning I will put handles on them and take a photo.
 
I have a feeling that the "whale knife" that George made would make my Cold Steel Gurkha Kukri look just a tad small...:D.:D.
 
If you can con them out of some scraps, you will have a fresh source, private supply of whale oil.
I hope they don't let anything go to waste.
 
Wow!! :eek:

...wait a sec...

Oooo...GROSS! :eek:

(what the beachmongers will say before and after they see your big-boy-blade in use!):D
 
A whale knife? Must be bigger than a tuna knife like this:

senmon411.jpg
 
"Is that a whale skinner in your pants or are you just happy to see me"......."No, it's a whale skinner." :D
 
I would have traded them the knives for bits and pieces of the whale. Bones and fat and such.
 
The customer picked up the knives yesterday and will begin trying them out today on a beach in Cape Bretton Island on a fin whale.

Carol took a couple of pictures but with the demise of photopoint I don't have a photo hosting site, can anyone recommend one?
 
Say, are they going to be keeping these knives for future use. Or do you think they would be looking to get rid of them after the job? I am sure some people around here, myself for instance, would be interested in a slightly used whale flensing knife.
 
Originally posted by george tichbourne
Carol took a couple of pictures but with the demise of photopoint I don't have a photo hosting site, can anyone recommend one?
Click to expand...

www.pbase.com

100% free and easy to use. Plus you can link to it very easily.

Dan
 
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