Thoughts on WSK Knives ?

pitdog

pitdog

Joined
Apr 13, 2007
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I know these knives are hated by many but for some strange reason these weird knives facinate me !


I still think the design if done right could be a very useful tool.

Mark Wohlwend once sent me his version to try out and that thing was a beast. Even at the super thickness it was it still cut great due to having a scandi section nearest the handle and a convexed section for chopping. If it had been outta 3/16" it would have been nearly perfect but it was just a little too thick for me as it was.

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By pitdog2010 at 2011-02-08

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By pitdog2010 at 2011-02-08

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By pitdog2010 at 2011-02-08



One thing that confuses me is the knotching section being at the end of the blade, to me it would make far more sense to have it near the handle A) for better control and B) So you have a nice flat section near the end for battoning.

I really like the lines of the one in the movie ' The Hunted ', check out the height of the fine edge closest to the handle, that thing would be a slicing machine !

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The quarter rounder is also a very important part of the blade. Not only is it great for skinning but it is also awesome when it comes to making fuzz-sticks or rounding off bow staves etc.

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Anyway lets hear some of your thoughts that might improve this love/hate design.

I'm still very eager to see what Bryan Breeden comes up with !!!!:D
 
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Well I will tell you this, Looking at Mr. Black over at Bushcraft USA and what he does with his in that video that he has out, Is really cool.

I think also, that most people have NOT gotten to handle one and if they did they got one that was not that sharp so that is a turn off.
In the last 2 or so months I have had the oppertunity to handle 2 of them and then do a little regrinding on them.
Once you get them sharpned up they are great cutting tool.

the saw works just like it should. But it is not for cutting logs in half it is for sawing notches.

I am not a big fan of sawing notches I can carve then faster than sawing them in to wood, for the traps that I make.

Over all I like the look of them. But I just like knives in general lol lol.

But then again I like to carry a saw that really saws lol. I like to carry a longer knife
7" to 10" for trail clearing. and I like to carry a small knife for smaller tasks where using a longer knife just is not needed.

Even though I am still working on mine It would not be the one knife for all things. could / can / will it work yea I think so. But still I am not into just carrying one knife with me lol.

I have some help in the shop now and so I hope to get all the orders caught soon. I hate being more than a couple of weeks behind. my nephew is drilling out the handles and cutting out the handle material lol. The stuff I hate to do.
As soon as I get mostly caught up I am going to work on the WSK style knife that I started on and put on the back burner till I make/ get the time lol.

When I get one done you know pitdog you will be a prefect person to send it to and see what you think of it.
I have had that in mind for a while now lol lol lol.


Anyways just some of my thoughts.

Bryan
 
I still think it is a completely silly design come up with for heaven-only-knows what ridiculous reasons and there are a ton of other knife designs out there that would serve any woodsman better as a woods tool. I don't care how good of a blade geometry you put on it, it's still an awkward, ungainly blade shape that is really not suited for general use. Saw backs are a worthless feature on a knife unless you plan on cutting through car doors and airplanes.

But I may be a bit of a jaded curmudgeon when it comes to knife design, so take my words for what they're worth. And I'm probably just proving pitdog's point here anyway, but if I am so be it then. :D

The Wolwhend design is much better, because it's much closer to a good old straight back knife and has what looks like a pretty nice handle.

Sincerely, a somewhat jaded bushcraft/survival enthusiast :rolleyes:
 
I have softened a bit to them, having seen a number of folks who really enjoy their WSK's and who know what they are doing. I think what sparked the hatred was the mythos placed on the blade and design, as though it was some inherently superior evolution to the knife. As a tool like any, you need to adapt your strategy to its use. Since the WSK has all kinds of "crap going on" :D, it offers many opportunities to cater techniques and methods to take advantage of all that crap. I say crap in jest here, because those features might be really helpful, but then again, some bloke with his common normal knife will just adapt around the limitations of not having good crap installed on his blade and make up for it. In the end, you use a blade for a long time and you get used to its characteristics. If you like all the crap, than it really must be some good $hit. If you don't use most of it, then it isn't serving you well and you are just buying into hype when a lighter weight, simpler, no-name blade will do the same things for you.

In the end the usability of a given knife all depends on the user and the time they spend with it. Personally, I don't see the advantage of having multiple grinds on one knife. I understand how different grinds confer different advantages, but I find it relatively easy to make a V-grind or convex do scandi like things by adjusting my technique. Others like to have the tool customized to the way they do things. Pict's use of multiple grinds on machete's is a good case in point. All just different points of view. Nobody is wrong in the end.
 
rocketbomb said:
I still think it is a completely silly design come up with for heaven-only-knows what ridiculous reasons and there are a ton of other knife designs out there that would serve any woodsman better as a woods tool. I don't care how good of a blade geometry you put on it, it's still an awkward, ungainly blade shape that is really not suited for general use. Saw backs are a worthless feature on a knife unless you plan on cutting through car doors and airplanes.

But I may be a bit of a jaded curmudgeon when it comes to knife design, so take my words for what they're worth. And I'm probably just proving pitdog's point here anyway, but if I am so be it then. :D

The Wolwhend design is much better, because it's much closer to a good old straight back knife and has what looks like a pretty nice handle.

