KnifeCenter FAQ #72: What is a Grail Knife? + Wood Handles and Heat Treatment

Hello everyone, here comes David C. Andersen from KnifeCenter. And welcome to KniFAQ number 72, the

knife

series where I answer all your questions, whether sharp or dull. This week we will talk about the advantages of different handle materials. And also, among other questions, we address the topic of the Grail knives. So let's get into it. Alright, for those of you who are new to this series, here's the deal. Leave your questions in the comments below. And we reviewed and selected a few that we think will be interesting to feature in future episodes. So if you want the chance to have your question on one of these offers, that's

what

you should do.

This week. The first question comes from Giu Ghana. Hi David, I was wondering why there seem to be very few

wood

en handled knives these days. Do they really have any major disadvantages compared to aluminum or FRN? Scales? Also, do you know why so many of the ones available are from Italy? Sure let's go. Let's delve into it. I think the reason you see less

wood

s, in general, especially when we're talking about mass-produced knives, is that wood is inherently less stable than something like FRN, or aluminum, or even micarta, things like that. Because it's a porous material that breathes naturally, it can shrink, it can warp a little bit, it can do things that I know personally, you know, in the area where we are, there's a lot of humidity and I'm even trying to get when I'm building knives to remove material myself when you try to flatten that piece of wood, so that it hits the tang of the

knife

, flatten it, leave it for a couple of days, it's bent again.

So it definitely creates more opportunities for things to go wrong in a production environment. You can get around this a little bit with certain stabilized materials, whether we're talking about a natural wood that's been impregnated with resin and stabilized that way or if we're talking about a laminate product like pakkawood. And it's material very near and dear to our hearts here at KnifeCenter. We also like the look and feel of the natural wood

handles

. But to avoid some of the disadvantages of this, we tend to spec some of our exclusives with some cool pakka wood material.

This one here, one of our new favorites, one of my new favorites anyway, a new version of Spyderco's Delica with a VG 10, Damascus and ebony core blade. It is not real ebony wood, but a black pakka wood handle. And I'm not sure

what

exactly they would use here in the vinegar process. But you can dye it several different colors. There are some really striking ones, we like to give them a more natural look, but they are still made from real wood. So you still get that character, you get that warm feeling in your hand and you get that variability a little bit from one to another, they'll be a little bit different from piece to piece.

But if you compare this knife to the FRN handled versions of the completely different Delica character, obviously with a much more gentlemanly look here, we also spec a lot with a more natural sort of brown coloration, like this little centaur from ArtisanCutlery right here. $110 for this one. Also with a VG 10 based Damascus in this case, I coincidentally didn't even think about that when I took these two as examples. But with this type of laminated wood products you can see the accumulated layers on this one a little better than on the black one there. It solves part of that problem of warping, shrinking and cracking that can affect an unstabilized Woods.

Is it completely immovable? No, you can still move a little bit, but we're talking about several orders of magnitude less than what you know, just a piece of cake and you hit the side of a piece of knife, so it's like a Damascus wood. I'm going to keep that analogy. Maybe if it was like the Bird's Eye maple. We could call it as a wooden Damascus at that time. But Thomas, ladies and gentlemen, you can get your stabilized woods to be able to use the laminated material. However, there are some natural woods that are extremely dense and are considered or not considered to actually need a secondary stabilization process to be ready.

There aren't many of them out there. Desert Ironwood is a good example. You can see it in this movie and even Embla right here, which is a beautiful knife, a beautiful piece of wood right here. It may be a little lighter, but usually a little darker, so it usually doesn't look much lighter than this lace. This magnificent hunting knife found here. As a result, 275 dollars for that. Other woods that work well are ebony, which is pretty decent. Osage orange has a reputation for being very, very hard and very stable. As for the Italians, the ones we see most frequently on Italian knives today are Santos ebony mahogany and, above all, the one I immediately associate with Italy is olive wood, as seen in this MKM palm from here.

And this is another word that is considered, you know, very dense, it is not generally considered to need to be stabilized. And olive woods are a local resource when you come to Italy, so it makes sense that they would lean towards that as a sort of defining, or at least characteristic, element for making Italian knives. And I'm glad because whether you go for something modern like this, this MKM clapper or something more traditional like this steel lion baesman, which comes with its Santos, mahogany wood on this particular one. It's great to see those things on modern production knives, because as we're about to see, they're not seen as often anymore, which is unfortunate.

