Why Scandie Grind?

[WayTooSharp]

you can turn the blade when carving wood



no those are not

 

[marcinek]

I can agree with that. But I have a question: The best slicer for any given knife is a full flat. But take any knife that is full flat, one can get another knife that's a better slicer if the other knife is thinner and full flat resulting in a more acute angle, yes?

Yes. Thinner slices better than thicker.

 

[pinnah]

Same here. I find scandies almost worthless for push cutting/food prep. Once they go "deep" into something they bind up. Try slicing a carrot or onion with one. Fine for a shallow, draw cut, but so are flat grinds.

My experience...

I find that any knife with a pronounced transition to a thicker portion of the blade will bind in non-self-separating materials like potatoes, carrots and cardboard. Scandis will bind in this way. But so will stock hollow grinds, like on my Buck and Case hunting knives. I find this worse when that transition is sharp, as it is on both a Mora or a Buck 110 and I find it gets better if I flatten and convex these transitions.

Here is a Mora Companion that I convexed both the shoulder and the primary grind down to the edge on.
Mora Companion by Pinnah, on Flickr

And here is a Case 316-5 that I've flattened (it's been flattened even further since this picture).
Case 316-5 (drop point) by Pinnah, on Flickr

The convexed appleseed shape of the Mora still isn't a great slicer by any means and will still shoot carrots off of the table when cutting them. This is why I prefer my convexed higher sabre ground H-15 for a camp knife, as it slices pretty OK and still handles wood splitting easily (hollow grinds don't).


For working with wood, I find the issue is not the grind of the blade but rather, the grind near the edge. I find that any blade will do fine wood working and will make decent fine shavings if the apex is sharp.

But I find that when I'm making hard cuts and I want to control those hard cuts to produce controlled larger shavings, as I do when making shavings or feather-sticks for fire starting, then I strongly prefer that the blade be thicker behind the edge. I feel that I can control the edge angle easier and suspect that the thicker shoulder of the edge acts as a fulcrum that helps with this control. I find that my true hollow grinds tend to dive into the wood doing this. I find that a zero-edge scandi edge will also dive on me but once I put on a convexed micro-bevel, I gain more control again.

The knife that showed me that it's the blade thickness near the edge is an old 70s vintage Buck 110, which uses what Buck used to call a semi-hollow grind that gets thicker just above the edge (to add bolt cutting strength).
Buck 110 by Pinnah, on Flickr

This knife will feather-stick with the best of them.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

My old carpenter axe has a scandi grind, my large felling axe is ground high and thin

 

[Macchina]

I can agree with that. But I have a question: The best slicer for any given knife is a full flat. But take any knife that is full flat, one can get another knife that's a better slicer if the other knife is thinner and full flat resulting in a more acute angle, yes?

I strongly disagree. Given blades of equal thickness and height I find a full height hollow grind (such as on my Dozier Yukon Skinner Pro) to slice far superior to a full height flat grind (such as on my RAT-4). Even a narrow blade like a Buck 102 with a nice hollow grind can be a fantastic slicer in soft mediums. I much prefer a hollow grind to any other grind for hunting knives and meat carving knives.

 

[Thomas Linton]

Yes. But at some point the edge can be too acute for the demands placed on it.

 

[marcinek]

What would you call this grind?

Buck calls it (and thus the BCCI Buckalites will insist that is) a "Flat Grind".

Its a saber grind. You are oversimplifying.

DeadBoxHero's post is very, very close to nailing it.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1427691-Why-Scandie-Grind?p=16458769#post16458769

The grinds, from left to right are full, scandi, and saber. And scandi is really just a type of saber. If the primary grind goes from edge to spine its full. If not, it some sort of saber/scandi.

Flat, convex, or hollow are entirely separate things. You can have full flat, full convex, hollow scandi, convex saber, etc etc etc.

 

[marcinek]

I strongly disagree. Given blades of equal thickness and height I find a full height hollow grind (such as on my Dozier Yukon Skinner Pro) to slice far superior to a full height flat grind (such as on my RAT-4). Even a narrow blade like a Buck 102 with a nice hollow grind can be a fantastic slicer in soft mediums. I much prefer a hollow grind to any other grind for hunting knives and meat carving knives.

Because they do shallow draw cuts using that very thin part of the blade. For a "while" , as you say given blades of equal thickness and height, the hollow grind will be thinner than a flat.

 

[pinnah]

Its a saber grind. You are oversimplifying.

I'm not disagreeing with you. Just noting that some folks refer to that Buck as a flat or high flat or v-flat grind. I believe that Benchmade refers to their similar grinds as flat or high flat, as distinguished from full flat.

 

[marcinek]

I'm not disagreeing with you. Just noting that some folks refer to that Buck as a flat or high flat or v-flat grind. I believe that Benchmade refers to their similar grinds as flat or high flat, as distinguished from full flat.

Then they are oversimplifying. Maybe the primary grind IS flat...I'll take your word for it. But saying just "flat" says nothing about whether it is full or saber/scandi.

High flat saber would probably be most accurate. "Flat" would probably be least.

 

[pinnah]

Regarding slicing, here are some of my better folding slicers.

The Buck 110 at the top has been dramatically thinned. I've flattened off the severe shoulder at the top of the hollow and have thinned the spine a bit. It now slices on par with the Opinel 9 and 10 below it, although I'd give the edge to the Opinel 9 just due to it having a still thinner spine.

