Woodbite Custom Knives

I have to pleasure to write up this review on my first Mora, thanks to Marc of EDCdepot.com. This is the model #612 Made by K.J. Eriksson of Frosts of Sweden.

The Basics: This is a high carbon steel knife with the dimensions of a 4.125 inch blade, 8.5 inches overall, birchwood handle with a total weight of 3 ounces. It comes with a decently molded plastic sheath. It also has a finger guard that provides you some extra security during use. The greatest thing about this knife is the price ($15) and can be ordered HERE.

First Impressions: Not only is this my first impression of the model number 612, but its my first impression of a Swedish Mora all together. Out of the package this trust worthy knife was shaving sharp and it took very little time to hone it to a glorified razor. The edge was fantastic, but the spine was a bit rough and unfinished. The basic rounded wood handle was a lot more comfortable that I would have thought and proved so during 2 weeks of camp use. There was no blade play or movement between the blade and the handle. The sheath is the bummer and could secure the knife a bit better, but when your paying $15 for a knife that will last for a lifetime, who cares. If you are planning on carrying around a Mora for your primary woods knife, I personally would opt for a leather or kydex sheath to offer a bit more security.

I now label this knife the “womens gateway knife”, because my wife would not put it down. The first day of our 2 week long excursion, I gave her the Mora and told her to use it for all camp cooking duties. It didn’t take her but the first cut to realize that 80% of her current kitchen knives were garbage compared to this $15 all purpose Mora. She cut everything from potatoes to beef ribs with the little Mora and she loved it so much she had to pick up another one. After a short bit of use the Mora started to develop a patina, though unattractive a good patina will eventually protect the blade from rust and rust will happen with a high carbon blade. I would have purchased the second Mora from Marc without hesitation, but she was given a smaller one (I forgot the model #) for her assisting the cook during our first week at a wilderness survival gathering. Both Mora’s are now her goto knives in the kitchen and she is now aware of what quality cutlery can do, even though they are inexpensive, they are very impressive.

During our 2 weeks in the outdoors, I came to realize that you don’t need a $400 prybar of a knife to get the job done. There were several highly educated outdoors men at the event whom rely on a Mora alone for all of their bushcrafty needs and I can now see why. I didn’t do much wood work with the Mora, but I know for a fact that whether it be making fuzz sticks, trap notches or cutting up meat a Mora is all you need. If it happens to get damaged or lost it will not break the bank either. If you buy one, you might as well pick up 2 or 3 because you are going to love them.
[eminimall]

I had the wonderful chance to take part in a knife passaround courtesy of Dan Koster of Koster knives this week and as part of the stipulations of the pass around I had to get some pictures and post them along with a brief write up.

The Bushmaster is not in production at this time and is only a PROTOTYPE, it may be part of Dan’s everyday line up, but only time will tell. The dimensions and specifications as posted by Dan are:

10″ overall
5″ blade = O1, hardened to ~59, full flat ground to a keen edge, as-forged flats
5″ handle = natural canvas micarta, aluminum corby bolts and lanyards

The passaround actually consisted of 2 Bushmasters, one with natural micarta handles and the other with ironwood as well as 3 different types of sheaths.

The nicest looking sheath in my opinion would be the fancier one with the styled design elements, that would be my first choice to be offered with this blade. Now onto the knives.

The blade shape is near perfect, I couldn’t ask for a better shape. It really reminds me of my Bark River Bravo 1, which is a big hit and one of BRK&T’s best selling blades. I have taken some comparison pictures along side the Bravo. The handles of the knives were shaped evenly, I preferred the ironwood over the micarta, but both of the handles were way to big for me. I think it was the depth that was too big for me. I think I was just getting too much bite from the micarta where as the ironwood was nice and smooth. A couple of differences between the two knives were obviously the handle material, the micarta had some thumb grooves and was full tang where the ironwood had a tappered tang. The natural canvas micarta handled knife came with some thumb grooves meant for a firesteel striker those are a must have, I could grip the handle and place my thumb firmly on the grooves for added traction. I would though make the section of grooves extend back closer to the hilt of the knife so I wouldn’t have to extend my thumb so far up the spine of the knife.

I was about the 8th person to do a bit a testing with these knifes so after the brief handling of them I checked to see if the sharpness had maintained throughout the testing. The ironwood one still shaved some hair from my arms where the micarta one didn’t. I chalked this up to people putting the micarta blade though the paces. I also noticed that there were some warping in 2 places along the edge that appeared to be from some sort of twisting motion. For my testing, I kept it simple and just cut down a piece of oleander (2-3″ diameter) using the ironwood blade and the Bushmaster bit into it pretty hard cutting it up quickly. I tried to make a feather stick, but oleanders suck for that so I moved on. I used the tip to drill through a 1/2 inch thick piece of hardwood bark which was no problem for the knife and there was no noticeable tip damage after the fact. This will be a good hard working knife and coming from Dan I’m sure it will be reasonably priced to boot.

