I got this knife some days back and have finally gotten a couple of chances
or rather I made a couple...to check it out yesterday. This knife is very similar to the Warthorn design having the same type guard, but with a little of weight trimmed away here and there and a bit smaller with shorter handle and blade. I have given this one the name "1-0". The blade on this one measures 5 5/8" from where the spine meets the handle to the tip, and the handle measures 5 3/8 from the end of the tang extension to where the handle meets the spine.
I decided to put it through a couple of tests involving two things I do often; Firecraft, and cooking.
The in experiments with the last design I learned that I liked how the slanted guard and scalloped spine worked really well for scraping fatwood fuzz. So I definitely wanted that feature in this one.
With that fuzz and some thin shavings the razor sharp edge made easy ...
and a flew split pieces of fatwood ...
And I had a great start to a fire.
Why fatwood makes a poor cooking fuel, but a great distress signal fire if it's handy. This is just a few small pieces... picture a couple dozen stumps of this stuff split apart and burning good.
Then last night I made some Mutton hash to see how it handled cooking. Now my potato peeling isn't the greatest with any knife because I seldom peel my potatoes and when I do it's not with a knife. I thought it did ok and would do better in the hands of someone more familiar with the task.
and here are a few pictures from working with the 1-0 a little earlier this evening. I wanted to burn the rust out some old cast-iron skillets I found so I wanted some good hot coals.
Chopping and splitting some well seasoned apple wood was a good way to check the toughness of this little knife.
For those of you who are wondering about the name... I call this knife the 1-0 (one-zero) in memory of some old friends to whom I feel I owe my being alive. These two men are known to me only as Pete and Dave, I was 11 when I met them and their last names if I ever even knew them are now lost from my memory. The entire story of my time of hanging out with these two guys is a three-and-a-half-years-long story which has no place being recounted here just enough to explain the 1-0 nomenclature.
I first met Pete and Dave in Dallas Texas in the later 1970's at a lounge where my mother was head bartender. My stepfather had become quite a jerk over the last couple of years (later learned it was a cocaine addiction) and Pete and Dave were friends of my mother who became like uncles to me. They would take me on weekend hiking trips during the school year and in the summers for some week long camping trips. We would hike in to places with minimal gear and make camp out of whatever we could scrounge together something these two guys were masters at. They taught me that survival was more about using ones wit more so than a prescribed set of "how-to's". We played games that took hide and seek, and capture the flag to previously unimagined levels, and I learned to eat things that I had previously never considered as a food source. At night sitting around the fire we would just sit and talk, they would talk about far away places, towns with strange names, and a culture with a diet nothing like mine. I think that to Pete and Dave these trips were just to get me away from my stepfather for a while and give me a break from his abuse and to get away from people for a while themselves. At the time they had no idea just how well they were preparing me for a very dark time to come then again sometimes I can't help but wonder if just maybe they did have an idea. A year later, after leaving Dallas, my mother and stepfather separated and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Then one night Floyd returned, kicked in the door, and opened fire. It's all sort of blurry now .mainly I just remember the pops and flashes of the beginning and then coming out of shock talking to strangers outside sitting under the apple tree, watching the surrealistic scene of multi-colored flashing lights, and watching the bodies being carried out on gurneys. Then some time later walking back into the house to find the white walls of our kitchen completely redecorated and a lot of my former stepfather on the walls of my bedroom. Thus at the age of fifteen began a very long four year journey through some very dark places. Along the way it would be not only my stubbornness, but the teachings of Pete and Dave, and the grace of some higher power that would allow me to survive many things I that to this day I still have trouble believing I made it through.
On more than one occasion I heard from both Pete and Dave how it was the teachings and actions of men who bore the designation "1-0" that saved their asses in some very grave situations and how those men were the ones they had the most respect for. It was the teachings of Pete and Dave that allowed me to overcome many great obstacles and survive some very dark places. For me these two men were my "1-0's", and so I name this knife in their memory.
I decided to put it through a couple of tests involving two things I do often; Firecraft, and cooking.
The in experiments with the last design I learned that I liked how the slanted guard and scalloped spine worked really well for scraping fatwood fuzz. So I definitely wanted that feature in this one.
With that fuzz and some thin shavings the razor sharp edge made easy ...
and a flew split pieces of fatwood ...
And I had a great start to a fire.
Why fatwood makes a poor cooking fuel, but a great distress signal fire if it's handy. This is just a few small pieces... picture a couple dozen stumps of this stuff split apart and burning good.
Then last night I made some Mutton hash to see how it handled cooking. Now my potato peeling isn't the greatest with any knife because I seldom peel my potatoes and when I do it's not with a knife. I thought it did ok and would do better in the hands of someone more familiar with the task.
and here are a few pictures from working with the 1-0 a little earlier this evening. I wanted to burn the rust out some old cast-iron skillets I found so I wanted some good hot coals.
Chopping and splitting some well seasoned apple wood was a good way to check the toughness of this little knife.
For those of you who are wondering about the name... I call this knife the 1-0 (one-zero) in memory of some old friends to whom I feel I owe my being alive. These two men are known to me only as Pete and Dave, I was 11 when I met them and their last names if I ever even knew them are now lost from my memory. The entire story of my time of hanging out with these two guys is a three-and-a-half-years-long story which has no place being recounted here just enough to explain the 1-0 nomenclature.
I first met Pete and Dave in Dallas Texas in the later 1970's at a lounge where my mother was head bartender. My stepfather had become quite a jerk over the last couple of years (later learned it was a cocaine addiction) and Pete and Dave were friends of my mother who became like uncles to me. They would take me on weekend hiking trips during the school year and in the summers for some week long camping trips. We would hike in to places with minimal gear and make camp out of whatever we could scrounge together something these two guys were masters at. They taught me that survival was more about using ones wit more so than a prescribed set of "how-to's". We played games that took hide and seek, and capture the flag to previously unimagined levels, and I learned to eat things that I had previously never considered as a food source. At night sitting around the fire we would just sit and talk, they would talk about far away places, towns with strange names, and a culture with a diet nothing like mine. I think that to Pete and Dave these trips were just to get me away from my stepfather for a while and give me a break from his abuse and to get away from people for a while themselves. At the time they had no idea just how well they were preparing me for a very dark time to come then again sometimes I can't help but wonder if just maybe they did have an idea. A year later, after leaving Dallas, my mother and stepfather separated and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Then one night Floyd returned, kicked in the door, and opened fire. It's all sort of blurry now .mainly I just remember the pops and flashes of the beginning and then coming out of shock talking to strangers outside sitting under the apple tree, watching the surrealistic scene of multi-colored flashing lights, and watching the bodies being carried out on gurneys. Then some time later walking back into the house to find the white walls of our kitchen completely redecorated and a lot of my former stepfather on the walls of my bedroom. Thus at the age of fifteen began a very long four year journey through some very dark places. Along the way it would be not only my stubbornness, but the teachings of Pete and Dave, and the grace of some higher power that would allow me to survive many things I that to this day I still have trouble believing I made it through.
On more than one occasion I heard from both Pete and Dave how it was the teachings and actions of men who bore the designation "1-0" that saved their asses in some very grave situations and how those men were the ones they had the most respect for. It was the teachings of Pete and Dave that allowed me to overcome many great obstacles and survive some very dark places. For me these two men were my "1-0's", and so I name this knife in their memory.
