Long live the hollow grind!

[meatmaster]

Okay, I am sure I will stir up a hornets nest here, but I reckon a hollow ground, drop point blade is #1 for bushcraft use. I use a Buck Vanguard & a Brusletto falken for gutting/skinning/whittiling/firestarting etc, & have never had a problem. Both take a razor edge from a fine india stone (in particular the brusletto) and both will take a beating. Don't get me wrong, I like scandi grinds, but don't find them any easier to carve with, and they are certainly not as efficient in the meat prep dept. I have taken big chunks out of the blade of a kellam utility taking breasts off pheasants before now-not so with buck or brusletto falken. I reckon a big reason why scandis are so popular is the ease of sharpening. Be interested to have your thoughts.
Cheers, AK

 

[Adi007]

In a lot of cases it's using what you like best ... if there was a best design there's only be a few different kinds of style of knife!!!! :shock:

I have taken big chunks out of the blade of a kellam utility taking breasts off pheasants before now

How big a chunks? Sounds like an odd thing to happen with a bird ...

I reckon a big reason why scandis are so popular is the ease of sharpening. Be interested to have your thoughts.

I dunno ... with tools like ez-lap and the Sharpmaker I would have thought that sharpening a scandi grind was now harder for people.

I've heard it said so often that a secondary bevel or hollow grind is harder to chip than a scandi - something to do with the strength given to the edge by the shoulder - but I think it's more to do with the steel. The usual steel that has a scandi grind is 01 tool steel ... imagine sharpening a scandi grind on a steel like CPM 440!!!! That's a lot of very hard steel to remove! I also think that technique comes into play too ... if you're used to a hollow grind then you'll do a better job with that than a scandi or secondary bevel.

Horses for courses!

 

[Martyn]

It's certainly unusual to chip a carbon tool steel with a relatively soft temper, I would of thought you'd more likely roll the edge than chip it. It's more common to chip the edge of a high rockwell, stainless though.

Still, stuff happens.

I agree, the scandi grind may well be popular because of it's ease of sharpening - seems like a valid reason to be popular to me. I certainly like it for that reason, other reasons too, but that's a good one.

 

[meatmaster]

Adi- the chips, about 1 mm depth were caused by cutting through the joints. Another point I thougt about in an idle moment-scandi grinds are alot harder on the stones (if using a bench stone) look at all that extra surface area you are exposing to the stone.

 

[JakeR]

I think i have heard Maddave talk about this knife, but could you send me a link for the brusletto?

Cheers,

Jake

 

[meatmaster]

Jake-not sure about a link for brusletto, but Attleborough Acessories are UK agents www.attacc.co.uk. The Falken is a really good blade, 12c27 steel and capable of most outdoor tasks, me thinks. The Solvgutton looks nice, about £85-silver guard.
cheers ak

 

[Hoodoo]

I find the full scandi grind much better for woodcarving than a hollow grind or a flat grind. This is why you don't see hollow ground chisels or planes with secondary bevels. Nor do you usually see any serious woodcarvers using hollow ground knives. I also find a convex grind better for woodcarving than a hollow grind or a flat grind. If I knock the sholders off the secondary bevel of a hollow or flat grind, woodcarving ability improves drastically. Every whittler I've ever met sharpens their pocket knife so that it's nearly flat, i.e., no secondary bevel. I also find the scandi grind and the full convex grind better for push cuts through heavy rope like sisal and hemp.

For wood carving, any time you have a small secondary bevel on a knife, you are essentially trying to force a small wedge through a fairly incompressible substance. That's why full scandi grinds carve better than ones with a secondary bevel.

A simple test can illustrate this easily. Get a 1 inch hardwood dowel and start carving on the end, as if you are carving a point on it. It short order you will see which style of knife bite into the wood and carves off large chips and which don't. It's less noticeable on green wood because green wood is softer and more compressible.

 

[Adi007]

Excellent test ... scandi wins hands down (even if it is comparably blunter than a hollow grind or secondary bevel.
:biggthump

A simple test can illustrate this easily. Get a 1 inch hardwood dowel and start carving on the end, as if you are carving a point on it. It short order you will see which style of knife bite into the wood and carves off large chips and which don't. It's less noticeable on green wood because green wood is softer and more compressible.

