Progress on my semi-integral bush barong

 This is somewhat of a special knife to me. It´s made from a piece of my first sword, a claymore I forged together with the folks of Clan Mac Laren. This is a piece from the tang originally that turned out to be leftover, so I thought I´d try out something new with it. A lot of thought  went into the construction. I wanted a knife with a sturdy yet nimble feel and at the same time an able chopper, slasher and slicer. The handle thusly should be offset, a bit like a pistol grip, to aid in chopping. To aid in cutting, it is not too thick in the spine and has a very high convex bevel. When I thought about it, it was when a problem occurred to me: The offset helps a lot in cutting, slashing and chopping freehand, but when preparing food you often cut on a board, and an offset handle like this one always compromises this. To aid in counteracting this effect, the contour of the handle follows a more or less s-shape, but what helps most is the barong style sage-leaf blade. This way the hindmost part of the blade might not get in contact with the board, but get into effect when you perform a drawing cut. Then the sausage or onion you want to slice is somewhat "gathered up", just like a recurve edge line would. For pressure cuts you can still use the tip area of the blade.

 The blade is tapering from 8-1,5 mm presenting a "bearing of equal load" layout. This means, a branch is always thickest at the stem of a tree making for an ideal stress distribution. A distal taper is always able to bear the equal load of a straight bearing double its size or more, depending on the material. The quench line is a progressive edge temper, meaning, the hardness gradually fades towards the spine and is not just selective. That way the blade can be much thinner than a traditional uniform or standard edge-quench temper because it has somewhat spring-like characteristics.

The blade is some 115mm long. I fitted it with olive wood scales and mosaic pins.

I look forward to use and test it. In the hand (while it still has to see some polishing) it feels well comfy and the balance point is right on the index finger. It cuts as aggressively as intended.

But I´m in for some serious testing still... watch out;-).

Experimental bushcraft knife design-integral bush Barong

This is something I currently have in the making. I was thinking hard about my way of knifemaking, and while I like to make ornamental and artisan concept knives, even spiritual knives, I certainly lack the talent for eloquent ornaments like the ones by my love. What I HAVE a talent for, however, is brutal backwoods beaters that can support your weight;-) but look dead ugly. Now this knife was admittedly inspired by Dan Koster`s Muck camp knife and a Barong in my collection. One of my latest bushcraft knives put to painful questioning here has a slightly offset angle of the handle which makes chopping and whittling a cinch. But the straight edge line makes it a bit difficult to actually use all of the edge when cutting on a flat surface. The Barong style has a curved edge line making for a better compromise when using it for kitchen tasks without compromising whittling and chopping prowess (or so I hope;-)). Now it is not thought socially adequate to carry a big and hefty Barong on your belt around these parts, so the blade has to be under 12 cm in length, which is fine for me, for most of the time I do not need anything larger. The blade also has a very gentle convex bevel, which in unison with the wide blade will make for an excellent slicer even with a 4 mm spine. For steel I used super-tough train wagon leaf spring steel. It does not take the highest of all tempers, but is tough as grandpa.  Forging it was a bummer, that I can tell you!;-) The blade is selectively tempered, of course. I have to correct the tang a bit and drill it out some more for balance, for I want the balance point on the index finger. Scales will presumeably be Corsian "pepper" juniper wood or G10 / micarta, in either case with mosaic pins and red G10 liners... we´ll see... and I want to design a decent kit sheath for scout carry mode for it.