Auggghhh! A First Love Comes Back To Haunt Me...

[Jorah Lavin]

Rambling around the net, I found this guy who makes forged knives that make me feel the same way a really decent 1911 does...

http://www.arcadianforge.com/AFAvailableNow.htm

Maybe not fighting knives per se, I hope you all will forgive the off topic post... these "Finnish" style knives are an old favorite of mine, and the boot knife over on the right side of this page is particularly nice, if not particularly traditional.

-Jorah

[Spectre]

Beautiful. The style is called...(thinking) pukko? Something like that? Anyway, these knives are very versatile, and useful as good tools that can double as defensive devices. Sounds like this thread, therefore, is home either here or in the gear forum. :D

(They do look darn sweet, too, Jorah.)

[Erick Gelhaus]

Naw, it can stay here.

:)

[Jorah Lavin]

Black nylon grips, brass bolsters or whatever they are called, and the blade has "Hackman Finland Stainless Tapio Wirkkala" on it.

I got the knife from a catalog like Sharper Image or something, for $30... one of the sharpest knives I've ever used, and easy to keep sharp. I wish I had two!

Check out the Links page on that guy's site; I found "Brisa Knife Supply," (http://www.brisa.fi/) with all sorts of stuff to build your own knives... why am I practically drooling to get started, when I'm not even particularly handy, and don't even have a workshop set up? Ah, hardware lust strikes again.

Check out the Damascus steel and the wood on this baby...

http://www.brisa.fi/lynn3.jpg

PS: I managed to track down a photo of my knife (http://pierpont11.tripod.com/images/wirkknife1.JPG) ... now I REALLY wish I'd bought a second one and put it away unused...!!!!
http://pierpont11.tripod.com/metal.htm

[Don Gwinn]

I can't load the pic of your knife, but there are some nice ones on that site. Doesn't look like the maker is calling most of those pukkos, but really, there's not much difference between the pukko and those blades. They're usually small, simple, no guard, a nicely swelled grip, and a wooden, bone or antler sheath. Scandinavian steel is justly famous; it's not really a better-performing steel than a lot of what we have, but they had stainless that worked that well long before most people. Good stuff.

[Quartus]

Some purty stuff there, fer sure.

But Jorah, you just hit one of my pet peeves.

How sharp a knife was when you bought it has almost nothing to do with quality of the knife. Granted, you can't get a good edge out of junk steel, but you CAN get a good edge out of mediocre steel.

The test is, how well does it HOLD an edge.

I have a knife I use for general round the house stuff (opening packages, whatever) that came to me pretty sharp. REAL sharp, in fact.

It's a piece of junk. Chinese garbage. I got it as a freebie from Sportsmans Warehouse.

[Jorah Lavin]

but you'd have no problem with my ol' puukko. It not only stays sharp, but freshes up really easily. My wife has a variety of French and German cutlery in the kitchen, some fairly expensive, and the Finnish knife gets at least as sharp as any of them, and is easier to sharpen.

I don't pretend to understand why or how this is possible, since I'm not a metalurgest. I do know that this knife comes as close to non-stainless high-quality German steel blades that I've sharpened, in terms of ease of maintenance and sharpness.

I once found a kitchen knife in a junk store that looked to me to be really, really, really old... it was that "dancing twins" trademark, I've had too much beer to remember what the name is. The blade was about a foot long and as flexible as a dream. Really sharp. Easy to sharpen. I gave it as a present to a friend of mine, who did some cooking. He didn't realize what he had, and I found him a year later using it to hold a window open... I should have taken the damned thing back, it was amazing. Anyway, the puukko is almost that good, and stainless to boot. I don't actually use it at the moment, it lives in my bug-out bag in the front hall closet...

For packages and things like that I use razor knives. I got tired of cleaning adhesive off my better knives.

-Jorah

[Quartus]

Oh, I have no doubt as to the quality of your knife. I was griping about other folks who DON'T know knives who think that the fact the knife was sharp out of the box proves that it's a quality knife.

Yeah, I wouldn't use a good knife for opening boxes, etc. either. But this one is junk anyway, so I don't mind.

[Spectre]

Finnish steel- and attitude- is justly famous. (See current sig! :D)