 

[Stuart]

The type of grind and the number of bevels on a blade are down to personal choice and intended use, I like the single bevel Scandi Grind and the single bevel convex grind, but find it very difficult to maintain a convex in the field (though many with experiance of this grind do not)

The following is from an earlier post and explains the history of the hollow grind and the benifits of the Scandi grind (single bevel flat AKA saber grind) it does not cover convex:

Kevin McClung:

Quote:
"Sheffield, England was to straight razors what Detroit was to automobiles. Their only serious competition for sales in Europe and America came from that other historic cutlery mecca, Solingen, Germany.

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, beards came back into vogue in a big way. Contemporaneous to this was the romantic popularization of the Bowie knife. Sheffield had been producing large numbers of flat ground Bowies, but the demand in America far outstripped their flat grind production capability. The decline in straight razor sales offered the perfect solution so far as the British marketing types were concerned. To wit, make hollow ground Bowies. The production advantages were obvious. The hollow grind is simpler and faster to accomplish, as it removes far less stock than a flat grind. The equipment was already in place and lying nearly idle, due to the decline in razor sales. Thus began the age of the hollow grind, a decision driven by capital expediency rather than dedication to quality."

Quote:
"Look no further than the flat grind for best general utility in a knife blade. Why? Because it is the least specialized. It suffers from none of the weaknesses of the other three from a user stand point, but it is slightly more costly and time consuming to produce, for the simple reason that as much as 60% of the stock must be removed by grinding, as opposed to the 10-30% removed by bevel or hollow grinding. The results are well worth the extra effort. Flat ground blades have a better strength to weight ratio and cut a wide variety of materials with less effort. The edge does not suffer weakness from excessive thinness, nor does the blade transition from edge thickness to full stock thickness too quickly, rendering the blade too fat to cut deeply with ease. The British had it right when they were selling flat ground cutlery to the discriminating buyer, who really needed a first class knife. As soon as faddish popularity kicked in, and everyone had to have a "Bowie knife", they started cranking out the hollow ground stuff"

Joe Talmadge at www.Bladeforums.com :

Quote:
"The hollow grind is done by taking two concave scoops out of the side of the blade. Many production companies use this grind, because it's easier to design machines to do it. But many custom makers grind this way as well. Its great advantage is that the edge is extraordinarily thin, and thin edges slice better. The disadvantage is that the thinner the edge, the weaker it is. Hollow ground edges can chip or roll over in harder use. And the hollow ground edge can't penetrate too far for food-type chopping, because the edge gets non-linearly thicker as it nears the spine."

Quote:
"The flat grind endeavors to provide an edge that is both thin and strong, and leaves a strong thick spine. The grind is completely flat, going from the spine to the edge. This grind is harder to make, because a lot of steel needs to be ground away. However, the edge ends up being fairly thin and so cutting very well. Because the bevels are flat, there is plenty of metal backing the edge, so it's much stronger than a hollow grind. It is not as strong as a sabre grind, but will outcut that grind.

The edge on this design also penetrates better for slicing and chopping. The hollow grind expands non-linearly as you go up the blade, the sabre grind expands linearly but very quickly. The flat grind expands linearly and slowly. Kitchen knives are usually flat ground, because when chopping/slicing food you need to push the blade all the way through the food. This grind is an outstanding compromise between strength and cutting ability, sacrificing little for either."

If you wish to learn a little more about knife blades etc please see the following links

www.bladeforums.com/features/faqbladegeo.shtml
www.capeforge.com/sharp.htm
www.arrow-dynamics.com/articlegrind.htm

 

[Hoodoo]

There is some misleading information in those quotes. Firstly, just because a knife is hollow ground does not mean it has a thinner edge. It depends on how the hollow grind was done. I guess if you are saying "all else being equal" but I really don't know how that statement even works because hollow and flat grinding ensure that all things are not equal. I have a flat ground Grohmann that has an incredibly thin edge. I have some hollow ground buck knives with edges that are much thicker and are very poor woodcarvers. I think the confusion arises depending on whether we are talking about the thickness at the edge or the thickness in the overall grind. As for woodcarving, I'm concerned about thickness right at the edge. And that can be different no matter what grind the knife has.

What matters mostly to me in terms of woodcarving (and bushcraft in general) is whether the knife does or does not have a secondary bevel and if it does, how thick it is and what the shape is.

The other interesting thing is that for years, the Scandi grind went unnoticed at Bladeforums yet it has and continues to be an incredibly successful grind, proven in the field and by woodcarvers the world over, for a long, long time.