There are nuanced differences in the thin (now thinner) hollow grind of the (modified) 110 and the Opinels. I prefer the hollow grind of the Buck on self-separating material like meat. The convex Opinel seems to do a better job on hard to separate materials like potatoes. I think the earlier and more gradual convexity helps keep the apex from binding. But on small hard things like carrots that can be cut without getting the Buck's spine involved, the Buck is very slightly better. But this is a very hard thing to notice and I could be convinced the other direction tomorrow, they're that close.

The Schrade 51OT is full flat ground and has the widest spine. I still prefer it to the others for potatoes. I suspect that tall nature of the blade (spine to edge) helps keep it going straight through the material. I prefer a real chef knife to a paring knife for that sort of slicing for the same reason.

My conclusion is that for slicing you want:
- thin spine
- thin behind the edge
- taller blade
- no friction-causing shoulder on the grind

 

[katanas]

pinnah, check out the Boker Chefyougo; I think you would approve.

 

[Sonnydaze]

I suspect that tall nature of the blade (spine to edge) helps keep it going straight through the material. I prefer a real chef knife to a paring knife for that sort of slicing for the same reason.

My conclusion is that for slicing you want:
- thin spine
- thin behind the edge
- taller blade
- no friction-causing shoulder on the grind

...sounds about right...and yes, the hollow-grind offers an advantage as long you don't go too deep into the material.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Let's untangle this mess, shall we?

Bevels come in three flavors: hollow, flat, and convex.

Grinds come in two major styles: saber, and full. Saber grinds may be any height that is less than the full height of the blade.

Edges come in two major styles: secondary (where there is a primary bevel behind the edge) or zero (where the primary grind and the edge are one and the same.)

Now mix and match from those three categories. A so-called "Scandi" grind is just a convenient shorthand term intended to mean a zero flat saber grind. This is something of a misnomer, since not only is that configuration not unique to Scandinavia, but countless Scandinavian knives do not use that particular configuration. Traditionally, most knives within the styles that are today to be considered as having a "Scandi" grind by default actually had convex edges due to the nature of sharpening over time, and many or even most had a small, barely perceptible microbevel on them. In fact, Moras (often considered to be the archetypal example of the "Scandi" grind) actually come with a very slight hollow grind to them with a microbevel, except in the case of their dedicated carving knives. A true microbevel is distinct from a conventional secondary bevel in that it is made with only 1-3 light strokes on a fine stone, and can only be seen by the naked eye when deliberately looking for it under bright light. Any bigger than that and it's become a regular "macro"-bevel.

The advantage of a "Scandi" is that--for a given stock thickness and edge angle--it is the very thickest possible geometry you can get. This allows it both to be cheap to manufacture, as well as providing strong support against side loads on the edge, which helps the low-angled edges of carving knives resist rolling when torquing them to break from a cut.

 

[Alberta Ed]

The sharpest blade in my collection is a Scandi grind in 1070 by Ivan Campos. A few convex blades (Marble's Campcraft in 52100) come close, but the Scandi blade will pop hair above the skin.

 

[irona]

I can agree with that. But I have a question: The best slicer for any given knife is a full flat. But take any knife that is full flat, one can get another knife that's a better slicer if the other knife is thinner and full flat resulting in a more acute angle, yes?

Yes, the thinner and wider the blade is, the shallower the angle, resulting in slicey goodness!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Rey HRH]

I strongly disagree. Given blades of equal thickness and height I find a full height hollow grind (such as on my Dozier Yukon Skinner Pro) to slice far superior to a full height flat grind (such as on my RAT-4). Even a narrow blade like a Buck 102 with a nice hollow grind can be a fantastic slicer in soft mediums. I much prefer a hollow grind to any other grind for hunting knives and meat carving knives.

I believe the hollow grind attribute does not add to the slicing ability of the blade; it's more for "strengthening" the blade by having a thicker spine. If you lop off the top of the blade before the profile flares out, then you simply have a thinner blade.

 

[DeadboxHero]

I believe the hollow grind attribute does not add to the slicing ability of the blade; it's more for "strengthening" the blade by having a thicker spine. If you lop off the top of the blade before the profile flares out, then you simply have a thinner blade.

There is less steel behind the edge that is why it slices better, hollow grinds also maintain a thin geometry as you sharpen them versus getting thicker and thicker on a flat grind.

Thats why I shave my face with a hollow ground straight razor not a flat ground one
but a hollow grind makes a poor wood knife.

it gets stuck in the wood when carving.

its the opposite of a scandi which is better for carving but poor at slicing.

thats why there are other grinds that offer more versatility such as convex grinds etc

 

[Rey HRH]

There is less steel behind the edge that is why it slices better, hollow grinds also maintain a thin geometry as you sharpen them versus getting thicker and thicker on a flat grind.

Thats why I shave my face with a hollow ground straight razor not a flat ground one
but a hollow grind makes a poor wood knife.

it gets stuck in the wood when carving.

its the opposite of a scandi which is better for carving but poor at slicing.

thats why there are other grinds that offer more versatility such as convex grinds etc

We're not disagreeing. "There is less steel behind the edge" is equal to me saying it's a thinner blade. What makes it a "hollow ground" is the transition to a thicker spine.

But now I have a question for you because I don't know the answer: what makes a hollow grind a poor wood knife? what part of it gets stuck in the wood? I can possibly see the scandi leveraging it's side against the wood and preventing it from being wedged as the edge moves forward,the wood being shaved away pushes out and is unable to "trap" the knife. I can see the hollow ground being able to cut into the wood unintentionally at a steeper angle and thereby getting wedged. The issue is interesting to me as I've never thought about this.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Thin hollow grinds can end up rippling when torquing them to break free of the cut.