Richard
BOUNCED EMAIL: I need to update my email address in my profile!
- Joined
- Oct 3, 1998
- Messages
- 1,742
The knife under review:
This knife was made for my wife by Canadian knifemaker Karl Rejman, known here on the forums as Crayola. He has been making knives for a few years now kind of on a part-time hobby basis. Having seen photos of a few of his early knives they kind of struck me as "ok, nice hobby and probably nice enough knives to give to his family members and such". Basically they looked like very basic knives from a beginning maker that wanted to try his hand at it, good start, but a ways to go.
Fast forward a couple of years or so. One night in the chat room (maybe last November or so), Karl and I got into a discussion of knives (of course). We began discussing a possible knife for my wife. It was decided that maybe a neck knife would be the way to go. We tossed around ideas for a bit, Karl said he would think about it and try to put something on paper to consider. A few weeks later he emailed a drawing of a couple of variations of a design. We settled on a drop (almost spear) point design. Over time we discussed other aspects of the knife, handle material, color, size and stuff like that.
For a while, the knife was mostly talk. I knew Karl had a busy schedule going, and this was not going to be an overnight project. One day he sent an email with a basic blade profile cutout. It looked promising. We began discussing it in more detail. When more talk about the handle came up, he started going on about possible use of titanium slabs, Japanese style cord wrap, handle decorations and coloring the slabs. I was getting into it and saying "yeah yeah!!!" imagining something really spectacular. Of course, later on I started thinking, "huh, this maybe out of his league...I had seen his early knives. Very basic, plain handles and functional."
To get to the point, one day about a month ago or so, a package was in the mailbox from Canada. I see his name, and think ok, lets open it and try not to be disappointed. When I opened it and removed the knife, I had to do a double take at the name and make sure I had not ordered from a big name maker and just forgotten. Nope, it was Karl. I obviously had not been keeping up with his progression in skill like I should have been. The knife simply looked like something you would expect from a well established maker charging WAY MORE than what Karl does. Sure enough, there are the titanium slabs that are beautifully colored, not to much and not to little, just enough to really catch the eye. The Japanese style wrap is also there. The wrap is tight, extremely well done and sealed with some type of epoxy for weather protection.
The handle of the knife as stated above is beautiful. Now moving onto the blade. Ground from 440C, the grinds are very nicely brushed for an almost polished fininsh with just enough rub to make it satiny (is that a word?). The flats are brough to a mirror polish. I found no flaws in the finish, it is a first rate job. The one thing I found to be a really nice touch was the spine. It is nice and square for a good sharp look. However it seems like it was polished "just enough" to take all actual sharpness away. So that leaves a very nice crisp look, with the absolute comfort of being able to keep your thumb on the spine without anything sharp digging into you. We discussed the edge and decided an extremely thin edge for slicing was the way to go on this particular knife. There is a secondary edge bevel, but not much. If I had to guess (and as I write this, my wife has it with her so I cant measure) I would say less than 10 degrees per side. The main grind is uniform on both sides as is the edge grind.
So, we have established that Karl can make a knife with fit, finish and looks that compete with the best looking knives around. But, can he makes one that performs? In a word, YES!
The edge as it came from Karl would easily fling hair from my arm. After it arrived back to us the second time (more on that in a bit) we used it for some basic stuff, opening boxes, cutting string and a few blister packs. So far so good, just some everyday use and it still would make the hair jump off my arm.
Over the past few days, the knife was subjected to some deliberate endurance cutting to see how it would really stand up in edge holding, comfort and overall usefulness. Basically to find out if the knife was really cut out to be a worker, or just a really pretty space filler for a drawer in the knife display.
Without any touch up of the edge, I dug some old cardboard out of the garage. With the length of the cardboard and the number of strips of it I cut, it works out to about 40 feet of cardboard. This knife sliced through it like a freshly sharpened Victorinox SAK. And anybody who uses SAKs knows that they are some of the best slicers around. Of course Karls knife blew away the SAK in edge holding. After the cardboard the knife still shaves. It does not fling the hair, but shaves it off easily just the same. Still without touching up the edge I grabbed a few sticks and made them into smaller sticks, this I did for about 30 minutes or so, still the edge was sharp. Afterwards I grabbed an old piece of carpet that was scrap from when my parents had new carpet put in their house. It was also stored in the garage (along with everything else since the dawn of time). Nice and gritty, the knife went through it very well. After a bit of that, the edge finally stopped shaving, but would still cut the cardboard easily enough to cause no discomfort. After all that, the edge showed no deformation or chipping. A few minuted on the Henckels steel and a few swiped on a Flitz loaded strop brought the edge back to its original scalpel sharpness.
Back when I mentioned getting the knife for the second time, that was because it arrived here and went back out the next day to have a sheath made. This was left to Michael A. Cooper ( L6Steel@aol.com ) I have a few of Michaels knives. He does first rate leather work as well as kydex. I asked for kydex. He created a neck sheath just large enough for the knife while still keeping with the compact nature of the overall package. He used ball-chain that he ran through the outer layer of a length of para-cord, so you get the comfort of cord with the break-away safety of the chain. The sheath itself it fitted extremely well to the knife, it holds the knife with 100 percent security and is still easy to draw from. He also added a removable belt loop that enables you to carry it on a belt in vertical, horizontal and in-the-pants positions. A well thought out and perfectly executed sheath of the quality I have come to expect from Michael.
So, what we have here is Karl, a maker who has moved into the big leagues with a knife that would look right at home in the finest collections or in the hands of somebody who needs a compact and hard working knife. That paired with a multi-postion kydex sheath from a knifemaker who knows what it takes to create quality and in my opinion its a combo that would be extremely difficult to top.