 

[Adi007]

Any ideas why that was so Hoodoo?

The other interesting thing is that for years, the Scandi grind went unnoticed at Bladeforums ...

 

[Hoodoo]

I guess because Scandinavian knives are not commonplace in the US and Bladeforums is primarily a US based site. They seem to be few and far between. But they are now showing up in more and more places--at least online. I know very few sporting goods stores that sell them and I go to a lot of gun and knife shows and it's rare to see a Scandi blade. I think it's just a matter of underexposure. Besides, who would believe that an $8 mora could out cut a $400 custom? :-D

I'm working to change that. Look for an article in Tactical Knives magazine on the Woodlore come November or so. :-D The weird thing is that there have been some good articles on Scandi blades written in the magazines and knife annuals but it has not translated into common availability in the sporting good stores here in the US.

 

[Hoodoo]

I guess I should add that "hunting knives" seem to dominate the US market and your everyday puukko is not the optimal skinner and meat processor in the world. Blades with a little belly yet with enough "point" on them to open an animal are more popular. Small secondary bevels fare better around bone. But I think there are plenty of scandi designs out there to fill that niche as well. I have a really nice small Leuku from Kellam that would have no problem field dressing a moose. :-D

 

[Adi007]

The quality of the mora stuff is quite hard to believe and they are a more than capable bushcraft/general outdoor knife. Granted, I see that hunting in the US skews the market a bit and also there seems to be greater emphasis on "wonder steels" than this side of the pond but I'm surprised that the wonders of the scandi grind are still to be discovered by most over there!

Besides, who would believe that an $8 mora could out cut a $400 custom? :-D

 

[Martyn]

There is some misleading information in those quotes.

Was just about to say the same thing. It's not wrong, but the implication is that flat grind mneans scandi - it doesn't - the flat grind referred to in those quotes is not the kind of flat grind you find on a scandi knife. The quote refers to a "full-flat" grind. In other words, a knife with flat sides all the way from the edge to the spine, these typically have a secondary edge bevel and the geometry of such a blade is far removed from a typical scandi knife.

 

[Adi007]

Sharpening a flat grind or scandi grind blade involves removing a lot of metal to do the job. Does anyone have any experience with scandi or flat grind on a hard stainless steel blade like CPM 440V or VG10? I'd imagine that it would be a tough job, even using diamond or ceramic stones.

 

[sargey]

when my S30V OSF knife (woodlore clone, sort of) turns up, i'll let you know!

cheers ,and.

 

[Martyn]

I guess I should add that "hunting knives" seem to dominate the US market and your everyday puukko is not the optimal skinner and meat processor in the world. Blades with a little belly yet with enough "point" on them to open an animal are more popular. Small secondary bevels fare better around bone. But I think there are plenty of scandi designs out there to fill that niche as well. I have a really nice small Leuku from Kellam that would have no problem field dressing a moose. :-D

This was discussed some time ago on BritishBlades. There is a huge following in the States for the Bowie, probably because of the history, but also because it's a fair game knife. But it's a lousy bushcrafter. The American market is very "hunrting" driven, which can often mean a day out in the 4x4 with your pick of high powered rifles blowing the head off any unsuspecting Elk that wanders into your sights, then out with the axes, saws & bowies to butcher the beast. Many Americans seem to evaluate a knife within this context which really isn't a bushcraft/woodlore remit.

Here in the UK and probably the rest of Europe to some lesser extent, such hunting as described above is virtually unheard of. The Bowie doesnt carry much historical value for brits, and it';s not much use as the kind of tool we are looking for, so you get a big discrepancy between what drives the American market and the British/European market.

 

[Martyn]

Sharpening a flat grind or scandi grind blade involves removing a lot of metal to do the job. Does anyone have any experience with scandi or flat grind on a hard stainless steel blade like CPM 440V or VG10? I'd imagine that it would be a tough job, even using diamond or ceramic stones.

Adi, a flat grind usually has a small secondary bevel and is the same to sharpen as a convex grind.

 

[Adi007]

Scandi S30V :yikes: if that ever gets blunt I'd think that you're going to have to take a week off work to sharpen it! :-D :-D

... that is, if it ever gets blunt! :-D

when my S30V OSF knife (woodlore clone, sort of) turns up, i'll let you know!

cheers ,and.