Koyote Knives Leuku Bushcrafter Passaround

PB Wilson said:
Fuzz pedals!:cool:

I've been making guitar effect pedals (distortion, overdrive, fuzz, envelope filters, equilizers, amplifiers, sonic messer-uppers...) for a bunch of years now. There's a big DIY community online and people are really willing to help out. I'm basically a "paint-by-numbers" builder but I've learned how to work my way through a schematic and do some basic de-bugging when a circuit doesn't work as planned.

Those two circuit boards are the same fuzz circuit, one for me and one for a high school aged neighbor who I taught how to solder. They've got different capacitors (the red and green parts) and different resistors and it's an attempt to see if there's any real difference in parts from different manufacturers. It's a lot of fun and keeps me out of trouble...for the most part.:D
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DUDE! U gotta get some clips of those pedals up somewhere. I am a guitar junky as well...dammit...i have too many expensive "hobbies"
 
Fuzz pedals..... QRM generators! I was wonderin, I work on different frequency and emission types, but I play around a bit with an iron, too.
 
I got the knife.
It is absolutely great.
Fun to look at and really sharp.
Like Big Mike, my initial impression is that the back of the handle could use some more material for griping.
I'll give it some sort of workout and and post some photos.
 
Glad it made it safe and sound. Enjoy it!

Also, theedge13, I don't own any microphones anymore so I can't post soundclips but there are a good number online if you poke around. PM me if you want to know more.
 
I got a chance to play with this knife some today.
I have a few overall comments
1.The handle does indeed grow on you with use as Big Mike observed
2.This knife has absolutely the best sheath I have ever had the pleasure of using
3.If I had one of these made for me, I would ask for the covexed section to be extended so that the edge geometry was more acute (a thinner longer "V")
4. I want to keep this knife

Now for some photos
Here is the Koyote Leuku next to a Bark River Aurora.
The Koyote is about an ounce heaver (6.5oz) than the BRK&T.
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After a quick stropping it was sharp.
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I put the knife through some light kitchen duty. Here and in making a fuzz stick are where a thinner edge would have been more to my taste. The trade off of course would be a knife that would not stand up as well to TonyM type abuse.
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The knife did well in the thin tomato slice test
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I then tried a fuzz stick and drilled a hole
The Koyote Leuku made nice curls but took more effort to get through the wood than some other knives.
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The strong point easily drilled through this hard wood.
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I will see if I can get some more testing in tomorrow before sending the knife on to crbauhs.
 
Didn't get time to do anymore testing.
I'm disappointed since this knife was begging to get outside.

crbauhs- the knife is on it's way to you.
 
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Good review Sharp Eye! Thanks for doing what you could with it, I know the timing was off and you were ill.
 
Hey guys. So i just got back to my house Monday and guess what I found??? Thats right Christoph's knife is here. So I don't have time to test today or tomorrow, but I'm off of school AND work on Thursday so there will be a comprehensive review coming then. Initial first impressions of the knife are this....GREAT SHEATH! Wow that sheath seems like it alone would cost 50 or more dollars. Top quality. And the knife I was somewhat apprehensive about till I got to touch it. Feels great in the hands so far. The only bad thing is the edge, its far thicker then I would ever want, and came sorta dull. So ill sharpen it up before work today and go from there. I cant wait to use this beast and thanks again everyone for letting me in on this pass around.
 
Update fellas.

Ted Palmer regretfully has to drop out of the pass around. He holds the #9 spot.

That would make Peripatew #9 and Jwilliams #10.

crbauhs, would you please update the list that is in the box?

Thank you
 
Thinning the edge back out shouldn't be hard. I't stempting on a convex to treat it a bit like a V grind, but it's better to work shallow like a scandi and just takes an extra 15 minutes to thin out. I'ts more of a convexed scandi grind than a convex edge on a saber grind. :)

If you have any trouble, we can always give it a quick stop in the shop!
 
crbauhs said:
... and came sorta dull. So ill sharpen it up before work today and go from there. I cant wait to use this beast and thanks again everyone for letting me in on this pass around.
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Sorry that I didn't sharpen it up for you before sending it out. :o
I didn't want to delay getting it to you.
Look forward to your review.
 
and here we go, the moment we have all been waiting for. I have completed my review and here are some of my thoughts......

I decided that I would do a review, while comparing it to another known performer, gives a better idea of what the knife can do, atleast in my opinion. So, the knives in question...Koyote Leuku and my personal favorite, the Enzo Trapper. Here are the knives in question.




And here is the fair testing mediun, yes, it is a 2x4. Once again it is something that everyone knows the properties of and is a good tester.


Now, I decided that I would start with batoning the wood. I decided to test the Leuku for this. Now, the knife had no problem doing this at all. The good thing for this is that the bevel itself was a bit thick. Because it was, the edge didnt even hit the wood, the knife just wedged it apart.




Now that I had a bit smaller of a piece of wood to use and test on, this is where some of the other more common practices come into use. I started with making fuzz sticks. The Leuku, even with the overly thick edge did this just fine. While they werent the cleanest smoothes fuzzies, they would work out in a pinch regardless.


I then went and tried my Enzo out. The enzo's curls were thicker, just because i am not used to using a scandi. Also the cut marks were smooth as a babies bottom.


Now i thought I would try to drill some holes. Neither knife was a spear point so it was a bit more difficult to get an even hole. However, both the enzo and the Leuku did fine. I myself prefer the Leuku because the tip is more robust.




Then I did a little bit of chopping. Now the leuku isnt a great chopper. But it will do a dandy job for smaller wood in a heart beat.
 
Then i whittled a notch. It would be easy to set up a figure four with either knife no problem. First knife is the Leuku and the Enzo is the second picture.




Here are a few in hand shots to show the shape.






Now here is a short recap on how the knife did, pros and cons.

Pros:
Great handle shape and comfort.
The knife has a nice shape to the blade.
The spine is sharp.
The blade polishes up nicely.
The sheath, which i didnt mention in the review is incredile. It is amazingly heavy duty and strong. The stitching is thick. This one isnt going to come apart on you any time soon.

Cons:
The edge was far too thick. It was a pain to get it sharp. The knife would be 100000000% better in my opinion if the edge was thinned to about half of what it is.
The edge didnt hold for very long. I am thinking that this is because of how thick it is. Because I had to sharpen it at such a high angle, there is no way it would hold for very long.


Overall this is a great robust all around knife. It is a great knife, that I would be happy to use all the time as my main knife if i had it. Thanks for this opportunity and its on its way, no worries everyone.
 
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