Like Mora's, try a Hultafors (Pic Heavy)

A

AustinTXShooter

Joined
Mar 21, 2007
Messages
373
Well, like many of you, I am addicted to Mora's and all things inexpensive and Scandinavian. I have a ton of Frost's and Eriksons, a few Ahti/Kellam Finman's and have plans on getting an M571 in the near future.

What I am posting about though is four awesome new knives I received today. They are made by Hultafor's (which is a town about 285 miles SSW of Mora, Sweden), which has been making knives in Sweden since 1883. They are very similar to Mora's. I ordered them from "The Good Stuff Shop" in Denmark on 10/26 and received them in Texas today. Including shipping, I paid $49 total. Not bad and very comparable to what I would have paid to get Mora's from Ragweed Forge.

The four knives I got are two of the regular sized Hultafors, one in stainless (the blue knife) and one in carbon (the orange knife). I also got one of the carbon steel GK heavy duty knives (the green one) and one of the electricians knives (the one that looks like a box cutter).

I must say that the GK knife is even more heavy duty than I expected. The blade measures 0.115" thick and stays thick all the way to the tip. This thing looks and feels like a tank. If you wanted to pry with it, I have no doubt that it would hold up. I however never plan on prying with it, so I will never know for sure. It is going to be an awesome knife, I can already tell. It should be noted that this knife has a slight secondary bevel on it, while the other knives do not. The electricians knife (which is also carbon steel) has a hook on the top of the blade that I think will work great if I ever have to quickly cut twine or another smaller rope. I thought it might be chisel ground, but it is in fact a true scandi grind. I did some tests on cardboard today after I got it and it cuts like a laser. Overall, I love the knives and am already planning on ordering some more when they get to the next color batch. (Hultafors apparently only manufactures each knife in one color at a time and occasionally change them. When you order from "The Good Stuff Shop" you don't get a choice of color, they just send you whatever is the current color. Another poster I know ordered the GK knife and it was maroon and one of the regular carbon ones and received one in red. They have apparently changed the colors to green and orange now.)

Hultafors also makes at least three additional knives, one with a file on the side of the blade, one that has a flat-head screwdriver on the tip and one that is a chisel knife. I will get around to ordering them at some point, just not yet.

If you have any questions about the knives please ask away. I haven't tested them yet, but they seem extremely well made.

Anyways, on to the pictures.

Here is a picture of all of the knifes together. From top: GK Carbon Heavy Duty, Stainless Regular, Carbon Regular, Electricians Knife.
P1060278.jpg



Here is the GK (Heavy Duty) Knife next to my new Mora 2000. I have a feeling I am going to love both these knives.
P1060282.jpg


Here is the two regular Hultafors knives next to a Frosts Clipper.
P1060281.jpg


Here is a regular Hultafors (orange) and the GK (green) next to a ruler for size reference.
P1060300.jpg


Here is the knives in their sheaths, which are very nice. They remind me of a Clipper sheath but seem a little more secure. I would love to have Normark make me some Kydex for them, but that is going to have to wait. While not as nice as his great sheaths, I think the factory sheaths are acceptable. They are certainly better than most of the Mora sheaths. I would compare their secureness to that of the Mora 2000 and the Mora 510.
P1060285.jpg


The sheaths snap shut, as shown in this picture. It looks like the design would allow you to securely wear the sheath on a belt or over a button.
P1060296.jpg
 
Those really look great! The handles look very comfortable. Are the handles plastic or kind of the rubberized stuff? I really like that big green bastard! It looks like a winner. In fact, they all do! Thanks for sharing. -Matt-
 
Interesting stuff. I like some of those specialty knives, like the one with the file, and the chisel point.
 
grease-man said:
Those really look great! The handles look very comfortable. Are the handles plastic or kind of the rubberized stuff? I really like that big green bastard! It looks like a winner. In fact, they all do! Thanks for sharing. -Matt-
Click to expand...

The handles are not a soft rubber like the Erikson 711 and the Mora 2000. They feel a lot like the Ahti/Kellam Finman knives and the Mora 510 handles. They are hard handles, but have pretty good grip on them. The handle on the electrician's knife is a lot slicker than the other three.

I wish I knew someone with X-Ray equipment so we could get some great x-ray shots of the tangs. They are probably not full tangs since most scandi's aren't, but it would be interesting to see how far they go back into the handle.

