- Joined
- Dec 20, 2009
- Messages
- 4,421
Here are three user knives for local folks that I just got ready to deliver. Two skinners and a slightly trailing hunter. The blades are all ATS34 hardened to 59-60. The two skinner blades are three inches long, the hunter is 3 3/8. They are all from 5/32 stock. The handles are 4, 4 1/4 and 4 1/2 inches long according to customers desires. The top one has mammoth interior ivory that shows off the cross hatching very nicely. I traded this knife, and another one for my customers Dad, for the tusk section that this ivory came from. That knife has a nickle silver guard, mosaic pins and red leather liner. I have found that the leather liners really help make a super bond between the tang and the ivory. The second skinner was one of two for my electrician, partial payment for my 3 phase that he installed. He likes copper so I used some copper flaky stuff from a counter top sink cut-out. It has a brass guard, mosaic pins and red paper liners. I "still" use a lot of brass for guards and bolsters, people keep asking for it. The hunter has a Steller sea cow handle and brass guard, I actually get cash money for this one.
Here's a little bit about the design theory on them. In my early guiding days we used Forschner skinners and openers for butchering game, they are good knives but harder metal holds up better. We have some big critters up here, bull moose top out at 1,200 pounds and brown bears do too, the biggest one we ever weighed was 1,185 pounds. (It had a skull of 30 1/16, we cut it into 50 pound chunks and weighed it with a fish scale and a chunk of netting off the beach, it's in Burger Brothers sporting goods store in MPLS.) My point is they are big and it takes up to three hours to skin one with a good skinner and a helper, our wrists would get sore. Most people only use the last three inches of the knife while skinning so I shortened up the blade and narrowed the ricasso. No more need to choke up on the blade and it cut down on the wrist fatigue. The skinners have a big belly (me too, but in this case it's the knife, mine got big when I quit guiding for a living) and a blunt point to help cut down on false cuts in the hide, they are hollow ground for the whole width with a 24 inch diameter, they are meant to be light so you can feel the blade skinning and skinny so it takes less pressure to push it through tissue and to sharpen up quickly. No rough duty here, they are not meant to go near bone or teeth. In many parts of Alaska we do back pack hunts and often kill game far from the drop-off location so it is important to skin close to keep the hide as light as possible, we want to shave the hide right to the leather. I needed to pack the Burger Brother bear, mentioned earlier, 12 miles, the hide wieghed 90 pounds skun very close and the fleshed out skull was another 15.
I don't do those kinds of hunts any more but the knives do. Thanks for looking at them. Mine is not the only way to do it, just one of them. It's easy to come off as some kind of know-it-all when writing these things, I hope I didn't do that. Mark
Here's a little bit about the design theory on them. In my early guiding days we used Forschner skinners and openers for butchering game, they are good knives but harder metal holds up better. We have some big critters up here, bull moose top out at 1,200 pounds and brown bears do too, the biggest one we ever weighed was 1,185 pounds. (It had a skull of 30 1/16, we cut it into 50 pound chunks and weighed it with a fish scale and a chunk of netting off the beach, it's in Burger Brothers sporting goods store in MPLS.) My point is they are big and it takes up to three hours to skin one with a good skinner and a helper, our wrists would get sore. Most people only use the last three inches of the knife while skinning so I shortened up the blade and narrowed the ricasso. No more need to choke up on the blade and it cut down on the wrist fatigue. The skinners have a big belly (me too, but in this case it's the knife, mine got big when I quit guiding for a living) and a blunt point to help cut down on false cuts in the hide, they are hollow ground for the whole width with a 24 inch diameter, they are meant to be light so you can feel the blade skinning and skinny so it takes less pressure to push it through tissue and to sharpen up quickly. No rough duty here, they are not meant to go near bone or teeth. In many parts of Alaska we do back pack hunts and often kill game far from the drop-off location so it is important to skin close to keep the hide as light as possible, we want to shave the hide right to the leather. I needed to pack the Burger Brother bear, mentioned earlier, 12 miles, the hide wieghed 90 pounds skun very close and the fleshed out skull was another 15.
I don't do those kinds of hunts any more but the knives do. Thanks for looking at them. Mine is not the only way to do it, just one of them. It's easy to come off as some kind of know-it-all when writing these things, I hope I didn't do that. Mark
