Question about scandi grinds

[Robs92XJ]

I fully admit there are FFGs that are very light weight, but compare nearly any of them sporting a blade width similar to a humble Mora classic in a torture test. The FFG needs to have a wider blade to equal the strength of a less broad Scandi. Factor in the reduced steel needed for a rat tail style tang. Respectfully, if you took the average Scandi and pounded it into a FFG you'd have a paring knife.

You have a point if you're talking about rat tail tang scandis versus full tang FFG. But that's not really apples to apples. A lot of the high end scandi bushcraft knives nowadays are made of 3/16" stock with a full tang. For what it's worth, I think full tangs are overrated as being necessary in an outdoors knife. I think they are done so often mostly because it's easier to manufacture than a hidden tang.

However if you ignore the tang and consider only the blade, a FFG is stronger laterally, per mass, than a scandi grind. That's because you can have a thicker spine with the FFG since it doesn't have any areas of un-ground steel. Essentially you take the steel from the slab sides on the scandi and put it up at the spine on the FFG; same mass with thicker spine. Thickness is much more significant to bending strength than width (cubic vs. linear relationship). The extra thickness would also improve wood splitting performance.

I don't understand the last sentence of your quote. Are you talking about pounding it, as in forging? Or actually batoning the scandi through the FFG like a Noss test? If the latter, that doesn't make any sense (and the former only makes sense if you're talking about a rat tail scandi, and pounding it for some reason into a full tang FFG).

 

[HeavyHanded]

You have a point if you're talking about rat tail tang scandis versus full tang FFG. But that's not really apples to apples. A lot of the high end scandi bushcraft knives nowadays are made of 3/16" stock with a full tang. For what it's worth, I think full tangs are overrated as being necessary in an outdoors knife. I think they are done so often mostly because it's easier to manufacture than a hidden tang.

However if you ignore the tang and consider only the blade, a FFG is stronger laterally, per mass, than a scandi grind. That's because you can have a thicker spine with the FFG since it doesn't have any areas of un-ground steel. Essentially you take the steel from the slab sides on the scandi and put it up at the spine on the FFG; same mass with thicker spine. Thickness is much more significant to bending strength than width (cubic vs. linear relationship). The extra thickness would also improve wood splitting performance.

I don't understand the last sentence of your quote. Are you talking about pounding it, as in forging? Or actually batoning the scandi through the FFG like a Noss test? If the latter, that doesn't make any sense (and the former only makes sense if you're talking about a rat tail scandi, and pounding it for some reason into a full tang FFG).

I'm talking about heating up a rat tail scandi and hammering it into a FFG. The amount of metal to work with would make for a very fragile FFG in my opinion. Neither my Mora or Jarvenpaa scandis have enough steel that you could remove the "shoulders" and pack it back on the spine without greatly weakening the blade. We could debate the lateral strength of either grind (thicker spine but thinner along a much larger percentage of the blade face - I'm not convinced this makes for greater lateral strength) but without destroying some knives...

I saw a coworker break over 1/4" off the tip of his Spyderco FFG dropping it from waist height - cannot imagine that happening with any of my scandis. Ahh well, without breaking out a scale, a vice, and a pipe we'll have to agree to disagree. FWIW I love my FFGs too.

 

[marcinek]

It's statements like this that make this forum such a fun place to hang out in.

This whole thread makes my head hurt.

In my opinion it would behoove people to just draw some simple pictures of what different edge grinds look like at the same edge angle.

Draw three vees with the same angle. Fit a convex, scandi, and flat grind in those vees. Zero ground or not...whatever...do both!

It's a real "Oh...now I see." moment. All the silliness, hype, and myth kinda fades away, replaced by geometry.

 

[Robs92XJ]

I'm talking about heating up a rat tail scandi and hammering it into a FFG. The amount of metal to work with would make for a very fragile FFG in my opinion. Neither my Mora or Jarvenpaa scandis have enough steel that you could remove the "shoulders" and pack it back on the spine without greatly weakening the blade. We could debate the lateral strength of either grind (thicker spine but thinner along a much larger percentage of the blade face - I'm not convinced this makes for greater lateral strength) but without destroying some knives...

I saw a coworker break over 1/4" off the tip of his Spyderco FFG dropping it from waist height - cannot imagine that happening with any of my scandis. Ahh well, without breaking out a scale, a vice, and a pipe we'll have to agree to disagree. FWIW I love my FFGs too.

And I love my Scandis. BTW I do agree that scandis have a stouter tip. I would add that to the list of inherent advantages for a scandi; I did not think of that in my first post.

 

[Robs92XJ]

Wrong. Serious woodcarvers, for example, prefer FFGs.

Scandis are easy to sharpen, cheap to make, and currently fasionable. That's it.

This is kind of over-stating your case. I suspect that if you go to Sweden and look for "serious woodcarvers" you will find a majority of them using something like a sloyd knife, which is a scandi grind. I think there is an advantage (however subtle) to having a large flat bevel for certain carving tasks. The bevel can follow its own cut and provides more feedback. If you're not cutting deeply into the grain, then the extra thickness in the scandi won't hurt.

I've been thinking that an ideal grind for wood carving would be a chisel grind. One side completely flat, the other FFG or convex. You could get the planing/paring characteristics of a scandi (plus some), and have a similar thickness profile to a regular FFG. Since you could use a secondary bevel on the FFG side you could increase the edge angle enough to prevent damage without a significant effect on performance. Of course now the knife would be handed, so you'd have to make left and right handed models. And making cuts in the "wrong" direction would be a little more awkward than usual.

