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The CLI: Composite Laminated Integrals

Bowies & Camp Knives

 

The Composite Laminated Integrals, or "CLI" for short, are a Burt Foster original.  Most of my knives, and in fact most knives in general are a collection of things we've copied or features we've borrowed from somewhere else, and adapted to our own style.  However, the CLI knife is one of my truly original ideas.  Maybe someone has done this before, but I've never seen it.

What I've done is taken two pieces of stainless steel, inserted a piece of high carbon steel in the core, similar to one of my laminated blades, but in this case, the carbon steel core is present only in the blade.  The entire exposed tang is the two pieces of stainless steel forge welded together to form one, solid piece.  Not only does this represent as far as I'm concerned, the essence of "complex simplicity", but it yields a knife that is about as close to the ideal of "high performance meets low maintenance" as I can imagine.  You can see the fade out of the carbon steel by looking at the top or bottom of the integral bolster.