Monday, February 22, 2016

THREE KNIVES FROM ONE

If we were practical sorts we’d think on knives as just another tool.  Of course, just about any knife works in the wilds if necessity dictates it must be used.  After all, our ancestors used rocks and bone to cut their way through everything from skin to wood.  Venture to faraway places and you’ll find knives that, from an American or European perspective, appear primitive, almost comical.  “Well, that’s not a knife.  This is a knife!”  But, indeed, those are knives and I’d venture to say that the thin-bladed, stick tanged designs seen in Africa and amongst the aborigines in Australia and the jungle enclaves in New Guinea are used more regularly and with greater proficiency than by any American who has a trunk full of knives, most of them barely used; and when those knives are employed they see nothing much beyond a feather stick or that tortuous practice called batoning.  Have you noticed that most of the knives displayed on the various knife forums and YouTube look unused?  Ah, but of course modern man (or woman) has other jobs for a knife like slicing tomatoes or cutting open cardboard boxes.  We are, however, as obsessed with knives as our brothers and sisters in other lands.  Our preoccupations are the product of a deeply seated collective unconscious that selected for those who could make and use knives as opposed to those who failed.  As such the knife holds a special place in our minds; a place reserved for those items wedded to our genetics through thousands of years of breeding and surviving.

We discuss steel types and blade designs and tang shapes and spine thickness and handle materials then go looking for the magic that will somehow turn us from novice to expert.  All the while the true practitioner takes a blade purchased at some market or even from a local peddler and plies his trade with nary a thought about the finer points of knife construction other than sharpness as it translates to cutting abilities.


This young fellow approached me and asked if I wanted to see the knife he carried.  He worked on a small piece of property attending to chores and helping with the garden.  The knife looked well used but functional.  He said he’d bought it la pulga (the flea market).  Stainless steel of what I imagine is 440A with plastic scales.  It looked sharpened with a mill file and as such had a burr-ridden edge.  But the knife served its purpose of cutting twine and jute rope as well as trimming stems and other odd jobs.

As with a lot of you, knives are an innate passion of mine.  I go about making knives and, as of late, buying puukko blades to attach all sorts of woods and antlers.  I’ve rescued dozens of machetes that had seen years of service and were but half as wide as they’d originally been.  I’d find them dumped into boxes or wooden crates and left to rot in barns or fields.  In my opinion the only machete worth saving is a Latin American machete because they’re made of good quality carbon steel usually between 1070 and 1075.  Sometimes I’ll reheat treat the steel and bring up the temper and other times I’ll just clean off the blades, reshape them into a smaller knife and go from there.  Peruse this blog for photos of my rescued and modified machete blades.  Recently, however, I did something I’ve not done before and that was to take a brand new machete and make it into three knives.  Made in Colombia, the Gavilan is, like all machetes, thin bladed and flexible.  The original blade length was 22 inches.  I cut the blade to ten inches leaving me with a 12 inch piece of blade steel that measured from 1.5 mm to 1 mm in thickness.  Using an angle grinder I cut out two knife blanks with the remaining 12 inches of steel.  It’s important to keep a can of water nearby to immerse the steel in the water in order to keep it cool.  Beveling thin blades is quite easy but thin blades heat up quickly.  So work for a couple of seconds and then immerse the blade in the water.

Once the blades had been beveled I scrounged around for some pieces of my micarta and found one made from cardstock and another from cloth.  I attached the cloth scales to the larger blade and the piece of cardstock micarta to the smaller blade.










I’ve done other similar projects in the last few months.  They’re fun to do if not a bit nonsensical.  In this case I took a ten dollar Gavilan machete and made three knives with it.  I used discarded pieces of micarta and some epoxy and I made some functional knives.  Don’t ask me to explain why I did this.  It’s not my fault.  Blame it on my ancient Celtic ancestors or maybe the people who lived even before them.  They passed along this passion for the blade.  I’m but an innocent recipient.

12 comments:

  1. Well written.
    Knives or any other hand tool are only as good as the person using them.

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    1. Yep, skill is the key. A fellow who knows how to use a knife will make it work.

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  2. Great work sir. As a matter of fact, I live in Brazil and can tell you the Tramontina brand is not very worth any rescuing. Other not so common brands like collins and zebu are good steel and deserve some work. I have a 12" very old collins in my stuff, I'll be grinding it to bowie shape. I also have some "good" stuff I use little, like a buck 442 my uncle gave me and a victorinox spartan, but all my other knives are for heavy duty, the only care I give them is honing and wiping an oily rag from time to time. Oh yes, loved your article on the Judge. I have the 6.5" version and love it, though it's .410 only (gun control in brazil) -- a .410 with .450 smoothbore barrel and .45 colt stepped chambers... BEst regards sir.

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    1. Now you've got me very interested in the Zebu machete. Do you happen to know what the steel is? Also, the Judge has become my number one revolver because it gives me the versatility I need out here in this isolated spot. What do you use in your Judge? Are you mostly shooting bird-shot or are you shooting OO buck as well?
      Thanks for sharing the info.

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  3. Mr. Longoria I believe Zebu is at least 1070. They rust easily but hold a great edge. I happen to have a pocketknife from them. They started some years ago as a small operation and that grew a lot over the years. I'll try to check then post it. I slugged the bore of my gun and got a surprise. It's.450 smoothbore so I developed my double ball loads of .40 and .440ish size. Also shoot very little birdshot for practice and keep for snakes/survival purposes. We have bad laws concerning firearms and the powder I can get is about red dot burning speed, so I use 6gr for 3/8oz shot, single round ball/slug, as for the double ball loads I use brass shells and seat the wad at .45 Colt bullet depth. It sounds strange, but works fine, because since I can't get slower powders I counterbalance pressure with more case space than if the was was seared over the powder. V.

