Playing with my BK 4

N

neeman

Joined
Apr 5, 2007
Messages
6,249
The Beginning

It arrived

Awesome!

Just holding it and feeling the forward weight
Working out the 'snap' motion
Little finger and palm or thumb and first finger

It is a chopper...........

More tomorrow when I can get out to some woods
Click to expand...

Expletive!!!

Took some time off before work to play
Chopping, batoning, cross batoning, and draw cutting

Chops between a heavy hatchet and a machete
Heavy enough to chop, thin enough to slice

Batoned a 3" diameter 3' long branch of fresh pine
Used the recurved end
It followed the twisted grain of the branch and went the whole lenght of the 3"
Used the swell end to baton further in to short pieces
Cross batons to shorten the sticks

There was the broken end of a thicker brand full of crystised sap and fatwood
Used the recurve to draw long thick pieces off the branch end

I am very impressed indeed
A superb woods tool

Kudos to Ethan
Click to expand...

Using the knife for the first time, I did not like the coating
I already stripped my #16 completely including under the grips
This time I kept the coating on the handle as I wanted it protected




The factory was sharp but too obtuse for my liking
And no knife is mine till I sharpen it

I had specially ordered from Benjamin (42 Blades) these two Scythe stones to sharpen the #4
I have not used stone like this since I was a little boy, and our gardener would let me use his stones to sharpen the shears and lawn mower

The Falci "Enzian" Scythe Stone is a course stone
http://www.baryonyxknife.com/fascst.html
And the Falci "Original Carborundum" Scythe Stone is quite a fine
http://www.baryonyxknife.com/fascst1.html





The knife sharpened very easily, with no pain.
A total intuitive sharpening looking at what the blade called for, to break the shoulder of the factory grind





It was very sharp
 
Using the Knife

I live 5 minute away from woods
We had a very heavy snow last winter that broke a lot of trees and the Forestry dept is thinning the trees

Cut myself a piece of wood
It is a great pruning saw




2 1/2" thick?




And started batoning




Long piece of wood, and it did not begin to crack till 3/4 of the way down
So it was work most of the way




After that quartering and eights was easy



Cross batoned them in to smaller pieces




Some of the pieces had fatwood
The recurve feathered very nicely
The knife is sharp



Blade in to the stump
I pulled the fatwood across the bottom of the blade
Very fine feathers





Feathers from across the belly of the blade




Split the ends of some sticks




Built a fire






One match

 
Conclusion

The learning curve of this knife was very fast
I had a Kukri 40 years ago
I found this knife very familiar to use, but it is full tang and all that goes with that strength

It sharpened up to very sharp, surprisingly sharp
So I found I could do very fine cutting with the recurve and with belly when the knife was static stuck in to the stump
The narrowness of the recurve makes fine cutting very easy, much easier than a wider blade
The balance of the sweet spot of the belly for chopping is superb

This knife is runs the gambit from being a heavy duty work horse to being able to perform very fine cutting task
The spectrum of use of this knife as an integrated wood tool is a testimony to Ethan's design brilliance
 
It sure is a fun blade, eh? I really enjoy using mine.
 
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