Whittling test yields surprises

stoffi said:
Cool :)
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I can probably give you a more detailed answer.

Per Wikipedia: 'Whittling is the art of carving shapes out of raw wood with a knife.'

That implies I have way more talent than I do. For any kind of intricate carving where the objective was a work-of-art I'm sure there are any number of blades that would be better than the ones I used.

But I don't have any of those and the real world application I envisioned when doing my modest test was more of the bushcraft/camping variety where one might wish to make a Feather Stick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather_stick to help start a fire.

In such a case one would have to use whatever knife one had available and I wanted to see how the knives I had handy would perform. There is also the old country/rural practice of sitting on the front porch and whittling away the time by whittling a stick with no object other than to turn a stick into a pile of shavings.

The serrated knives in the test (the Enduras) would perform the chore of making a feather stick very well. But they aren't ideal for the second type of whittling nor are they appropriate for the classic definition of whittling where a work-of-art is the object.

I appreciate your comments and the fact that you took the time to read my post but don't think too hard on this, I sure didn't:)
 
Very interesting test.

I think one thing this test shows is how much variations in the way individuals use tools can make for wide variety of choices that would not be suitable for others. Shouldn't be all that surprising. After all, there are hundreds of shapes, sizes and styles of knives to be had. If there was one universal performer, that number would probably be in the dozens, if that. I know some of my choices would be scoffed at by many folks here. In my defense, all I can say is what works for me just works.
 
I appreciated your inclusion and evaluation of serrated blades. I have such a low opinion of serrated blades I need to see things like this to balance my prejudices. Other than the surprisingly good performance of some serrated blade your results are about what I would expect. The blade profile makes a big difference for this type of test. If you try and make shallow cuts you need to lay the blade nearly flat on your stick. That works best with a hollow ground blade, followed by flat ground, followed by a very high ground blade. If the blade is saber ground you have to tilt it up to a higher angle to start your cut and it wedges more abruptly into the material as you continue the cut. As long as your cuts are shallow the hollow grind will work the best (at least for these relatively heavy blades). For whittling I usually favor a basic carbon steel stockman model pocket knife. I like the sheepsfoot blade the best.

Here's another interesting test of a similar type of performance, wooden pencil sharpening. When you sharpen a pencil you need to be able to take very shallow cuts with minimum stress on the lead and the remainder of the pencil. As you try and get a nice fine point on the lead you need a very sharp and thin edge or the lead (well graphite actually) will break. That is sort of a defacto test that helped shape my preference for hollow ground blades.

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That's a nice knife that was designed for guys who really work outdoors all the time. My grandfather wore out a ton of them. He never asked where he could find a heavy duty knife for a crisis situation. I don't even know if he ever owned a sheath knife. If he needed to prepare game he brought a boning knife and a butcher knife to supplement his stockman.
 
cgmblade said:
I haven't re-profiled the edge. I've done some light touch-up on the Sharpmaker but it hasn't seemed to need any major maintenance.

It gives every indication of being very sharp. Like I said above; it pop cut the cord easily and shaves as well as any other knife. It also push cuts paper very well and will catch at just a slight angle on a fingernail. I've tried it on other pieces of wood including an old 2x4 with the same results. On the edge of the 2x4 it just skipped along. Then I tried the Kershaw and it bite into the wood and produced a nice long strip.
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This seems to be the very problem of this kind of test: most - if not all - US made factory knives have a secondary edge - which I regard as a manufacturing shorcut - which makes effective whitling more or less impossible. Yes. they may cut paper and hair, but that´s more or less irrelevant. The cure is very simple: just resharpen the blade to convex or flat cutting edge and remove the burr. This is what people & bladesmiths have always known & done here in Scandinavia. E.g. my BM Griptilian was totally useless until I convexed it, freehand.

As for using SE knives for cutting wood, I´d do it only in an emergency situation to make tinder, for shaping a useful object they are useless.
 
Get yourself a scandi ground knife and try it. I do not think you will find that Veeteetee is right. When I got my first scandi blade nearly 50 years ago I was expecting it to whittle thin strips well like my boy scout knife--it didn't. A scandi grind is just a thinly profiled saber grind. It has the same geometric problems as a saber grind, it is just sharper because the final bevel is rather acute. Some of the thinner scandi ground blades, like a classic wood handled Mora carbon steel blade work pretty well, but much of that is just due to a thinner blade. Try whittling with a good sharp kitchen knife with a thin edge for comparison. A BM Griptilian is a bad design for whittling and many designs outperform it. Doing better than a Griptilian does not validate the scandi design.
 
In my experience,knives with hard and simple(without too many carbides) steels are better choices for whittling.These blades work really well on wood and tough ,therefore I would like to see more manufacturers use them on higher end tactical knives.They are not good for carboard,maybe,but I seldom cut carboard in the Army.Axis lock+13C26@Rc60 would be a dream come true for me.IMHO,toughness,wood working ability,corrosion resistance should be the priorities of steels for outdoor use.Knives with simpler but hard stainless steels are safer for batoning technique,better for carving wood,and better in corrosion resistance.
 
