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My New Fixed Blade Pattern For [Light Backpacking]
- Thread starter redsquid2
- Start date
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2016
- Messages
- 3,211
I'm sorry for your loss. It sounds like you have many wonderful memories to bring you comfort in a trying time. Those help.
On your knife prototype, I'd say to take your original personal vision for it to completion and try it out. Then perhaps do another prototype incorporating suggestions from this thread. You may find things you'd change about your original before finalizing the design or may come up with a completely different design with a different philosophy of use and different target audience that could be made later in addition to the original.
On your knife prototype, I'd say to take your original personal vision for it to completion and try it out. Then perhaps do another prototype incorporating suggestions from this thread. You may find things you'd change about your original before finalizing the design or may come up with a completely different design with a different philosophy of use and different target audience that could be made later in addition to the original.
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2009
- Messages
- 149
Last Saturday, I flew to Oklahoma, and then on Monday, with relatives, buried my wonderful, amazing dad. In the company of supportive friends, I have been reflecting on his 78 years of wonder, creativity, compassion and generosity. In my memory, he inhabits the streets, homes, fields, hills and gullies of southern Oklahoma and northern Texas. He tills and plants a garden, embarks on a camping or cycling adventure, looks around in the trees and brush for squirrels or rabbits, his old .22 resting on his right arm. He he dives into the mysterious waters below Price's Falls, then persists in urging me to do the same, though I am convinced there are deadly snakes in there. He casts a fishing line, or entertains children with his wonderful silliness. He cooks up something horrible in the kitchen, from ingredients that should never be combined ever, or he cooks up his homemade pizza, which is more appetizing than anything ever invented. He spins that disc of homemade pizza dough on a finger over his head, as I am sure he did in a restaurant in Davenport, Iowa, while working his way through chiropractic school. My being has been permeated and surrounded at times with loneliness. Sometimes I don't know what to do, except "chop wood and carry water" for just this moment, loneliness and all.
Needless to say, knifemaking was set aside for a few days. On the other hand, I tend to get busy with projects when a loved one passes. So yesterday I resumed with this design project for a full-tang backpacker.
There is such a wide range of opinions on this thread, about what knife is appropriate for backpacking. I think I am going to stick with the basic profile shown in my most recent post here, because it reflects the kind of backpacking I do. I can get by with a cutting edge of 1 3/4", and I don't need anything longer than 2 1/2". I do mostly three things with a knife, when backpacking: cut paracord, slice sausage or cheese, and whittle an occasional extra tent peg. I want this knife to come in at under 6.5" OAL, while still allowing someone with small hands to wrap four fingers around it. I also want it to be useful for occasional, minor woodcarving, and weigh less than 3 oz.
I shy away from cord wrapped handles, because I want something more supportive up against that webbing between thumb and forefinger. And I ALWAYS have at least 30 feet of paracord in my pack. So I will make this first unit of my new pattern with comfy wood scales.
Update: I added a slight upward curve to the underside of the handle, just because this improves the appearance.
For heat treat, I will be shipping this one, along with nine other various patterns, to Post Falls, Idaho.
Condolences on the loss of your father but you can really treasure memories of a father like that.
On the knife, you have a winner as far as I'm concerned. I've done quite a bit of backpacking and in my starter years it was with a Scout style folder. To this day I find a knife of that size the most useful and have several fixed blades that are very close to the size of a folding Scout/camper or a SAK Spartan. The little fixed blade as you have created there, with some good scales installed will not collect dirt and food bits like a folder. That is why, like you, I prefer not to have a knife that is cord wrapped, too much of a dirt and food collector.
The three fixed blades I use the most when backpacking, one at a time of course, are the flat ground Enzo necker, a rare run flat ground Dozier with a short blade about like yours, and a rare run of the Blind Horse Bushbaby, flat ground, that had the first use of 01 and still had the maple scales. I'd bet on any of those...they really work. Never had a use for a machete or big knife when backpacking in remote and rugged areas. I have needed a fixed blade over a folder a few times for either strength or easy clean up after food prep.
You have listened to the suggestions and changed the grind to full flat and use lightening holes to take weight off the handle. From here, if the edge is ground thin enough, it really looks like the perfect backpacking knife when you get the scales on.