Thread: Various Knives

question for you...been pondering this all day.
Ive got two if not three old wooden handled skinning knives possibly green river possibly ex freezing works....very old and very easy to get and keep sharp..only issue I have is not a fan at all of curved skinning blades....how hard would it be/it it feasable/possible to heat and reshape blade to straight??? without having to go whole hog and heat to red and beat them to pulp and start again???

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

question for you...been pondering this all day.
Ive got two if not three old wooden handled skinning knives possibly green river possibly ex freezing works....very old and very easy to get and keep sharp..only issue I have is not a fan at all of curved skinning blades....how hard would it be/it it feasable/possible to heat and reshape blade to straight??? without having to go whole hog and heat to red and beat them to pulp and start again???

Cold working destroys steel so no you cant move metal into different shapes without heat and enough heat (red at least) so it will move under the hammer without cracking so what you contemplate would ruin the blades. It is the heat treating of good carbon steel that makes them take and hold an edge and a correctly heat treated carbon steel blade will hold an edge but still be reasonably easy to keep sharp.

For me this is all the curve that a skinning knife should have and the way I worked toward making then since 1968 when I was given an old green river skinner with the big upswept blade to kill a few sheep on the high country station I went when I left school school. Hated the design and that was when I started critical analysis of knife design and working on better (for my use) shapes in both blade and handle for easy and safe use and handling.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

question for you...been pondering this all day.
Ive got two if not three old wooden handled skinning knives possibly green river possibly ex freezing works....very old and very easy to get and keep sharp..only issue I have is not a fan at all of curved skinning blades....how hard would it be/it it feasable/possible to heat and reshape blade to straight??? without having to go whole hog and heat to red and beat them to pulp and start again???

Another thing to think about is reshaping the blades to take some of the big upsweep off them. Careful grinding to minimise heat and you can do a great deal with an old knife that has good steel by re-shaping them. Not hard to do at all.

More ready to go with a General purpose kitchen and pairing knife in NitroV with spilled acrylic as a gift for a friend.
An EDC with curly eucalyptus over 1084 blade in stamped sheath with attached honing steel. The customer wanted my name engraved with the NuZ being the Czech way of spelling knives and with the N and Z being capitalised reinforcing its NZ made origin.
And for a repeat customer an Euro kitchen set in NitroV and a General purpose Field knife in 1084 HC, all with Totora over brass.

A Wapiti Hunter for a very big man so had to make the handle a 1/2 in longer than normal to suit his hands. A nice set of spalted Hackberry scales with snake knot lanyard over curve backed buffalo horn bolster on the 3/16 1075 blade and carried in a closed top sheath.