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Jeff Clark said:
A scandi grind is just a thinly profiled saber grind. It has the same geometric problems as a saber grind, it is just sharper because the final bevel is rather acute.
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I believe you like hollow ground blades for whittling and my test confirmed your preferences. The hollow ground Kershaw and Ka-Bar did very well as did the flat ground Caly 3.

I've been doing a little research trying to figure out exactly what a scandi grind is. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe a scandi grind is where the blade tapers to the edge with no secondary bevel or a very small secondary bevel. From my reading it seemed that it didn't really matter where the taper began either at the top of the blade or midway.

If the above information is correct then it would seem that the grind on the Ritter Gritilian is close to a scandi grind. It's full flat ground with a very small final bevel and yet it won't cut wood. It'll shave and push cut paper, but it does poorly on wood.

Isstaipei wrote about different types of steel being better for whittling. Is S30V a poor choice for this application? I'm disappointed in the Ritter's performance in this regard and am thinking about getting rid of it. I purchased the knife to take on day hikes where I wanted a good knife but maybe didn't want to carry a fixed blade. Any recommendations?
 
Jeff Clark said:
Get yourself a scandi ground knife and try it. I do not think you will find that Veeteetee is right. When I got my first scandi blade nearly 50 years ago I was expecting it to whittle thin strips well like my boy scout knife--it didn't. A scandi grind is just a thinly profiled saber grind. It has the same geometric problems as a saber grind, it is just sharper because the final bevel is rather acute. Some of the thinner scandi ground blades, like a classic wood handled Mora carbon steel blade work pretty well, but much of that is just due to a thinner blade. Try whittling with a good sharp kitchen knife with a thin edge for comparison. A BM Griptilian is a bad design for whittling and many designs outperform it. Doing better than a Griptilian does not validate the scandi design.
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OK, nice to hear we´ve had it all wrong for the last 1000 years here in Scandinavia:rolleyes:
 
Veeteetee, While a scandi grind works well for wood carving it doesn't give the best performance for this particular arbitrary task. We aren't talking about general usefulness, just peeling thin surface strips off a stick.

The real problem with a scandi grind is weakness which is also the problem with a full hollow ground edge. The thin edges can buckle and roll. Hence they work better when you've got a hard carbon steel blade or hard core laminated blade. The models with soft 12C27 blades while reasonably tough don't stand up well to bone. A secondary bevel or better yet a convex bevel will increase the edge strength of a scandi or hollow grind. Normally we aren't really talking about a full straight razor hollow grind up to the edge on a knife. I assume the hollow terminates some distance back from the edge.

cgmblade, S30V is hard to bring to an extremely fine edge. I use ultrafine diamond hones and strop on submicron diamond paste to get best performance. You would get a finer edge if you got a simple 1095 carbon steel blade or VG10 stainless.
 
It's true that, on paper, the scandi edge geometry is not optimal for these cuts. But the human factor has to be considered. After all, a knife is nothing without the human hand to direct it.

The scandi edge works very well for woodworking is because the blade can be oriented easily and instinctively. The wide zero grind lets you feel with your fingers and see with your eyes exactly where the bevels are pointing, so fine drawing and whittling cuts can be placed and directed precisely.

When people talk about the ergonomics of a knife, they usually refer to the handle. But the forte of a scandi knife is in the ergonomics of the blade.
 
You will learn the most by trying things. Sitting around talking and thinking often leads to mistaken ideas. Trying things yourself helps separate the wheat from the chaff. Sometimes even when people offer you a nugget of truth you won't interpret it correctly unless you've tried it. It's easy to get things out of perspective without hands on experience.
 
interesting test. i think it's great that some of us around here like to just mess around w/ our knives and see what they are capable of.

one observation: your piece of wood looked to be very variable in it's composition. and since you were taking the 20 strokes w/ each knife all at once, then each knife only got to "see" one part of the tree limb. the "good" knives could have simply gotten lucky ;)

i also would guess that green wood (ie, wood that might be sappy) would favor narrower blades with higher polishes/blade coatings.

those are my thoughts.

keep up the good work :)
 
ExMachina said:
interesting test. i think it's great that some of us around here like to just mess around w/ our knives and see what they are capable of.

one observation: your piece of wood looked to be very variable in it's composition. and since you were taking the 20 strokes w/ each knife all at once, then each knife only got to "see" one part of the tree limb. the "good" knives could have simply gotten lucky ;)

i also would guess that green wood (ie, wood that might be sappy) would favor narrower blades with higher polishes/blade coatings.

those are my thoughts.

keep up the good work :)
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Thanks for your comments.:)

During the test I did recognize the possibility that the composition of the wood as I carved it might change and influence the results. My methods weren't scientific but I did try to vary where I was whittling with each knife to minimize this problem. As much as possible I tried to give each knife a chance to whittle bark as well as deeper layers of wood. And when I had used all the knives I then went back and whittled some more with various knives trying to confirm the earlier results and figure out just how I wanted to group them.

Since the test I've had the occasion to pick up various sticks and whittle some more and the knives that did well in the test continued to perform well and those that did poorly in the test are still performing poorly.

I'm now trying to find other things to cut so I can compare them again.
 
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