The Carothers 6" Utility Fighter

I also received my shipping notice today (UF scored on the past-past a Friday's sale). Jo went out of her way to help me out for something which I had been pondering about. Thank you V. much Jo.Da.Boss :)

Nice :thumbsup::)

No notice here, but it wouldn’t be the first time I came home to a nice surprise :) Box from CPK sometimes just appears :) gotta say those always make my day :)
 
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Jo the Machinist Jo the Machinist aka Jo-the-handle-scales-Maven :)

Beautiful job Jo; thank you very much for making this happen :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

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Chip, wholeheartedly agreed :thumbsup:

You rarely see Nathan's knives coming up for sale but when they do, you often see the seller stating that he/she deems the knife just too beautiful to bring himself/herself to actually using it. Nathan's knives are not "cheap" by any means but they are offered at tremendous value to those of us who have invariably become high-end yet utilitarian knife connoisseurs/aficionados/enthusiasts/fanatics/NUTZ! Poor Nathan; who most times falls a bit of a victim to the beauty of what he creates because after admiring his creations, makes it a bit hard to beat the cr*p outta his CPKs, well at least those are the cases with mine anyway!

But not so much with the newly offered UFs! In its basic format, sans all the optional bells and whistles offered for the preorders, these tumbled UFs with the tooling marks more noticeable as opposed to the ones which he used to pour over in the past (hand rubbed satin finished, double-edge, wood handle customizing, etc...) lends the new D3V iteration more to what Nathan has in mind, i.e, pure and unadulterated usage.

Me likey lurve this blue-collar version very much :)
 
My son is deployed to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, and I gave him a UF to take with him on the deployment. Here is his first report on his UF:

"I really like the Utility Fighter. So far, I've only had occasion to really use it once, and that was cutting a mess of improperly done tie-downs and ratchet straps inside a shipping container that got flipped around quite a bit, and the contents moved enough that there was no way to remove the straps without cutting them. Everyone else was using Multitools and leathermans and taking forever on each cut, if not outright failing, but the edge on that Utility Fighter made pretty short work of it all! Being inside shipping containers at 1 pm out here was exceptionally miserable, but hey, that's how it goes sometimes!
 
My son is deployed to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, and I gave him a UF to take with him on the deployment. Here is his first report on his UF:

"I really like the Utility Fighter. So far, I've only had occasion to really use it once, and that was cutting a mess of improperly done tie-downs and ratchet straps inside a shipping container that got flipped around quite a bit, and the contents moved enough that there was no way to remove the straps without cutting them. Everyone else was using Multitools and leathermans and taking forever on each cut, if not outright failing, but the edge on that Utility Fighter made pretty short work of it all! Being inside shipping containers at 1 pm out here was exceptionally miserable, but hey, that's how it goes sometimes!
Glad to hear it worked so well for him Bob!
 
My son is deployed to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, and I gave him a UF to take with him on the deployment. Here is his first report on his UF:

"I really like the Utility Fighter. So far, I've only had occasion to really use it once, and that was cutting a mess of improperly done tie-downs and ratchet straps inside a shipping container that got flipped around quite a bit, and the contents moved enough that there was no way to remove the straps without cutting them. Everyone else was using Multitools and leathermans and taking forever on each cut, if not outright failing, but the edge on that Utility Fighter made pretty short work of it all! Being inside shipping containers at 1 pm out here was exceptionally miserable, but hey, that's how it goes sometimes!
This is what it's all about
 
Does anyone have a UF here with both Ebonite and Terotuf scales to compare gripiness?

Ebonite is a cool material. It's like what you might expect rubber to be if it were a mineral that came out of the ground, like a rubber rock. It feels hard, much harder feeling than micarta, I think the texturing edges feel sharper in ebonite than in any other handle material CPK offers. But, it's contradictory and also feels soft when you squeeze the handle in a full grip, like it might have some rubber give. Feels more like a mineral than a plastic but kind of similar to a mineral, or plastic, or metal, but not really rubber....yet it does feel like rubber. Mainly in terms of its friction. The friction of it is also confusing. As far as grippiness, ebonite is neck and neck with Terotuf I think, but it's smooth, so if the fuzzy Terotuf is one one end of a smoothness spectrum, ebonite is on the other. It's smooth as can be but your hand sticks to it once you apply any meaningful amount of pressure to your grip. It's nice to have such a confident secure grip that's due to the handle material itself rather than a rough texture. Anyway out of my several ebonite knives I've only used the Medium Chopper. I chopped off a few branches that were above my head and took down some trees along the border of my yard and along a retaining wall, wailed on some dead wood and tried to focus on the handle and how my hand felt. I am certain the ebonite absorbed much of the shock from impact, and it gave superior control over the blade, making me undeservedly accurate. If Terotuf is like velcro hands, ebonite is kind of like tree frog hands I guess. My ebonite is usually wet immediately once I start touching it, because any hand sweat just sits on it, versus micarta, where it immediately absorbs into and darkens it. But even if its all covered in sweat it grips the same. So I have super limited experience in using ebonite handles, but my opinion is it's approximately as good as Terotuf, there are significant tactile differences, ebonite looks really good while Terotuf looks rather ugly, but Terotuf is nigh indestructible while ebonite is mortal.
 
Found this and figured it may be worth sharing here since this pattern is being revisited and there are quite a few people interested in them.

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/wip-machined-knife.1153472/

Good read with an abundant amount of information on the processes behind the way Nathan makes his knives. Made me appreciate mine that much more!

Hope this is ok. Not sure how much has changed in the process since this thread was originally posted. Nonetheless it's worth looking/reading through.
EXCELLENT Post! Showing EXCELLENT Work! :thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
Does anyone have a UF here with both Ebonite and Terotuf scales to compare gripiness?
I don’t have a terotuf UF, but I would guess that terotuf is gonna generally feel grippiest with its rough texture. If you want an immediate emotional reaction to a very grippy handle when you pick it up, I think go with terotuf. My personal thing with terotuf is it can be a bit too rough, e.g. I don’t like when it gets slimy stuff stuck to it.
 
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