Where a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.
Quoting from the source:
Dan Keffeler’s winning run at the 2019 BladeSports National Championships. If you’re not familiar with Dan’s work, he also makes some impressive swords and choppers in modern high alloy tool steel.
Damn… that is an impressive blade. Notice it is not pointy which makes it totally cool in the formerly Great Britain.
Semi-retired like Vito Corleone before the heart attack. Consiglieri to J.Kb and AWA. I lived in a Gun Control Paradise: It sucked and got people killed. I do believe that Freedom scares the political elites.
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I’m sort of meh on these knives. They have become very specialized competition winning tools and the standards are set by Blade Sports.
10 inch max blade length, 15 inch OAL. 2 inch blade height, no limit to thickness.
They have all become cleaver like choppers at the max allowable size, using 1/4 inch or 3/8 stock.
Most guys buy tool steel strip, on the low end O1 or A2, some guys are going all in for CPM REX M4 or 9V mold and die steel.
Then grind and heat treat. The only “artistry” is in the handles, and that is governed by the Sport (lanyard required) and use. The result is very little variation between knives.
What started out at a way for knife makers to test their knives against one another has become knife design homogeneity driven by competition.
J.Kb, if I can summarize, you’re meh on these because they’re purpose-built and you don’t care about that purpose?
I see that, but I’m still impressed.
Sort of…
In the early days of this sport, knife makers would bring out their knives. They were all of different sizes and designs. Guys would test Bowies and all sorts of stuff.
As the sport became more competition driven the deign became optimized to the sport, which funneled all the designs to that 10 inch by 2 inch cleaver shape.
The only variation being in thickness and grind. The thicker and steeper the grind, the more weight for chopping. The thinner and shallower the better for slicing, so it’s up to the maker to optimize there for what they thinks is the best balance of chopping and slicing.
That sort of takes a little of the fun out of it for me.
Sort of like looking at race cars from back in the day before wind tunnel testing when they came in all sorts of awesome designs, versus Formula 1 or NASCAR today where they are all the same but for the decals due to optimization and regulation.
I can appreciate the skill of the heat treat, but these knives in general make me go “meh.” They are purpose driven competition choppers, not general purpose knives.
Specialized competition tends to do that. Long range benchrest rifles tend to look alike, perform alike and aren’t practical for anything else. NASCAR autos used to be modified off the shelf cars, now they’re machines optimized to go fast and turn left. Not saying there isn’t value in advancing the state of the art, but when H. Sapiens compete using tools, every advantage is sought and the trend is to a sameness optimized to fit the given rules.
Hence the “meh.” I can appreciate the skill that goes into making one of these, but I’m not going to buy one and put it on my belt for use as a hunting/camping/outdoors knife.
The water bottles & paper slice made me golf-clap. Whole video reminded me of those old 80’s late night ads… “it slices, it dices! It also makes julienne fries!” 😀