I don't quite get the scandi grind either. Ive only used one and it bites extremely deep into wood when you make push cuts but other than that I don't see any advantages.
As Tom Krein once said, FFG is where its at.
I don't quite get the scandi grind either. Ive only used one and it bites extremely deep into wood when you make push cuts but other than that I don't see any advantages.
As Tom Krein once said, FFG is where its at.
I'm not singling out your post, just using it as a convenient hook to respond to the "don't get it" crowd.
I think to properly appreciate what is short handed as the "Scandi grind" you need to look away from the UK centered interpretations of knives from Scandinavia and actually look at the historical forms as the people there used them to understand them.
One factor was that it was difficult to obtain high quality steel for much of history in that part of the world. The knives that were made had to be material efficient. The knife had to be an excellent cutting tool first and foremost. Splitting wood, chopping through a joint or pelvis of an animal was the realm of another tool, perhaps an axe, which could make up for a lack of quality metallurgy with mass.
Next, take anything more than basic food prep out of the equation as stylistically slicing onions or other fine kitchen work is not what a knife like a puukko is about. However, the edge approaching zero degrees will zip open an animal and the wedging/scraping action of the grind can make it an effective skinner with practice. These same attributes make such knives excellent draw cutters as well as pretty decent at scraping hides in aid of preservation.
In my view, such knives evolved in a world where you make your own tools, axe handles, eating implements, furniture, traps, whatever, from wood, bark, antler, and bone and you do it multiple times over the course of your life. In addition to carving, puukkos are pretty decent for drilling holes through material in the field because they have an acute but well supported point.
These knives were tasked in an unforgiving environment where things are frozen hard a good fraction of the year and where a broken field knife could easily cost one his life, and in any event his knife is neither cheap nor easy to replace. This last point historically accounts for the high retention sheaths associated with these knives.
The traditional belt knives of the area excel foremost at the woodworking because that was the demand to meet. Making firewood, processing fish, butchering animals, all of these were secondary concerns or lower. The Scandinavian knives are not efficient slicers or great for filleting, but they offer great woodworking control, bite rather than skip off of hard woods or frozen materials and to my way of thinking represent a still valid compromise between utility, toughness, liveliness in the hand, and weight, one that works for a lot of people.