 

[1234]

Wow,,,


1234,,,

 

[Jack Black]

I have LOADS of Scandinavian knives, with what are now known as 'Scandi grinds' (nothing new about that blade grind, it just wasn't known as that way back when). I was pushing Scandinavian-made knives as great knives at a good price when the market was saturated with overpriced 'Rambo' knives which weren't worth a biscuit out in the woods. I LIKE Scandi knives. The 'Scandi-grind' is a LOT easier to grind than a FFG, and cheaper to make, It's perhaps easier for the novice to sharpen too, but I'd maintain that a FFG is BETTER for just about everything than a 'Scandi grind'. Now I think the whole fascination with Scandi grinds came from a certain knife, a good design by Alan Wood and Ray Mears, which has been lazily copied. In other words the 'bushcraft' design, which is now ubiquitous because knife designers are so lazy and unoriginal that they can't come up with something of their own. Twenty to twenty five years ago I used to chat to Ray Mears regularly, I'd reccomend him Scandi knives for his bushcraft courses. Ray reckons that a Scandi-ground knife will cut wood better than a FFG, but I believe he's wrong about that, and without wishing to knock the feller, he's a great guy, he previously thought the Wilkinson Sword Survival Knife (look it up) was a good knife design. Knife design is often led by ill-considered fashion, if people want a 'bushcraft'' knife of a certain design, buy the original, or at least buy SOMETHING original. For me, there's no contest, a properly-ground, properly heat-treated FFG from decent steel is a much better knife than the equivalent Scani-grind.

 

[peppen108]

Nice thread! The Erik Frost 120 knife is currently my go to knife. Is there a FFG knife superior to this knife I would love to hear about it.

 

[marcinek]

Nice thread! The Erik Frost 120 knife is currently my go to knife. Is there a FFG knife superior to this knife I would love to hear about it.

Of course there are superior knives. Countless ones.

My chef's knife is full flat ground and runs circles around a scandi in the kitchen.

 

[peppen108]

Yes, cheapo scandi kitchen knives are horrible. Kitchen knives have always been FFG even in Scandinavia. I like to have a thin high ground razor sharp scandi like the Polar Whittler laying around nevertheless. But that is almost a mix of a scandi and a FFG.

 

[marcinek]

Yes, cheapo scandi kitchen knives are horrible. Kitchen knives have always been FFG even in Scandinavia. I like tho have a thin high ground razor sharp scandi like the Polar Whittler laying around nevertheless. But that is almost a mix of a scandi and a FFG.

True. My point - and it appears that you and the rest of Scandinavia agree - is that FFG knives are superior to scandi knives (like your Erik Frost 120) in the kitchen.

You asked, "Is there a FFG knife superior to this knife I would love to hear about it." and I think we just answered that question. Just about any FFG knife is superior.

 

[peppen108]

Yeah, different knives for different tasks.

 

[meanwhile]

This is kind of over-stating your case. I suspect that if you go to Sweden and look for "serious woodcarvers" you will find a majority of them using something like a sloyd knife, which is a scandi grind. .

They also eat lutefisk. Cultural conditioning will do that.

 

[1234]

They also eat lutefisk. Cultural conditioning will do that.

Whats your point ?

1234,,,

 

[Robs92XJ]

Being a southern boy, I had to look up lutefisk. I found this on wikipedia:

Quote from Garrison Keillor's book Pontoon:


Lutefisk is cod that has been dried in a lye solution. It looks like the desiccated cadavers of squirrels run over by trucks, but after it is soaked and reconstituted and the lye is washed out and it's cooked, it looks more fish-related, though with lutefisk, the window of success is small. It can be tasty, but the statistics aren’t on your side. It is the hereditary delicacy of Swedes and Norwegians who serve it around the holidays, in memory of their ancestors, who ate it because they were poor. Most lutefisk is not edible by normal people. It is reminiscent of the afterbirth of a dog or the world's largest chunk of phlegm.

Interview with Jeffrey Steingarten, author of The Man Who Ate Everything (translated quote from a 1999 article in Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet):

Lutefisk is not food, it is a weapon of mass destruction. It is currently the only exception for the man who ate everything. Otherwise, I am fairly liberal, I gladly eat worms and insects, but I draw the line on lutefisk.
What is special with lutefisk?

Lutefisk is the Norwegians' attempt at conquering the world. When they discovered that Viking raids didn't give world supremacy, they invented a meal so terrifying, so cruel, that they could scare people to become one's subordinates. And if I'm not terribly wrong, you will be able to do it as well.

But some people say that they like lutefisk. Do you think they tell the truth?
I do not know. Of all food, lutefisk is the only one that I don't take any stand on. I simply cannot decide whether it is nice or disgusting, if the taste is interesting or commonplace. The only thing I know, is that I like bacon, mustard and lefse. Lutefisk is an example of food that almost doesn't taste like anything, but is so full of emotions that the taste buds get knocked out.

:barf:

Anyways, to make another pithy point in this pithy argument: you assert that FFG is superior in every case with absolutely no qualifications, and that the Swedish (for example) continue to use scandi knives simply because they are ignorant and beholden to tradition. Do you really think they would continue to use these knives in the modern age, with ample cheap FFG/Convex knives available from Europe, Japan, USA, and even Scandinavia, if they were not at least on par for carving/whittling tasks? In other words, we both understand a technical argument which suggests a FFG is superior, but is this applicable to woodcarving/whittling tasks, and is it significant?

Also, do you give any creedence to the advantage I mentioned in earlier posts regarding the wide bevels improving feedback and control? I'm not totally convinced that this advantage is not just my own perception, but in a certain way it makes sense. If there's any truth in it then it would show up most in exactly these sorts of tasks (carving) and the primary disadvantages (thickness behind the edge and fragile edge) are of course minimized in this work (since the wood is soft and straight grained usually, and you are not cutting deep across the grain).