- Joined
- Feb 28, 2007
- Messages
- 9,786
Well, I had the fortune of interacting with a couple of good 'ole W&SS regulars here and through those interactions ended up with a bit of new steel to play with.
First up was a trade with MtnFolk Mike. A Breeden for a Breeden! Oh it gets better than that. I traded Mike the prequel to the cub for a cub
So long story, about a year and a half ago, I had Bryan put an osage orange PSK handle and marry it to his standard kat knife blade. This became my osage modified kat. I loved this knife, but it was a bit small for me in blade length and height. Then Reuban came along and designed the cub. Really, the cub is Reuban's design, but he contacted me and asked me several questions about my modified kat and asked for some pictures, dimensions, my likes and dislikes about it. The end result of his design was a wider blade and bit longer blade and thicker handle.
So the specs: 3.75" blade, 1/8" O1 steel and 1.25" blade width. Handle slabs are about 1" wide of green mircata with SS bolts.
The good part of the trade is that Mike wanted the smaller handle of my mod. kat and I wanted the chubby handle of his cub. So that was the deal. I was happy!! So now my collection of Breeden's remains unchanged at six blades, but the synthetics are starting to outnumber the natural scales. Well - two orange G10, two mircata and two wood. The new cub is the 4th one down in the first picture.
(Breeden Knives in order of size: Peacemaker in osage orange, pathfinder in orange G10, bigpaw in natural mircata, cub knife in green mircata, bocote scandi/sabre, original kat knife in orange G10)
Little did I know but that cub was almost identical to the bocote scandi(sabre) blade I received from Brian earlier this year. However, the pictures don't really show the difference of the grinds, made even harder to trace now that I shined up the blade.
Between these two blades I have a good set of choices. The bocote is pretty and the mircata bombproof. This cub certainly is chubby in the handle. You can see the size difference compared to the bocote. However, despite its chubbyness, I like the lack of contouring, almost barrel shape of the handle. In fact, it fits me better then bocote. The bocote one feels better for its width, but the finger notch just doesn't settle my finger as well as I'd like. We can't have everything fit us like a glove! With the thick cub and its featureless handle, you can use just about any grip you like. Personally, I like this attribute more often and I think it will work great with this new one.
I couldn't help but touch up the edge, but Breeden's knives always come really sharp from his shop. I can tell that Mike put a bit of stropping love on to this one also as you can see where he stropped it from the patina forming. Does great at fuzzies and felt good in the hands to make them! This is tough as heck locust that doesn't like to fuzzy so I consider the ones made by this knife very good.
Batoning a new knife....shucks, if your going to have eggs you might as well have bacon. When you open up a new knife, you better do some batoning!
Comes with a nice pouch sheath too!
Overall, the Breeden CUB is a great utility blade. A small blade that wants to be big and for most purposes feels that way. Reuban claimed the cub was something like an RC-3 without the choil. It feels like a different knife than the RC-3, but the blade profile is similar. Paired with a chopper, this little blade will take you far and handle many woodsy chores nicely. All that in a bombproof mircata package. Couldn't ask for more.
First up was a trade with MtnFolk Mike. A Breeden for a Breeden! Oh it gets better than that. I traded Mike the prequel to the cub for a cub
So long story, about a year and a half ago, I had Bryan put an osage orange PSK handle and marry it to his standard kat knife blade. This became my osage modified kat. I loved this knife, but it was a bit small for me in blade length and height. Then Reuban came along and designed the cub. Really, the cub is Reuban's design, but he contacted me and asked me several questions about my modified kat and asked for some pictures, dimensions, my likes and dislikes about it. The end result of his design was a wider blade and bit longer blade and thicker handle. So the specs: 3.75" blade, 1/8" O1 steel and 1.25" blade width. Handle slabs are about 1" wide of green mircata with SS bolts.
The good part of the trade is that Mike wanted the smaller handle of my mod. kat and I wanted the chubby handle of his cub. So that was the deal. I was happy!! So now my collection of Breeden's remains unchanged at six blades, but the synthetics are starting to outnumber the natural scales. Well - two orange G10, two mircata and two wood. The new cub is the 4th one down in the first picture.
(Breeden Knives in order of size: Peacemaker in osage orange, pathfinder in orange G10, bigpaw in natural mircata, cub knife in green mircata, bocote scandi/sabre, original kat knife in orange G10)
Little did I know but that cub was almost identical to the bocote scandi(sabre) blade I received from Brian earlier this year. However, the pictures don't really show the difference of the grinds, made even harder to trace now that I shined up the blade.
Between these two blades I have a good set of choices. The bocote is pretty and the mircata bombproof. This cub certainly is chubby in the handle. You can see the size difference compared to the bocote. However, despite its chubbyness, I like the lack of contouring, almost barrel shape of the handle. In fact, it fits me better then bocote. The bocote one feels better for its width, but the finger notch just doesn't settle my finger as well as I'd like. We can't have everything fit us like a glove! With the thick cub and its featureless handle, you can use just about any grip you like. Personally, I like this attribute more often and I think it will work great with this new one.
I couldn't help but touch up the edge, but Breeden's knives always come really sharp from his shop. I can tell that Mike put a bit of stropping love on to this one also as you can see where he stropped it from the patina forming. Does great at fuzzies and felt good in the hands to make them! This is tough as heck locust that doesn't like to fuzzy so I consider the ones made by this knife very good.
Batoning a new knife....shucks, if your going to have eggs you might as well have bacon. When you open up a new knife, you better do some batoning!
Comes with a nice pouch sheath too!
Overall, the Breeden CUB is a great utility blade. A small blade that wants to be big and for most purposes feels that way. Reuban claimed the cub was something like an RC-3 without the choil. It feels like a different knife than the RC-3, but the blade profile is similar. Paired with a chopper, this little blade will take you far and handle many woodsy chores nicely. All that in a bombproof mircata package. Couldn't ask for more.