Overall I really like the knives, my biggest concern was that the handles were simply to fat for me to use comfortably. The thumb ramp is a great feature, but should be lengthened or start closer to the hilt. The ironwood is gorgeous and that is the handle I would prefer. The stylized sheath is a thumbs up, the other sheaths were nice, but the stylized one would be my choice.
[eminimall]

I acquired this fine blade in trade last month and finally got around to taking some pictures. This knife has many features that I love, great steel, spear point, multiple comfortable grips. My favorite part about this knife is the extra long handle for choking back for heavy, heavy chopping.

The knife came with a nice kydex sheath, but I really prefer this upgrade Blackhawk airborne sheath with the front pouch/pocket. It holds my Leatherman Blast and a mini kit nicely. I had to slightly modify the Blackhawk sheath by cutting the back off of the plastic insert, I guess the B.U.S.K. is a little wider that I thought. The sheath was a good buy so I wasn’t to worried about a slight unseen modification. I did pick up a cheapo first aid kit pouch that I attached onto the original sheath. It fits good and is attached via 550 paracord (must have) and hold quite a bit of personal survival gear.

I haven’t had a chance to really put this knife through the paces, but I did do some destruction to some oleanders without any issues. Clean chops through 2″ branches took a good couple of swings, but it was very impressive chopper for the blade length (6.75 inches).

The pseudo official specs are:
Steel: L6
Grind: Hollow ground spearpoint
Rockwell: 57-58
Blade Length: 6.75 inches
Blade Thickness: 0.25 inches
Handle Length: 6.75 inches
Overall Length: 13.5 inches
Handle Material: G10 Birch Bark Pattern (removable)
Sheath: Original Kydex with Tec Lock plus an OD blackhawk Airborne Deluxe (slightly moded)
Other: KC gun-kote
Notes: Michael Burch has been acknowledged as a maker to watch in 2008 by Blade magazine. Here is a link to the article. I’m waiting confirmation, but I think there are less than a dozen of these bad boys made.
Condition: Gingerly used, but in excellent overall condition. Kydex rubs and general scuffs on gun-kote. This can be re-coated and sharpened to be 100% at no charge.

“The knife is designed to be an all around heavy-duty camp/combat knife that is comfortable to use for a variety of tasks. The handle is long (about six inches from the butt to the front of the scales) so you can easily chop with it, or choke up for fine work. The choil gives even more room to choke up and it trails into the edge so material won’t be caught in it. A checkered thumb-ramp is placed right were your thumb would naturally lay and all edges are smoothed over except for the spine for those of you that like to smack firestarters.” – Posted by Burchtree in Bladeforums.com on 1/4/06.

“Nice to see one of those around! I probably put more thought into the designing of the BUSK than any other knife I ever made, but it didn’t hit off as well as some other blades. I made them to be around 57-58 HRC so they can take plenty of abuse. I wanted them to be easily “sharpenable” in the field (without a diamond hone ). The handles are removeable so the blade can be sent back to me for a fresh coat of gun-kote if ever needed. The reason the handles is a little long is so you can hold it in the back for serious chopping or choke up for fine work. The finger-groove/choil is radiused out toward the edge so you won’t cut your fingers while choking up and it allows material to slide towards the edge is it gets caught in there.” – Posted by Burchtree in the Jerzeedevil.com forums on 3/4/08.


[eminimall]

I recently had the extreme please to pick up both of these fine blades and though I have only owned them for a month or so, I figured it was a good time to write up a quick review.

The Bark River Bravo 1 was developed by Bark River Knife & Tool with the assistance of the training unit of the Force Recon Division of the U.S. Marine Corp. The recon group field tested random knives from store shelves in hopes of finding a knife that best suits their field needs. One of which was the Bark River Gameskeeper and after testing and relaying the information to Mike from BRK&T they came up with the very successful and extremely popular Bravo 1.

The Specifications of the Bravo 1 are:

Overall Length: 9.065 Inches
Blade Length: 4.250 Inches
Blade Steel: A-2 @ 59 RC
Blade Thickness: 0.215 Inch
Weight: 7.375 Ounces
Full tang construction
Full convex grind

The Bravo 1 comes in a huge amount of different handle materials and colors, mine happens to be Blaze orange G10 and according to Bark River’s owner Mike Stewart the Blaze orange is one of the best selling handle materials.