All three of the knives have blades that are just about 3.75 inches long, but the blade on the the GK knife is considerably beefier. It is 0.115" thick compared to 0.95 on the other two. It is also deeper (I guess that is the correct term) from top to bottom and holds its thickness all the way to the tip. I also measured from the sharpened edge of the blade to the spine, right where the handle and blade meet. The GK knife measured 0.898" and both the regular knives measured 0.727".
 
Thanks for the tip! I like simple, sturdy, knives of proven designs that get the job done without costing a week's pay. :thumbup:
 
I have just checked the Hultafors.se homepage and they say that the change in colour of the handles is to distinguish these knives from other. Apparently the maroon might have been too close to the usual Mora or other cheap knives.

There are currently eight different models available.
1: Handymans knife, now orange, used to be light red.
2: Handymans knife, stainless, blue.
3: Heavy duty knife, or coarse knive with a direct translation, used to be maroon but now green.
4: Chisel knife, looks like a tanto with 90 degree angle :), yellow.
5: Electricians knife, for right handed, light orange.
6: The same but for left handed, colour unknown.
7: Painters knife, with a paint can opener/ screwdriver at the tip, white.
8: Plumbers knife, with a file on it for filing copper tubing, grey.

There are several extras, like the handymans knife without sheath, twin holsters in different configurations and such.

I just bought one too. The blade is about the same as a Fallkniven F1 in size but the handle is bigger.
 
nodh,

Thank you so much for the information. I don't know how Sweden does it, but your country, as well as Finland and Norway, are able to manufacture wonderful knives at great prices. I am starting to learn more of the history of the different knife companies and how the knives have been used in your country and it is fascinating. When I was in college I took a four month class on the Sami people of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Western Russia and it was one of the most interesting classes I ever took. Our professor went to Scandinavia every year and had several native Sami speakers lecture in our class. The artifacts they brought with them, including some stunning reindeer handled knives and other tools, is the main reason I became interested in the Scandinavian knives.
 
Thanks for nothing AustinTXShooter. You just cost me 192.88 Danish kroner!

I had to get two of those GK's...



:-)

-Mark
 
I like those Hultafors things. The fingerguard is rather too large, but I can live with that. Good knives for construction work and any other stuff where you need a good cutting edge that you can beat on with liberty.

AustinTXShooter said:
nodh,

Thank you so much for the information. I don't know how Sweden does it, but your country, as well as Finland and Norway, are able to manufacture wonderful knives at great prices. I am starting to learn more of the history of the different knife companies and how the knives have been used in your country and it is fascinating. When I was in college I took a four month class on the Sami people of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Western Russia and it was one of the most interesting classes I ever took. Our professor went to Scandinavia every year and had several native Sami speakers lecture in our class. The artifacts they brought with them, including some stunning reindeer handled knives and other tools, is the main reason I became interested in the Scandinavian knives.
Click to expand...

I think the price issue has much to do with the materials used and the type of marketing. If any of you guys ever happen to come to visit Scandinavia, you'll quickly notice there is very little marketing of knives, very little advertising - it's mostly word of mouth and perhaps the manufacturer's website, and some knives put on display by retailers. That means the marketing (ie. bullcrap) costs are kept to a minimum, and the money goes to the actual blades and their making. The materials used in the blades aren't enormously expensive, either. Wood, leather, and tried and true steels - practically no-one here uses any of the expensive superduper steels like S30V.
 
Elen,
Thanks. That makes a lot of sense. If you have seen some of our American knife magazines you would swear that knife companies spend 10 times more money on advertising than they spend on research and development. I know a lot of the knife companies in America are constantly using bigger and badder steels, but I don't have any experience with knives that cost over $40-50 so my experience with steels is limited to the basics. The steels that Frosts, Eriksson, Okapi, Opinel and Buck use all work great for me. They may not be as corrosion resistant or have the toughness/edge holding ability of the super steels, but they are generally steels that have worked for many years and continue to work great today.

Sharkmeat,
I am glad I was able to help separate you from $25. I hope you like yours as much as I already like mine.
 
Yeah, I've been rather amazed by some of the knife ads I've seen. Some makers even make DVDs where they show off their knives. Now that is something that never happens here. But then again, Scandinavians, and Finns in particular, have often been said to be poor at marketing for some reason unknown - perhaps modesty.

