I have designed this knife with a focus on ease of manufacture. It is meant to be a simple design that would allow me to utilize micarta made when impregnating wooden handles with epoxy. The metal bolsters are not exactly easy to make, but micarta would allow me to forgo them completely if I ever decide to do so. I do not like knives without bolsters, thou.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The ornamental pins came out more asymmetrical than I hoped for, I will have to use another method to get them more consistent. And the black micarta, made from old jeans, looks tacticool, which is not entirely intended. The knife is a small outdoor knife, suitable for example for mushroom picking. In fact, my father immediately said it would be a knife ideal for mushroom picking upon seeing it, which made me happy because that was my intent.
Then I have also made a badger knife with a handle from micarta. But this time it was not micarta made from stacked layers of fabric but from smaller cuts of different colors crumpled together in the resin.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
It is hard to take a photo of, but the crumpled fabric does give the micarta a black&grey camo look, which is again more tacticool than I intended. I will probably start making micarta with bright colors because those are more suitable for a forest walk IMO – if you lose them, you have better chances of finding them than these. Although the stainless steel would, of course, gleam like a naked bum amongst the undergrowth.
I will probably furnish both of these with simple black sheaths. These knives are meant to be simple.
These are both lovely. I like the angles on the second one a bit better but I agree with your father -- these are terrific knives to take mushroom hunting! They look very useful and appropriate.
Really quite pretty, nice work there.
They look too useful to be confused with current tacticool knives…
Shapely knives. I like the idea of colourful micarta for the handles.
I’ve seen mushroom knives that have integrated brushes for cleaning the ‘shrooms. I wonder how useful are such things? I think the socket in the handle would make it possible to have a detachable brush for the knife (the brushes in mushroom knives are usually not detachable).
What @2 lochaber Said.
I agree that bright colors would be a good idea for ‘shrooming. My Beloved and Darling Wife wraps all her tool handles in orange or yellow duct tape so she doesn’t lose them in the garden.
fusilier
James 2:24
Tacti? Maybe.
Cool? Definitly!
I love the squiggly look of the handles.