New knife by Kai-EDC bush with buffalo scales

Kai has done it again! When I was on a visit at his place recently, he presented me his newest project. 1.2842 steel, blade 76 mm long, Watussi - cattle horn handle glued on with epoxy, but not riveted (not my way of doing things, but beautiful anyway...), 2mm spine, and a leather sheath of natural tanned leather. That´s a cutter!

Mountain man style utility

 I finally managed to get the utility blade that was lying around on the bench for ages now mounted. Leaf spring steel, with a rather thick blade, selective temper, tempered and heat-blued "freehand". HRC 58-45 (towards the spine). Handle is tanned stag and leather with a brass bolster.

 The tang is riveted against a rune disc. It shows an inscription often found on the inside of vendel time tombstones... I like that;-).

Spine´s rather thick, but since the blade is wide enough, and the bevel is high, it cuts well enough. Batoning and such endeavours;-) are a cinch with this blade. Okay, it has no full tang, and might be the handle will fail due to the added flexibility of the leather washers if you constantly bash it through knotted hardwood. But for that I would recommend a billhook, a hatchet or any such like anyway.

Have to make a decent sheath for it...

Jagd und Hund Expo Dortmund 2012

On Tuesday, the 31st of January my highlight of the year will start in the "Westfalenhallen" neighbouring city of Dortmund. It will take place from 31.01.2012 until Sunday, the 5th of February. There will be roundabout 686 corporations on display, the entire area is about 48.000 m² big. There will be about 79.000 visitors (That number is from 2011). There will be corporations from 34 countries.

Many interesting and important topics will be dealt with. For instance, there will be a theme booth on Geocaching. This sport is currently booming worldwide and quite naturally there are conflicts with other groups as well as some ecological challenges still to be discussed. For the first time, groundspeak, one of the biggest geocaching platforms on the internet and partner of the national hunting association in Germany, will be present and inform about this topic as well as be ready to adress any conflicts face-to-face.

A load of activities will take place, too many to mention them all, but there will be an offroad parcours in expo area 3B, where there will be quite a bit of action (a 5 m teeter - totter on a truck anyone;-)?), a show of hunting with birds of prey (my favourite last year), a show of many different races of hunting dogs, fashion shows, fishing demonstrations and many such like. There will be products from bargain-priced up to high-end geardo equipment;-), guns, ammunition, knives (many very well renowned knifemakers have announced their venue, and I especially look forward to the Swedish, Czechian and Hungarian knifemakers. Loads of delicious food, discussions and meeting people. You can have a good insight on all the actions in this brochure here. If you want to display your products, you can get info here and here.

I look forward to meeting with Per, Martin and Ulf from Karesuando kniven, Mr. Hochstein, Mr. Morsbach from Otter knives, who will be there hopefully, the friendly folks from the Wildfarm Best and all those others, and I have saved the entire year to get me some gear and simply have a ball. I will keep you informed;-), no really, I will!;-)

Traditional Hungarian hunting knives

This is my collection of traditional Hungarian hunting knives. I am quite interested into the ethnographical and morphogenetic influences of the Oriental, German, French and Hungarian folding hunting knives. Hungarian culture was strongly influenced by Turk-nomadic and other Oriental ethnies. It shows in the form of the blade, which supposedly shows an influence of the "Yatagan" fixed blade knife. The top three are hunting knives, the last was sold to me as a shepherd´s knife. The sickle-like short blade was used to ream the hooves of sheep, the large one. I especially like the one with the curved handle. All of them are slip-joint folders, with a high spring rate, but the one with the curved handle is kept open also by an intelligent geometry of spring and handle. It is virtually impossible to accidentally close the blade when doing sensible work. The steel of all three is stainless, but who knows from what quality;-). Except the second one from top, they hold an edge quite well, and that´s all one could ask for. Top is an Szalóntai István blade, the others are made by Mr. Belenczak. All handmade in Hungary, they come dead cheap nonetheless. Kinda rustic appearance, but that only adds to the charme of those little cutters... I love them and use them a lot as a clasp knife for backing up the backup knife that backs up my backup knife, which backs my backup knife up.*ggg*.

Flea market find: Another Horace Kephart-lookalike

 I recently read the book of Kephart;-) and realized I had a very similar knife to the one featured in his book as an allround knife for woodcraft lying around in my attic / warzone - turned - home*ggg*. I got it some 3 years ago from Bünyamin. It is a Widder Solingen make sold as a "pathfinder´s knife". It is made from carbon steel, flat ground, and has a thin blade. It stands the Solingen "nail test". In that the blade is laid on the fingernail or nowadays a ring of steel and pulled over it with the nail / ring forming a kind of wave in the edge. This wave has to roll through the edge from back to front, and the edge has to be straight after that. Quite an achievement!

The knife dates back to ca. 1950-1960. The handle is made from leather, fibre and brass washers. The pommel is brass also, and there is a not inside it to tighten the washer stack, The sheath is typical of the era, a simple one with no inlay, made from leather.

I feel inspired to do some research on the influence of overseas woodcraft authors on Solingen knifemaking...:-)

Study and (mild;-)) review of a Janos Madaras Hungarian hunting knife

 This one is one of the highlights in my collection, and I like it quite a lot. It´s a blade made by Janos Madaras, 95 mm long and 440 C. It has a perfect, razor-like hollow grind that is so elastic, it shows a continuous wave when drawn over a testing steel rod, yet works to carve the same steel. It has an integral bolster, the rivets and the washers are handmade. The washers are  nickel silver, the rivets bronze. The baroque engraving is hand made by the maker, as is the sheath from thick, naturally tanned and formed leather.

 Akanthus engraving and hollow grind detail.

 The blade gets continuously thinner to the tip, a hint to being hand - forged (which it is). The scales from stag antler are hand-fitted with not so much as 1 / 10  mm tolerance.

 The hollow grind to nearly zero, and the bolster part. The only thing not so precise is the small leftover part from the blade´s ricasso on the bolster.

The hollow grind ground absolutely symmetrically.


So, I normally test my knives to the max. With this knife I am somewhat reluctant. I love its beauty, and the extreme cutting prowess. I even used it to shave my facial hair, for it has all the properties a good razor has, too! It cuts onion slices so thin you can see your dinner dated girlfriend through... can´t see why noone wants to date me...hmpf;-).