*UPDATE* this knife was stolen from our vehicle January 19, 2018. If seen or found on the market please notify, collect payment, or return to its original home.
I made this knife in 1996 at the age of 18. I wanted to continue to develop my integral survival-style camp knife pattern with this piece. The steel comes from a heavy leaf spring and entailed quite a bit of shaping work.
The shape is called integral because the guard and blade are forged and ground from one piece. Sleek with clean lines, this a solid working knife with enough heft for light chopping tasks. The full tang blade was forged and ground from a high carbon truck spring and finished with a blued working polish. The handle is shaped for comfort in any position and is made from buffed linen micarta and held with bronze pins and lanyard eye.
The shape is a slightly recurved survival/bowie hybrid and the hira-zukuri profile is very meaty so it can be used for tough jobs like chopping and splitting kindling in an emergency situation. It has a slightly tapered tang and a partial false double-edge (kanmuri-otoshi-zukuri) but still packs a lot of weight. The handle was finished with sculpted black linen-micarta and pinned with bronze. The brass riveted hand-stitched oak (vegetable) tanned cow hide sheath is signed and marked with the original Crossed Heart Forge logo and “96” on the back. The blade is about 7″ long and the overall length is 12″.
This is one of my older pieces but one in my personal collection and one of my favourite designs to date so I decided to post it here. This knife has been used as a working and companion knife for many years and sometimes on a daily basis but is aging gracefully as seen in the photo above.
Material: Reclaimed truck overload spring steel, linen micarta, bronze, leather
This piece is in my own collection and gets used regularly as a working knife.
