The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
My newest find, a Vaughn Neeley. Fairly short blade, but nice balance, and a unique way of attaching blade to handle.
An interesting touch, not visible in the photo, but the top edge has micro serrations. Maybe to cut wire?
... There is a scene where you see Stallone whittling a stick to make a point, and you see quite enough of the work to see his edge is probably at around 20° per side, despite the Lile's flat blade grind, which could be made so much sharper than 20° at the bevel... He seems to be trying to make slightly "ogival" wood points rather than really thin points (or the knife is skipping and forcing him to do so...); this may be correct practice for stronger points in wood: I don't know, not knowing much about making booby traps for cops!
What did you think of the Neeley's handle attachment method? It looks just like the cheapo 80s knives: You see a big bold sitting naked at the bottom of the handle! I'm sure it is indestructible anyway, and the extra room around the bolt is actually quite useable: I was just surprised by its appearance, and I wonder if anyone knows more about what makes it an especially strong attachment?
The workmanship on those Neeleys has to be seen to be believed... Everything is so well thought out (like making the usually dull clip more efficient, with these exquisitely tiny rope serrations).... Everything is well thought out that is, except the main edge!... I wonder why he puts that 30° edge per side on there... I even find 20°, the accepted standard, to be far from acceptable...
First Blood played again this past weekend, and I sort of timed my viewing to when the knife appears
If you look closely, you can actually see that despite having a flat-ground knife that should be very well suited for whittling, his work seems hampered by the 20° edge: He skips and misses, and the work doesn't seem to progress fast, or easily...
It is true that the inner edge of my Hawke Hellion, a portion whose silly 25° per side bevel I never changed (unlike the rest, closer to 12° or less), whittles "reasonably" well in that portion, despite the ridiculous edge angle there... But I attribute that mostly to this edge being peculiarly angled upwards: If it was straight to the handle, it would again behave like crap I think...
I just can't see any merit to 20° per side edges...
As to those Schrades one-piece, they are looking better and better every day: I wonder if the handle capacity is any better than what is available in one of the large 8.75" Chris Reeves one piece: This is the exhaustive list of all I could put in my CR Jereboam Mk II:
-8 Advils, neatly lined up in 4 rows of two in a tightly rolled plastic bag, with a tape tab to help pull everything out.
-Two very small band aids (only there to prevent rattling of the unwrapped items).
-2 small fish hooks, two fishing weights, and maybe 4 feet of thin nylon line...
-A 1/2" diameter block of a very whittled down block of "Strike Force" foam fuel.
-12 matches, that's it!
I would say the 12 matches and the 8 Advils represent about 85% of the Reeve's available handle space, mainly due to the small diameter (the longer handle interior is not much good for packing things, or getting them out)...
By contrast, the Randall Model 18:
-One comparatively huge, much deeper 2/3" block of "Strike Force" foam fuel (also within the pommel, but compared to the much smaller pommel interior of the Reeves, I would say the volume of the piece here is double or more)
-3 fish hooks, 3 fish weights, 5 feet of line X 2
-One wheel/flint spark maker with one cotton piece
-18 matches neatly packed in a rolled waterproof plastic bag, not loose as in the Reeves...
-Strike paper to help the strike anywhere matches, just in case...
True, the Advils take up about as much room as the spark maker does with the cotton piece, but this list doesn't include how much neater the Randall arrangement is, since in the Reeves everything had to be jumbled together, and will not go back in neatly... Nor can I take out the individual matches of the Reeves into my pocket, since they don't have any plastic bag to protect them...
The Neeley has roughly the same inner diameter capacity as the Randall (a bit more: 21 matches), but the handle compartment is much, much deeper (I used a long tape "tab" to be able to pull at the bottom items: The smoother Neeley walls allow this much easier than the weird rubber coating inside the CR). The Neeley SA9 is deeper to the point that to the Randall's content I could add an entire undiminished block of "Strike Force" foam below that, with 8 additional, slightly shortened, matches taped around it: 21 +8: 29 matches. However, no other foam fuel block sits within the un-hollowed out buttcap: A nicely done flat mirror surface was done in there, which robs quite a bit of potential volume...