OK, let’s get down to business. When I first received my Bravo 1 and felt it in my hand and was totally satisfied, the fit, feel and heft of this gorgeous knife is incredible. It felt rock solid and comfortable in my hand and with its full convex grind was razor sharp out of the box. My only initial disappointment with the Bravo 1 was the factory kydex sheath. The fit of the sheath was kind of loose and the kydex used was the thinnest available. I addressed my concerns with Mr. Stewart and he stated that the sheath was exactly what the Marine Force Recon team wanted, compact and light weight and as far as the fit of the sheath Mr. Stewart said for me to send my knife back in and he would have a new sheath made. So at this point, I was not satisfied with the sheath, but extremely satisfied with the quick response and the best customer service I have ever experienced. Here is a picture of the factory Sheath taken from DLT Trading’s website. DLT in my opinion has the biggest selection of Bark River products. I was planning on and did order the factory leather sheath with the firesteel loop, which is extremely well made by Sharpshooter sheath systems, so in the end it was not worth it to me to send the knife in for another kydex sheath.

Now, back to the blade review. My first kitchen experience with the Bravo 1 was with a 2 pound half frozen London broil and I must say the slicing ability was extraordinary. I was able to shave thin slices (about 1/8 of an inch) of the beef with no problems and it sliced better than most if not all of my kitchen knives and cut the beef like a hot knife through butter. Even the frozen portions of the steak were very easy to slice through and I was able to get even thinner slices than the thawed portions. Next was to make a fire using natural materials and the matching blaze orange firesteel that I picked up when I bought with the leather sheath. I found some thick oak bark and began to curl off some thin slices for kindling. Edge went through the 1/2 inch piece of bark without any issues and I was able to curl off many tiny pieces of bark, I used the knife in a drawing fashion to accomplish this. After I gather my additional kindling and the bark curls I then used the blade in a scraping manor to get a small pile of oak dust to hopefully catch my spark. Using the back of the blade rather than the recommend thumb ramp against my firesteel worked flawlessly and the sparks were flying, unfortunately I could not get flame from my oak dust. I resorted to crushed up dead oak leaves and after several good tries was able to obtain fire, it was my first stab at using natural materials so I was kind of excited.
After fire was obtained the Bravo 1 was handed over to my wife for a little bit of hot dog stick making. It is not a problem to make a hot dog stick with almost any knife, but my wife did not want to give me the blade back. She spent a great deal of time shaving the stick to perfection. After that little trip to the woods it was back in the kitchen for some more steak slicing and after all of that the Bravo 1 maintained its edge and again I was able to thinly slice the steak as I had done before.

One of the coolest things about Bark River knives is the ability to piggy back a smaller knife like the Mikro Canadian to a larger BRK&T knife like my Bravo 1. All of the newer sheath have this ability and it makes for a great package. The firesteel loops are also very cool and can be fitted with a small flashlight or other items if you opted out of the firesteel.

The specifications of the Mikro-Canadian are.

Blade Steel: A-2 (12C27 in my case since its a 1st production run)
Steel Hardness: 58-60 RC
Blade thickness: 0.15 inches
Blade length: 1.75 inches
Overall Length: 5 inches
Weight: 1.625 ounces
Full tang construction
Full convex grind

This little bad boy is one of the coolest heavy, small duty knives I have ever owned and it has not left my back pocket since I got it. My only downfall is that I wish it was blaze orange to complete my matching set, I must be more fashion conscious then I thought. All that I can say about this little guy is that it will cut the hell out of anything in its way. For its size it is very comfortable in my hand using a 3 finger grip and is very easy to maneuver around what ever you are cutting. I haven’t done too many field tests with this one, but breaking down boxes is extremely easy and does not require a huge amount of pressure. Paracord is not a problem either, nor is heavy plastic packing both of which I have cut many times over without any loss of edge retention. Again I hate to sound redundant but the piggy back factor is one of the most innovative things Bark River has done.

Overall Bark River knives are extremely usable tools backed by a lifetime warranty and extraordinary customer service. I would, and have recommended BRK&T products on many occasions because in my opinion BRK&T knives are simply the best bang for your buck knives on the market.

For More information and good conversation please head over to the Bark River section at knifeforums. Also Mike Stewart the owner of Bark River makes a lot of posts in those forums and if you have any questions about any of the Bark River products I’m sure he will be happy to answer them.
[eminimall]