There's lots of good things about basic steels. One of the best is ease of sharpening. Sharpening a basic carbon steel puukko is pretty much the easiest thing on earth when it comes to sharpening things. These steels have worked before, and still do. Good enough for me. :)
 
The only Finnish knives I own are a couple of Ahti Finmann's. I really like how the puukko blade stays straight and doesn't dip down at the point. I have been wanting to get a nicer puukko but all of the ones I see on Ragweed Forge are so beautiful I can never make a decision. The knives from Järvenpää really interest me. Of course I also want to get some more Norwegian knives to go with the one that I already own, an excellent little Brusletto Balder. A few of the Helle knives look great and will probably be purchased at some point. At least I became addicted to Scandi's and not something like Busse's. I used a Busse once and it was one amazing knife. Built like a tank, sharp as can be and wonderfully balanced, but I can buy a truck load of great Scandi's for the price of a few Busse's.
 
Nice knives! and if I ever get bored of Moras I will know where to look. Thanks for the tip!
 
I actually took apart one of those GK heavy-duty knives and used the blade to make a bushcrafting knife. The blade has a nice strong tang, and the tang is quite wide just behind the shoulder. If you remove the plastic handle, it will reveal the rest of the blade and then it measures full 100mm. You just need to thin out the edge to make it usable, I found the secondary bevel WAY too obtuse to use...
 
There is almost no need for advertising the basic Mora clone. They sell themselves. In the old days there was only the red handled Mora knife, made by KI Ericsson, and later Frost and they bought each other or something, whatever.
Then came the Mora 545 type knives and one like that but with a finger guard (the first sheaths just had a cutout for the guard so it was outside the sheath), then came the 760/780 types and so on.

If you walk into a swedish hardware store you can find loads of knives. They are usually at different places in the shop. There are the fancy ones by the hunting gadgets, there are the twelve different Mora clones by the hammers and saws, there is the big bucket full of knives for 16 kronor (about 2 USD) but still good, there is the new stand from manufacturer X who has a new line of knives and there is a styrofoam stand at the counter by the checkout. So even if you are just buying some paint, nail, some board and some other stuff you usually end up with two or three knives as well. Why? Because the fiftyeleven you already have lying about are dull or "somewhere" and the only cost so little and usually the check out guy counts like 42+69=100 so it ends up for free anyway.

There is maybe another reason as well. People in Sweden are not used to carry knives around anymore so the average farmer has knives lying around everywhere. One in the tool box, on showed down the bale string pack, one to cut the hay bales open, one on the fertilizer spreader and so on. Wherever you need a knife there is most likely one close by. The average home owner in the town usually dont use a decent knife that often so it is easier to buy a new one every time than A: find the last one he bought and B: make it sharp again. 16 kronor is about the same prize as the newspaper on a sunday so why bother sharpening an old one.

In a folder from Hultafors I read that a carpenter usually wear out ten knives before he needs to get a new sheath so now they sell them sheathsless too, and 100 in a box.
Since a decent Mora clone cost from 12 kronor (carbon steel with a molded on hollow handle) to somewhere around 44 (Hultafors GK) without tax they get used to anything.
Why bother, if it gets really dull or breaks or gets lost in the concrete or whatever, so what, I get a new one from the 100 pack in the trailer in fifteen minutes when it is coffee break.
 
AustinTXShooter, did you have to do anything special in regards to shipping, or did you just put the order in your basket, type in your info, and go? I'm thinking about ordering a couple of these, but don't want to get surprised by a $50 UPS "brokerage" fee. :rolleyes:

Thanks!
 
I didn't have to pay any kind of a brokerage fee, but I don't know if Canadians will have to or not.

When I ordered mine, I chose the paypal option (which adds a 3% fee to cover the paypal fees). After I ordered I received an immediate email confirming the order and then a second one about 15 minutes later telling me the actual price. When you order on the site, it adds in a Value Added Tax which apparently is only paid by Europeans. In the second email, they take that off and tell you the final order total. (the first email confirming your order still included the VAT, so the second email will have the actual total and will be less than the first one.) The shipping charges are automatically added to your order depending on the weight of the order.

In the second email they tell me to just convert the total myself and then pay their paypal account. To do the conversion, I simply typed "254.50 dkk to usd" into google. (I just tried it with "DKK to canadian dollars" and it worked the same way.) It automatically converts it for you and comes back with this "254.50 Danish kroner = 49.3294805 U.S. dollars." My total with the VAT was $56 and the second total was $49 so I saved about $7.

My order came via US Postal Service and on their website it says they mailed it from Denmark with the Danish Postal Service. If that is always the case, it would hopefully arrive in Canada through the post office and not through UPS.
 
Hey Guys...

Austin...

Lets work out a Trade!
Shoot me an email...

I'n very interested in those knives as well...

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
Thanks for the link. Just ordered a GK and a chisel knife.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top