OT: Traditional knives vs. modern

Do the real Scandinavian knives respond well to steeling, especially the Sandvik ones? And some carbon steel ones are pretty hard, I think I've seen.

I just chipped out a pretty inexpensive SS kitchen knife from Europe somewhere with a grooved steel:mad: It just a little sheepsfoot thing that cost a few bucks, but it's useful enough that I may try and reset the edge.

Maybe I should just toss that grooved steel anyway, and see if I can get someone to get me a smooth one at the Holidays...Or use my biggest chakma.
 
Yvsa: Got to love those Scandinavian handles. My favorite is the simple old classic "Mora Knife". To the untrained eye their handles look to be a ridiculously simple straight affair, but on closer examination the thing is oval shaped, fatter in the middle, and tapered toward each end, nothing straight about it. It's the handle style I favor for "work knives", no bells and whistles, just a sure, firm, grip.

Firkin: Just about any knife can be steeled, but if I were you I'd lose the grooved steel. However, the correct way to sharpen a Scandinavian ground knife is to hone the entire bevel surface taking care to maintain the bevel at the correct angle (not hard to do since you just place the bevel flat to the stone and it acts as its own sharpening guide).

Kis: Yup, high carbon stainless. I've made knives using blades from Helle and Brusletto of Norway, and Eriksson and Karesuando of Sweden, all using the Sandvik high carbon stainless ( I'm with Uncle Bill in preferring straight carbon steel, but I make a lot of knives for "outdoorsey types" who like knives that don't rust). It's been my experience that the Swedish stainless hardened at around 59RC sharpens with relative ease and holds an edge very, very, well.

Side note; I just finished another one of my "villager" knives hand ground from a file and it's a sweet heart. It's my version of a Scottish Sgian Dubh. I own two Sgian Dubhs, one from Sheffield, England, and one from Scotland. The Scottish one has a thick blade that's poorly ground and even more poorly tempered. The English is good steel and well tempered, but on the thin side. Both have very narrow tangs, and are obviously made for show not go, and the blades are too short IMHO for a proper boot knife. I made mine with a convex ground blade just a skosh under 3/16" thick, and a tapered tang that runs 3/4 of the way through the Bolivian rosewood handle (sorry, but my wood supplier didn't have bog oak). This one may not be quite as pretty as "store bought", but it's made to earn its keep.

Sarge
 
Originally posted by firkin


I just chipped out a pretty inexpensive SS kitchen knife from Europe somewhere with a grooved steel:mad: It just a little sheepsfoot thing that cost a few bucks, but it's useful enough that I may try and reset the edge.

Maybe I should just toss that grooved steel anyway, and see if I can get someone to get me a smooth one at the Holidays...Or use my biggest chakma.
Click to expand...

Firkin may I suggest this place to buy a steel? I have one and it's the finest steel I've ever seen or handled, bar none!!!!

http://www.twoxen.it/

http://www.twoxen.it/bin/x.cgi/pager/item/5hastee/7903-68-656719393?item=674-27.5~0

EDIT:
To expound on this a little further; The steel is smooth with a hard chromed finish that goes to 64* Rc which is much more than the average knife is today and will be for some years to come IMO even though there are 62 Rc knives today, perhaps even a few that may be 64 Rc, but if they are I'm thinking it would have to be among the Finest Japanese Culinary Tools and I doubt those would be steeled anyway.:)
Mine, or I should really say "ours" works really well from the set of Due Buoi Kitchen Knives that we both love dearly to the hardest blade in my collection, so far.:0

*
Oops*!!!! Just checked out the website and saw that the hardness is 66 Rc, Not 64!!!!


674-27.5.jpg
 
I have one and it's the finest steel I've ever seen or handled, bar none!!!!
Click to expand...

Quite a rec....Guess that means your'e still pleased with the stuff you got from these guys a while back! :)

The oval one looks very nice--which do you have?

EDIT: LOL!!

dancing edits...and I can't keep up with my slow connection.

Thanks, you got the flat one--I assume that the corners are rounded a tad so a little slip doesn't generate too concentrated a pressure?

I think that's why the grooved steel chipped the edge on my POS kitchen knife, which is really a giant razor-blade anyway.
 
Originally posted by firkin
Quite a rec....Guess that means your'e still pleased with the stuff you got from these guys a while back! :)
Click to expand...

Very well pleased Firkin!!!!:D The only thing I've had to do to about three of the knives is to put them on an aggressive strop to refresh the convex edge that somehow wasn't at the factory. Since then they have performed extremely well.

The oval one looks very nice--which do you have?
Click to expand...

Ours was supposed to have been the flat one and that's the one I would recommend. Ours is slightly oval and I believe that works even better than the round ones as a little more edge comes in contact with the steel which helps in maintaining the angle.
And although I would prefer the perfectly flat one I don't see ever needing to replace this one or any of the knives.
Like Barbie said, "We're gonna have to figure out who to will these to as they're gonna last several generations!!!!":D

Also please note the edit on my previous post that I corrected the hardness from 64 Rc to 66 Rc.
I don't know what I was thinkin, probably under the influence of the meds.:)
 
Yvsa. when I have the money, I plan on following this good advice as I did the stones with no regrets.

munk
 
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