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When I talk about the
philosophy of knifemaking, I am not talking about some kind of vague,
mystical belief, but rather, a very practical theory that defines my ideal
knife. I believe that the most
important aspect of knifemaking is the philosophy held by the maker in
relation to making the knife. True
philosophy is born out of the observation of the world we live in and
developing theories that we test. A maker’s personal philosophy in
regards to knives and their function, is the overriding principle in the
knifemaking process. (Just to be clear, we're not talking about
faith, or religion, just knives.) You see, the philosophy guides the entire process. Every maker has in his mind a particular standard of perfection that he is shooting for. Perfection cannot be attained of course, but a maker strives to move closer to that point throughout his life. However, he is always pursuing his particular ideal, because there is no real objective standard of perfection when it comes to knives, so each man or woman creates one for himself. Most people don’t realize that different makers have very different ideas of perfection. If you took a survey of 100 top makers, and asked them what constitutes a perfect knife, you would get very different answers even on questions like fit and finish. However, what I’m
talking about are things like design and function.
I’m talking about the relationship between the handle and the
blade, the relationship of the materials to one another, and the end
purpose and likely use of the knife.
Philosophy relates to how the maker sees the world around him.
Some makers carve out the future by pushing the performance
boundaries of their blades, while others re-create history in traditional
methods with traditional blades. Because our philosophies
should be under constant re-examination, a maker’s philosophy can (and
should) change throughout his life. As
our experiences affect us and expose us to a larger base of knowledge, our
philosophies should be modified, if necessary, to deal with things which
we may have understood less fully before than now.
As a practical example, you will notice that almost all makers find
that their knife blades get progressively thinner throughout their
careers. Many of us makers have started out by making knives
that would punch holes in a 55-gallon drum all day long and show no ill
affect. However, as our work
and our experience progressed, we found that a knife like that doesn’t
clean fingernails very well. And
we found that we needed to clean a lot more fingernails than 55-gallon
drums, so the blades got thinner. Some makers specialize only in art knives. Many makers who do this do so under the belief that if they want their work to survive their lifetimes, they stand a better chance of doing so if they craft knives of exceptional detail and perfection so that they will be delicately cared for for generations to come. Knives like that may be in pristine condition 500 years from now. Other makers are consumed with terminal performance alone. They pride themselves in building tools which are used daily and which will excel under a wide variety of circumstances. Those knives are less likely to survive even 50 years under those conditions, but those makers are involved more in the here and now than the distant future. The first group will naturally concentrate more on details, and finish and less on the extreme performance of their blades, while the second group will generally spend their energy on the precise heat treatments and thoughtfully designed edge geometries. There are a select group of makers whose knives are in the top 1% in the world in both categories, and they are the true, rare masters of the craft. That is not to say that
the fit and finish guys cannot build a high performance knife or that the
high performance guys can’t do a good job with details.
It is simply that each carries with himself a different idea of
perfection, and most are willing to abide imperfections and shortcomings
in the area that is not their primary passion. Here is a list of ideas
and theories that constitute much of my overall knifemaking philosophy: 1. A knife
should be designed above all things as a tool. 2. A knife’s
essential value is that though it is seldom the best tool for the job, it
is a tool that is capable of doing a wide variety of jobs well.
So a knife, though it may be designed for a specific job, should be
capable of doing other jobs as well.
Example: If you want
to split wood, use an axe. If
you want to open an envelope, use a letter opener.
If you want to clean your fingernails, use a fingernail cleaner.
If you want to have one tool that does all three jobs, use a knife. 3. A knife
should be comfortable to hold in several positions, because the versatile
nature of a knife dictates that the ultimate use of the knife cannot be
anticipated, and therefore, allow the tool as much flexibility as
possible. 4.
A knife needs to be sharp, needs to stay sharp, and when it’s
dull, it should be easy to re-sharpen.
More than just sharp at the edge, a
knife should be designed to cut in a natural, effortless way. This
statement affects everything from steel selection to heat treatment to
edge geometry. My knifemaking philosophy is constructed around a bull’s-eye concept. In the center are the jobs that the knife was designed for. In the next ring are jobs that the knife was not designed for, but for which it is likely to see. In the outer ring are jobs that the knife was not designed for and is not likely to see.
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The bull’s-eye concept
says that the knife needs to be able to handle as many jobs in the two
outer rings as possible without sacrificing it’s ability to do the tasks
in the inner ring. For instance, let’s say
we are making a hunting knife. The
knife is designed to cut through skin, muscle, and connective tissues.
It will have to cut through dirty fur and remove tissue attached to
bone. It must cut cleanly
with only a light touch. It should be comfortable to use and easy to hold in several
positions. Finally, it should
stay sharp throughout the entire process of cleaning an animal, and
re-sharpen easily when necessary with a minimum of tools.
This description is the inner ring for a hunting knife.
It should do all these jobs very well, and frankly, it should excel
at these jobs. In the next ring, we will
find jobs like: cutting rope, opening boxes, cleaning fingernails,
emergency field surgery, cutting vegetables, splitting small kindling and
whittling a stick. The knife
should be able to do all the jobs in the second ring also, even though
these are not tasks for which the knife was designed. In the outer ring may be
things like, cutting through a car door, hammering nails, etc.
These are not only jobs for which the knife was not designed, but
also things it will not likely see. Some jobs in this outer ring can damage the knife if the jobs
are extreme. The knife should
be designed to survive as many tasks as possible in this ring without
failure. However, these
design elements should never adversely affect the function of the knife in
its primary roles described in the center ring.
For instance, a knife can be designed for heavy prying or use as a
screwdriver, but a thick, heavy tip would be hinder the knife’s use as a
delicate tool for most cleaning and skinning tasks.
If we were designing a knife for opening paint cans and chipping
through large blocks of ice, then that would be in the center ring and the
delicate tasks associated with a hunting knife would probably be in the
outer ring. So, if we’re making a
hunter, I make it the best hunting knife I can, and then I sneak in little
design features (like differential heat treatment and certain edge
geometries) that do not adversely affect its use as a hunting knife,
but give the blade greater versatility in handling chores outside of its
intended scope. Another area that is part
of my knife design philosophy is the look and visual “flow” of the
knife. There are two
important reasons why a knife should look good as well as work well. The first is that when paying good money for a handmade knife
(or anything else for that matter), it needs to look sharp (no pun
intended). It should draw
attention to itself and its owner. As
a customer said to me, “I want a knife that when I’m sitting around
the fire in a hunting camp and someone sees my knife, it looks like
something special and they want to see it.” There’s another reason a
knife needs to look good. You’ve
probably heard a chef say of food, “You eat with your eyes first.”
That means that if food looks good on the plate, it’s more likely
to taste good than food that looks bad.
My wife sometimes makes mashed potatoes with green food coloring in
them on St. Patrick’s Day. I
don’t know, but they just don’t seem to taste right.
The same goes with knives. A
knife that looks right and has all its elements in proper proportion and
relationship to one another just seems to work better.
I don’t know whether it’s psychological or if relating all
those elements properly really contributes to performance.
Either way, I have noticed it time and time again, and that is why
the look of the knife really is as important as anything else.
Now, that doesn’t mean expensive materials.
You can put a pretty Damascus blade and ivory together on a knife
and if it’s a bad design, it will still look wrong. Once all the facets of a well designed and executed knife are in place, then a knife can be dressed up in whatever way necessary to please both the maker’s sense of creativity and artistry and the customer’s desire for function and beauty. |