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    1. Sir, indeed it's 1070. Just checked their page, which is in Portuguese but I think you can run into google translate for better reading.

      http://www.zebu.com.br/pt/pagina.php?cont=produtosDet&id=1341

      Best,

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    2. Just wanted you to know that I've been checking out the Zebu knife, machete. One more question, if you don't mind. I can't find anything about spine width on the Zebu machete. Is it about the same as the Tramontina...about 2.5 mm close to the handle tapering to about 1.5 mm at the tip? Also, it looks like a modified stick tang? Is that correct? I've noticed that the Gavilan is a modified stick tang as is the Tranontina. I've never had any problems with that design. As you know, I'm a machete nut. There's actually a good reason for that since we use machetes here on the ranch almost daily. Really, a good quality machete (Latin American made) and an SAK with a saw blade is all anyone really needs in the Brushlands or further south. IMO. Problem is that us knife aficionados are always looking for an excuse to mess around with a new knife.

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  4. Hi there, sorry for the delay. yes, most machetes here taper from tang. Save some home made/custom made ones, that have constant width. Today's machetes probably are using a modified stick yes, but at least the more common design tramontinas (without fancy grip) use the full tang you can see the steel around from top to bottom. I love knives, but don't care to buy any, since I'm well covered with what I have including those office cutters. They are good and if you resharpen the blades you never break its segments. I'm using a single one, steel body chinese, for about 10yrs, just sharpening when needed. 3 knives I like are the Ka-bar marine fighter, the BK2 and the ESEE JUnglas, but they're too expensive and non essential to justify. I'd rather buy ammo with the money hehehe... I like your approach. Machete and saw/hatchet wins. I live in a region quite like yours, but not that dry yet.

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  5. As for the Judge, I'm using a .440~ round ball over a regular powder charge and it gave good power and penetration. The sizes I load most are 3x00 buckshot, 1x440 ball, 3/8oz of BB, 4 or 6. Given the short barrel and the fast powders we can have here, there's no healthy way to go to 1/2oz. This is the regular 32ga load in Brazil... which is a lot bigger and can lower the pressure in the shell. I believe Americans "killed" the 32ga for this reason. Why another gauge to do .410 jobs? Here the 32 is still well regarded, I had a single-shot Rossi in my teens, before gun control took over.I started messing with black powder to see if I can stack 2x440 balls and have some power (say like .45 Colt), since the payload is about 260gr. Take care, best regards. V.

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  6. *** About the short barrel, I forgot to add, I load bigger shot because it starts with low speed and if sometime I need to shoot a bird or small game, it better keep energy down range. Reading some old reloading manuals, I learnt the judge muzzle velocity compares to a shotgun at about 35yrds!

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    1. You're right about stick tangs of various designs having become popular on many Latin American machetes. More's the pity. These are not the tiny micro-stick tangs found on parangs and kukuris but instead full-grip-length accouterments designed to save steel. In other words, once the cost accountants got a hold of manufacturing, it all went to crap. Well, maybe it hasn't gone that far in the world of Latin American machetes but it most certainly has gone that far in gun manufacturing. Gone are the days of the supremely made Winchester (pre-64) model 70s, the controlled round feed, small ring Husqvarnas, the FN commercial Mausers and the like. Today's motto is not "lets keep quality high" but instead "let's make it as cheaply as we can." Nonetheless, the Taurus Judge is a very decent revolver and has become my mainstay in a world of venomous snakes and ornery wild hogs. I prefer number 6 shot for los viboras and .45 LC for the piggies.

      I must confess I'm a knife nut. But I excuse my obsession by saying that, for the most part, I make all my own knives so I cut out the middle man, the end man, and just about everyone else in the process. So I guess I am forgiven in that regard.

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    2. You tell me! I'm profoundly digusted at most "new" plastic firearms and such.. I was considering getting an expensive army license so I could get access to restricted caliber firearms and hopefully reloading (yes in communist brazil you can barely reload shotshells without that permit) just to find we can't import say CZ rifles because Imbel (state maker of FALs for the army/police and some 1911 clones) makes a stupid .308 rifle. They made nice Mauser 98 clones in the past but not anymore. In the 1960s, they had a lot of surplus rifles and carbines and guess what? Most were sold cheap to American buyers as surplus and the carbines were bubba'ed at factory to make .410 and 28ga ugly bolt shotguns... They don't make them anymore... I think CZ series of bolt rifles are the closest thing to original Mausers today, though their shotguns are made in Turkey by Huglu I think.

      As for knives, only black handle stuff with a TACTICAL serrated edge are common. I see some monstrosities all the time in the market and magazines...

      As for the Judge since it's no .45, I have to stick to the ball load I mentioned and factory 000 loads. I'm trying a bunch of loads mostly slugs to see what's best for now. I have this gun since last Xmas so I didn't shoot it enough but even in its smoothbore incarnation there's plenty of versatily a .38spl (my other option) don't have here since we can't handload. I had to do some tweaking myself like honing the cylinder chambers of ammo would stick badly or had to be pounded in and out. Also dissassembled it and cleaned some gunky that was letting the cylinder spin freely. It trapped the cylinder lock (latch? the thing that stops the cylinder from moving when the gun is cocked...) and now it's much better. I'm speculating the rifling makes this gun shoot higher so the front post need to be taller. In the smoothbore, it makes the shots go too low. I painted a white bead at a lower point with wife's nail polish and have to go to range to see if it improved. If so, I'll remove the original sight and put something else.

      As for your love of knives I understand perfectly. I am another case... Best regards, V.

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