My advice is to get in touch with Karl and get him started on your knife before the waiting list starts
This knife was made for my wife by Canadian knifemaker Karl Rejman, known here on the forums as Crayola. He has been making knives for a few years now kind of on a part-time hobby basis. Having seen photos of a few of his early knives they kind of struck me as "ok, nice hobby and probably nice enough knives to give to his family members and such". Basically they looked like very basic knives from a beginning maker that wanted to try his hand at it, good start, but a ways to go.
Fast forward a couple of years or so. One night in the chat room (maybe last November or so), Karl and I got into a discussion of knives (of course). We began discussing a possible knife for my wife. It was decided that maybe a neck knife would be the way to go. We tossed around ideas for a bit, Karl said he would think about it and try to put something on paper to consider. A few weeks later he emailed a drawing of a couple of variations of a design. We settled on a drop (almost spear) point design. Over time we discussed other aspects of the knife, handle material, color, size and stuff like that.
For a while, the knife was mostly talk. I knew Karl had a busy schedule going, and this was not going to be an overnight project. One day he sent an email with a basic blade profile cutout. It looked promising. We began discussing it in more detail. When more talk about the handle came up, he started going on about possible use of titanium slabs, Japanese style cord wrap, handle decorations and coloring the slabs. I was getting into it and saying "yeah yeah!!!" imagining something really spectacular. Of course, later on I started thinking, "huh, this maybe out of his league...I had seen his early knives. Very basic, plain handles and functional."
To get to the point, one day about a month ago or so, a package was in the mailbox from Canada. I see his name, and think ok, lets open it and try not to be disappointed. When I opened it and removed the knife, I had to do a double take at the name and make sure I had not ordered from a big name maker and just forgotten. Nope, it was Karl. I obviously had not been keeping up with his progression in skill like I should have been. The knife simply looked like something you would expect from a well established maker charging WAY MORE than what Karl does. Sure enough, there are the titanium slabs that are beautifully colored, not to much and not to little, just enough to really catch the eye. The Japanese style wrap is also there. The wrap is tight, extremely well done and sealed with some type of epoxy for weather protection.
The handle of the knife as stated above is beautiful. Now moving onto the blade. Ground from 440C, the grinds are very nicely brushed for an almost polished fininsh with just enough rub to make it satiny (is that a word?). The flats are brough to a mirror polish. I found no flaws in the finish, it is a first rate job. The one thing I found to be a really nice touch was the spine. It is nice and square for a good sharp look. However it seems like it was polished "just enough" to take all actual sharpness away. So that leaves a very nice crisp look, with the absolute comfort of being able to keep your thumb on the spine without anything sharp digging into you. We discussed the edge and decided an extremely thin edge for slicing was the way to go on this particular knife. There is a secondary edge bevel, but not much. If I had to guess (and as I write this, my wife has it with her so I cant measure) I would say less than 10 degrees per side. The main grind is uniform on both sides as is the edge grind.
So, we have established that Karl can make a knife with fit, finish and looks that compete with the best looking knives around. But, can he makes one that performs? In a word, YES!
The edge as it came from Karl would easily fling hair from my arm. After it arrived back to us the second time (more on that in a bit) we used it for some basic stuff, opening boxes, cutting string and a few blister packs. So far so good, just some everyday use and it still would make the hair jump off my arm.
Over the past few days, the knife was subjected to some deliberate endurance cutting to see how it would really stand up in edge holding, comfort and overall usefulness. Basically to find out if the knife was really cut out to be a worker, or just a really pretty space filler for a drawer in the knife display.
Without any touch up of the edge, I dug some old cardboard out of the garage. With the length of the cardboard and the number of strips of it I cut, it works out to about 40 feet of cardboard. This knife sliced through it like a freshly sharpened Victorinox SAK. And anybody who uses SAKs knows that they are some of the best slicers around. Of course Karls knife blew away the SAK in edge holding. After the cardboard the knife still shaves. It does not fling the hair, but shaves it off easily just the same. Still without touching up the edge I grabbed a few sticks and made them into smaller sticks, this I did for about 30 minutes or so, still the edge was sharp. Afterwards I grabbed an old piece of carpet that was scrap from when my parents had new carpet put in their house. It was also stored in the garage (along with everything else since the dawn of time). Nice and gritty, the knife went through it very well. After a bit of that, the edge finally stopped shaving, but would still cut the cardboard easily enough to cause no discomfort. After all that, the edge showed no deformation or chipping. A few minuted on the Henckels steel and a few swiped on a Flitz loaded strop brought the edge back to its original scalpel sharpness.
Back when I mentioned getting the knife for the second time, that was because it arrived here and went back out the next day to have a sheath made. This was left to Michael A. Cooper ( L6Steel@aol.com ) I have a few of Michaels knives. He does first rate leather work as well as kydex. I asked for kydex. He created a neck sheath just large enough for the knife while still keeping with the compact nature of the overall package. He used ball-chain that he ran through the outer layer of a length of para-cord, so you get the comfort of cord with the break-away safety of the chain. The sheath itself it fitted extremely well to the knife, it holds the knife with 100 percent security and is still easy to draw from. He also added a removable belt loop that enables you to carry it on a belt in vertical, horizontal and in-the-pants positions. A well thought out and perfectly executed sheath of the quality I have come to expect from Michael.
So, what we have here is Karl, a maker who has moved into the big leagues with a knife that would look right at home in the finest collections or in the hands of somebody who needs a compact and hard working knife. That paired with a multi-postion kydex sheath from a knifemaker who knows what it takes to create quality and in my opinion its a combo that would be extremely difficult to top.
My advice is to get in touch with Karl and get him started on your knife before the waiting list starts
Your work has really come a long way man! Its simple and complex all at once.. 