Sincerely, a somewhat jaded bushcraft/survival enthusiast :rolleyes:
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LOL....they are certainly not everyones cup of tea eh !!!

As Bryan said the Tracker spine isn't for sawing per se but for knotching. I have used it for this quite a few times and it works pretty well. Here is an old post of mine~

To show the Tracker can be used for practical tasks I decided to make a modified figure 4 trap. First step was to rough shape the section of wood, the heft of the Tracker enables you to rough shape wood very quickly as you would with a small axe....

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By pitdog2010 at 2011-04-06

To break the wood down into smaller pieces I used the Tracker's saw back to notch the wood where I wanted it to break....

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By pitdog2010 at 2011-04-06

That's two parts completed now to find one for the bait stick...

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By pitdog2010 at 2011-04-06

With the bait stick finished I set up the trap( If I was using it for real I'd set the trap on a section of thick bark etc so it wouldn't sink into the soft soil, as this was just a practice I set it up on a rock ).....

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By pitdog2010 at 2011-04-06

Once again if using it for real I'd smother peanut butter on the end of the bait stick to make a rat or squirrel etc have to work to get it off.
 
All well and good, folks like different things in knives, that's quite true and I am fairly well at peace with that. I think, anyway!

But let me ask an honest question: Has anybody had trouble making notches for traps without a saw? (sawback or otherwise) I ask that to point out the idea that the knife really is full of crap. Are there any features on the knife that truly give it great advantages over a regular old, say, Green River pattern? Or a Grohmann? Or a Mora? What types of knife designs to people that live in the wilderness for real use on a daily basis to keep themselves alive? I realize that is somewhat limited by what's available in any given location, so that colors the answer to that a bit, but I'm not aware of too many of those tools that are made with multiple grinds and sawbacks.

In the end, use what you like, but that's not going to stop me from asking what on earth somebody is thinking when they use some sort of goofy monstrosity like a WSK :p
 
I had one by Bill Siegle and another member wanted it more than I did--and now he owns it.

:)

I think that a WSK knife is more dependent on the skill of the person using it-more so that a regular knife design.

I mean you can do more with it if you spend more time using it and finding out what it can and can not do compared to the time it would take using a standard knife design.

Bill Siegle's design worked well but like all others of it's type it did nothing really well-but did most well enough that you would not suffer from a lack of a tool.

It was also a lot of fun to use and test..


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rocketbomb said:
All well and good, folks like different things in knives, that's quite true and I am fairly well at peace with that. I think, anyway!

But let me ask an honest question: Has anybody had trouble making notches for traps without a saw? (sawback or otherwise) I ask that to point out the idea that the knife really is full of crap. Are there any features on the knife that truly give it great advantages over a regular old, say, Green River pattern? Or a Grohmann? Or a Mora?
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I can definitely process wood far quicker with the Tracker for making traps etc than I could using any of the knives you mention......maybe the Grohmann survival might come close but I haven't had the chance to try one.
 
I use to own two of the Becks. I id have to say they were awesome in everyway
 
A very rough sketch but I was thinking I'd like them a little more along these lines~

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you know, I had a hate on for these styles for the longest time....

Just like I did with the potbelly, thought it was the ugliest, useless looking knife I had ever seen.

Then I used one.... Total change of mind, and im sure this would be no different.
 
sicily02 said:
I have some help in the shop now and so I hope to get all the orders caught soon. I hate being more than a couple of weeks behind. my nephew is drilling out the handles and cutting out the handle material lol. The stuff I hate to do.
As soon as I get mostly caught up I am going to work on the WSK style knife that I started on and put on the back burner till I make/ get the time lol.

When I get one done you know pitdog you will be a prefect person to send it to and see what you think of it.
I have had that in mind for a while now lol lol lol.


Anyways just some of my thoughts.

Bryan
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Now I really can't wait !!!!:excitement::thumbup:
 
I think they are fine, if you are skillful with them. I am not, and I would not do well with them. I don't really like the looks that much, either. They do have their place, that place is just not with me. If they work for you, great! If not, then there is still plenty of other sharpened pieces of steel out there ;)
 
They may very well be the best knife ever which like many here are on the search for but I doubt I will ever buy one due to the fact they are so ugly:o I can't imagine being a knife knut and carrying an ugly knife lol.
 
They will never appeal to me because the niche they aim at has parameters that are totally irrelevant to me. If I want a chopping tool that weighs about 1lb it isn't going to look remotely like that. If I want a wood carving knife it isn't going to look anything like that. If I want a good field knife that has excellence at cutting stuff I'm likely to want to cut I won't look at all like that. If I want a saw it will not look like that. There's a bit of a pattern forming. However, if I were to stick a bunch of dumb parameters together - “I must only have one cutting tool”, “that cutting tool be really thick but also have a potion of the blade that shaves wood as well as a SAK”, “yet it must be front heavy”, “whilst retaining enough knife like shape that kids will readily identify with it as a weapon in some damn stupid movie” and so on, it might start to look like that. Unfortunately such a random cluster of unnecessary parameters is something I just don't have, so any potential enjoyment is lost to me forever. To quote Mike Stewart “it is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist”.
 
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