Now that the Randall rides in an Eagle nylon sheath, you can add to the 18 matches 12 more, for 30 in total, one more cotton cord piece, 1 large combined match/fuel, strike paper for the big match/fuel, a compass, one band aid, a needle and 15' of sewing thread for clothing, and, most important of all, a 4" Dia-Sharp coarse sharpener, with a nylon strap around it to prevent wear on the sheath's nylon pocket.
The Hellion carries a similar Dia Sharp sharpener/fishing/spark maker/big match set up to the Randall, but only 12 matches in total in a sealed plastic bag, since everything is limited to its two sheath pockets. It is so sharp in the forward blade section (including the re-ground point edge) that I consider it the best survival knife I have. It has also become remarkably hard to get, for some reason...
My favourite is still the Neeley SA9, which took several weeks to get really sharp, at a similar edge thickness at the top of the bevel: 1.8 mm (you can imagine how either of those 1.8 mm edges perform compared to a Randall at 0.5 mm, even if the edge angles are not that far apart...) Unfortunately, the simple thin stone the SA9 carries, neatly concealed within its superb leather sheath, would probably lose its flatness rapidly when faced with the overwhelming task of sharpening a 9.5" 440C blade...: With a Dia-Sharp diamond sharpener within its nylon sheath, the Hellion would not only out-chop the Neeley by a large margin, but it would retain better sharpness far longer, just because of its sharpener... Yes I do know its 5160 steel is far inferior to the Neeley's 440C in edge-holding, but in this case it wouldn't matter...
Sorry for the slightly rambling post...
Gaston
In an earlier post, I mentioned my affection for the Cold Steel Survival Edge. Not a hardcore knife that you would do chin-ups withbut for what it is, a great backpacking kit.
Here is one I just bought for my nephew:
) they are just about perfect for a strenuous day hike. I equate them to the "survival" version of a Mora. For what I would use it for, I have no concerns about the blade-to-handle strength either.
If only there was some magical process to change the edge angle!Thanks very much for linking this thread (I obviously missed your post the first time around), which I found the most useful I have ever seen concerning the Schrade Chris Reeves "copies": Thank God I did not sell my Chris Reeves Jereboam, thinking I could get a similar, if shorter, Schrade equivalent!
I suddenly treasure my Jereboam much more since reading this... Mind you, it's not that the Scrade is worthless on its own, ---if very, very heavily sharpened---, but it cannot even begin to compare with a Reeves, which not only has a much thicker spine, but is quite usefully sharp as it comes, with a 1 mm edge at 13° per side...: And I already think the Reeves is kind of a non-optimal item owing to its reputed low edge-holding, and the very questionable choice of a Carbon steel...
The linked thread kind of comes to all the wrong conclusions, from my point of view, but at least, unlike elsewhere, it doesn't pull any punches as to the quality you are getting with the low cost Schrade: Cheap ill-fitting sheath (awful-looking near the guard), steel very prone to staining (sort of like Randall's 0-1, which I just had to Cerakoat to alleviate the problem) an issue worsened by cheap paint that easily flies off, grossly dull edge angle (30° per side or thereabouts, almost the same absurdity as on the Boker Apparo), and, the final nail in the coffin because totally unfixable, much thinner overall blade thickness than the original, that turns this thing into a handle-heavy low-performing hacker, rather than a marginally decent chopper that a full genuine Reeves thickness would allow: This didn't save Schrade a dime, since the one-piece construction means they have to grind off more metal to get to an inferior thinner blade, and then they have the gall to ruin the thinner blade's marginal geometry advantage with a thicker duller edge: The opposite of what should be...
For the price you can't complain, except for the dull edge, but these are not in any remote way Chris Reeves copies: They are just different knives altogether, with a family air, but nothing remotely comparable...
And the discontinuation of the Reeves one-piece line feels all the more rotten for it...
Gaston
P.S. In the linked thread, there is a post mentionning that the Schrade throws surprisingly well: At the low cost, that might be a perfect niche for it!
G.
