More Photos Below!Gallery
A friend was selling his grampa’s old butcher knife at a garage sale. It was huge, with a 1/3″ thick maybe 14″ long blade—more like a cleaver. But I saw another knife hiding inside it. I asked him if it would be OK if I chopped up the old knife and he said fine, let’s do it! He wanted to see what would come of it all…
So I drew the outline of a new knife on the blade then borrowed a friend’s angle-grinder and cut it out.
Too bad I didn’t take a darn “before” photo!
Well, here’s what I have now…
And here’s another pic of where I think it’s headed. I photoshopped it to make it an inch shorter, bringing the tip lower and more in line with the handle, and making the blade lots thinner—but still WAY stout and fine for chopping action.
It now has a 9.75″ blade and it weighs about 2 lbs!
I got the blade shape idea from the Nessmuk knife—a classic smallish thin camp knife. So it’s a huge, heavy Nessmuk. Meaning, not really a Nessmuk but it has the look. The hump on top gives it a forward weighting and heft for chopping. Right now the blade is so thick that it’s a wedge that’s even thicker than a hatchet. I want it thin enough to whittle with, to cut/chop kindling shavings and slice in instead of glancing off. A wedge shape doesn’t like to whittle. A guy online at the rec.knives newsgroup called it a nice looking “smachet”—I guess that’s a semi-military type of big, heavy chopping knife. They can also be used for digging. I’d use mine for limbing saplings, too—trail clearing.
I’ll make a big ole sheath for it. Probably with a shoulder strap.
Big Nessmuk…now
Maybe what it’ll look like later…
