Bill Siegle
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2000
- Messages
- 6,955
Bored as anything this morning so I grabbed up a buncha blades and headed to the woods. Took along a Scrap Yard SOD, Busse NMSFNO, Koster Bushcraft, Rat Cutlery RC4, a Leuku, and a Puukko. I made the Leuku and the Puukko myself and was really interested in how they'd do 
My son and I found a cool spot down along the riverbank and there was a nice small pile of limbs there from the last campers. I decided to scrounge around in the limb wood for test pieces and came up with some alder and some that cut more like a green maple. All the baleds did well as I had figured they would. The NMSFNO and the SOD were no match for the small stuff on carving but they held their own doing the fine work and chopping was no problem whatsoever. The RC4 did awesome! To tell the truth it far out works it's price range. I was even doing small chopping on 1in limbs and it bit deep enough to make me believe it was the right tool for the job My Leuku is only 1/8in thick and did great. The scandi edge is a little steeper than on the Puukko but it held up fine for snap cut style chopping and carving. I am very happy with it's performance. The Puukko was the real champion carver though. It also has the thinnest edge so it wasn't too suprising. It was cutting slivers thin enough to see light through Very easy to control the cut too. I did some small chopping with the Puukko on dowel rod sized twigs and it did well considering it only has a 3 1/2in blade. The Koster Bushcraft was riding on my Murse so I forgot to get it in the log pic but it did well too. I used a "standard" of carving a point and a notch with each blade. Not too scientific but for the person doing the cutting it was easy to see which blades were more suited to the task.
My son and I found a cool spot down along the riverbank and there was a nice small pile of limbs there from the last campers. I decided to scrounge around in the limb wood for test pieces and came up with some alder and some that cut more like a green maple. All the baleds did well as I had figured they would. The NMSFNO and the SOD were no match for the small stuff on carving but they held their own doing the fine work and chopping was no problem whatsoever. The RC4 did awesome! To tell the truth it far out works it's price range. I was even doing small chopping on 1in limbs and it bit deep enough to make me believe it was the right tool for the job My Leuku is only 1/8in thick and did great. The scandi edge is a little steeper than on the Puukko but it held up fine for snap cut style chopping and carving. I am very happy with it's performance. The Puukko was the real champion carver though. It also has the thinnest edge so it wasn't too suprising. It was cutting slivers thin enough to see light through Very easy to control the cut too. I did some small chopping with the Puukko on dowel rod sized twigs and it did well considering it only has a 3 1/2in blade. The Koster Bushcraft was riding on my Murse so I forgot to get it in the log pic but it did well too. I used a "standard" of carving a point and a notch with each blade. Not too scientific but for the person doing the cutting it was easy to see which blades were more suited to the task.
