Scandi grind for outdoor preparedness

Lots of beautiful knives here. What I see is a lot of wood handles, either birch or maple. I see one distributor who says continue using boiled (not raw) linseed oil on the blade and burled maple handle of the Spyderco Bushcraft to prevent cracking (an issue that caused some, if not all, factory knives to be sold as seconds.
Do all natural wood handles need treated periodically with linseed oil?
 
Well I wouldn't take the Spyderco Bushcraft handle blooper as a good example. The wood was supposed to be stabilized, it wasn't, or it was done very poorly, by the company supplying the scales to Spyderco. Stabilised wood does not really need oiling.

Also worth noting, in the above instance, the wood was spalted, meaning it had a natural fugal infection which causes random coloration and patterns within the wood. The pay off of this coloration is that the wood is weakened and more fragile than an unspalted piece. In these cases stabilisation is used to bind the wood together and stopping any movement or weakness from affecting the handle integrity. This can also be the case for many handle pieces cut from burls, roots or cross or oblique cut weak grained woods such as Yew (ask me how I know :-/).

But, truth be told, it's good to give your (normal, unstabilised) wooden handle knives a bit of an oil from time to time, much like it is with any wooden handle tool, such as axes, hammers and chisels.

You can use any suitable oil you fancy, from vegetable oil to tung oil. It's a matter of personal taste....and if you are oiling the blade, I mean that quite literally! Food safe oils, such as those used for chopping boards can be ideal if you are oiling the two together.
 
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I settled on the Tops BOB Fieldcraft. I see it is slightly bigger than my mora Companion and a nice combination of a survival, hunting, and bushcraft knife. I guess this covers all areas of preparedness.
I just don't know how to treat the modified Scandi grind when it comes to sharpening.
 
I have bought several of the Mora's and have found them to be one of the best fixed blade knives for the money that I can buy. I also built one knife using the Laurie blade it seems to be really good but have yet to use it to skin deer. I always grab the Mora.
 
I can only agree to all the mentionings of Enzo knife blanks - cheap to make your own Scandi knife, and they are great. I own an Enzo Camper in O1 steel, good knife, I made handles out of beech wood that I got from a hardware store. Wood and brass tubing cost about 10 € and I can handle many more knives from those pieces. You might also want to check the Boker Bushcraft knife if you want a „woodlore“ style design for relatively little money.

Best regards!
 
Machete Gringo said:
I settled on the Tops BOB Fieldcraft. I see it is slightly bigger than my mora Companion and a nice combination of a survival, hunting, and bushcraft knife. I guess this covers all areas of preparedness.
I just don't know how to treat the modified Scandi grind when it comes to sharpening.
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Youl love it. Just strop it a little with a belt. Its a little more robust on the edge due to the scandi-vex
 
Machete-Gringo - Get wet-dry sandpaper, put in on a thick leather strop and strop away. The right sandpaper would work for a long time and you just have to give the right pressure and you can maintain your scandi grind due to the give of the leather. It gets iffy if you experience a dent or goodness forbid a chip, then you have to grind away a lot of metal and if it is a "scandi-vex" grind, you would have to do it in a rocking motion on a stone (provided we would like to avoid power tools, e.g. belt sander, that you don't have in the great outdoors anyway but that's where you are with a bushcraft style knife, are you not?). Alternatively you could use a very coarse sandpaper for stock removal. A rocking motion on a flat stone, once practiced enough, gives you much more control over the edge geometry than sandpaper on a softer backing, plus you are less likely to screw up your tip (rounded off). The only delicate thing with the rocking motion is that you have to control your max. angle tightly so you don't end up with an too obtuse angle/too round convex which is useless for "delicate" bushcraft tasks
 
I would have to say that my Tops Fieldcraft BOB, and my Mora (both Scandi grind knives) are indeed the sharpest tools in my collection, as well as the easiest to sharpen. As far as grinds go they are my personal preference, and I wish more manufacturers offered scandi grind models.
 
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