Lately I've been trying to find a knife that fits what I'm looking for. I never really thought about a custom solution to cook up a unique knife for my personal needs.
I've recently been working with a knife maker to cook me up a sheath, and some new grips for a Tom Brown Tracker. While I think it's a good tool, I realise that there's some shortcomings.
I think too much was crammed into it to be a solid performer at any given task. That being said, much like the survivalist himself, the Tracker knife is a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. I do like it better than the RAT-7 as an overall performer. Basically, if I was only taking one, it would be the TBT.
So, over the past couple of weeks, I'd been stewing on a custom-design.
Right now, I'm at a stumbling block on what steel to use. I'm leaning towards either D2, ATS-34, or S30V.
My main uses for a full-sized, "bush" knife are hacking, notching, and splitting logs.
Since I'm not planning on taking down any large game, I don't need any extraneous horseshit like gut-hooks; I don't really see the point in a wire-stripper/fence "breaker" either.
The only things I do are chop, baton, notch, and shave branches. I don't use branches bigger than my wrist, so the 8" blade is more for heft and chopping power. I don't want a hatchet. I absolutely hate hatchets.
Here's the preliminary doodle from last week, and my lunch-break design:
I'm open to feedback. This will probably take a while for me to really settle on a design I like.
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