But thanks for your question, because it gave us a reason to go see these fantastic knives. Alright, next question comes from Frank Abate. Aside from the type of steel used, I would like you to comment on the

heat

treatment

and tempering. Tempering is only one part of the entire

heat

treatment

process. Any steel that is used for heat treating and quenching can spoil its good qualities. Very sure. So doesn't it largely depend on which manufacturer created the blade? Yes absolutely. I mean, heat treatment is the magic ingredient. You know, before heat treatment, that's not a knife, it's just a knife-shaped object.

Once a shirt has been treated, you get to the you know, the knife. And heat treatment is usually, you know, to simplify things, if we're talking about simple carbon steels, there are two stages, you have hardening and tempering, which is the softening stage, you harden it very hard and then you quench it. Lower it again and soften it until you reach the desired hardness. So you're jumping from soft to hard to somewhere in between where steel has its sweet spot. Unfortunately, when we look at knives, it's not something we can really look at. You know, the look of an unhealthy heat-treated knife or a poorly heat-treated knife to a properly heat-treated knife, they're going to look the same.

Now, there are certain companies that you know have a reputation for doing a really excellent job with their heat treatment or getting the most out of a particular steel. Rowan, who makes ESEE knives, many consider their 1095 heat treatment to be among the best in the industry, if not the best. But we simply have to trust that all manufacturers are doing it right. But you know, I take this, this Fallkniven here, and I assume that this blade is properly heat treated. But do I know if I have tested this individual knife? No, I haven't. And of course, you know, any manufacturer, anything that's done on a large scale, is going to have some things that might require a lemon or two.

But let's say I'm swinging this knife doing something really crazy and the knife blade breaks in half, even then it's going to take an expert to be able to look at that break, look at the failure, and say whether it was the fault of the heat treatment, or whether It was simply the fault of user error. You and I without metallurgical experience or metallurgical experience really won't be able to know. Now when I say we have to trust that the manufacturers are doing it, right? I don't know, that's not really a way out. Because practically everyone is doing it well.

And when they get it wrong, when you have a whole batch of knives from one manufacturer that don't work, you're going to find out, whether you know it, a lot of returns and a lot of customer complaints, it's all going to come. to the light. And you don't see that very often because people who buy expensive knives either don't use them or they all work pretty well. Which is what I choose to believe because well, I believe it is what it is. But anyway, pay attention to long-term reviews to see how something performs. Almost everyone is doing a good job out there.

Like trying to buy a bad truck wrong. Yeah, well, it's like, you know, look, you know, how can you judge a long-term review or the long-term reliability of a new car? You really can't until you dry it until you drive it long term. But anyway, next question. Let's move on. Comes from A Sam love joy has two L's in his name. Mr. Andersen, this week I bought a full size Benchmade Adamas and some cool 562 Ti zero tolerance knives. My question is that between the two knives I make more than $500. Should I have opted to save my money and get a $500 more Grail knife or was I right?

And get to the heavy duty tanks I'll use forever? Right or wrong? I think this is not the way to approach this issue. Is your money. Is your money. Do you like these knives? Are you happy you bought them? Hey, guess what you did right? You're doing something wrong here. I mean, they are both phenomenal knives, they are very well built, wear resistant blades that work in both cases. And I have no hesitation in recommending either of them. What you would get if you came across what you know, let's say we combined the value or the cost of these two knives, you would be in Sebenza. territory, phenomenal knives, I love a Sebenza.

And you'll get a little bit more of a premium feel, you know, that kind of thing, you'll get something that works harder than these two, it's certainly up for debate, these two knives should last a lifetime of use. last a lifetime of fairly intense use and be something you can pass on. So when you enter these strata, what you pay for when you search for those Grails are specialists. If that's what you're looking for, go for the Grail, if you just want heavy use you might not need to spend that much money. But as an example of what I mean when I say that they are going to get more specialists.

This knife here, I think is an amazing Grail knife for many. I have never spent $1,500 on a knife, not even close. But you have something like this solid rock right here: Fig 2 x f o x CF ZDP. These knives are so special. I didn't even want to put it on the table. So here, sitting on the lid of his packaging, which is padded, we gave him a nice pillow. Because we have your carbon fiber hand, carbon fiber

handles

gold titanium coatings, look at these guys blades with zero straight mirror polished convex edge, no secondary bevel. And this is why I don't want to put my fingerprint on it.

I don't even want him to touch the table. Because it's absolutely gorgeous. Getting a mirror polish on a steel like this takes time and dedication to get it as perfect as this. When talking about a convex edge reduced to zero, there is no margin for error either. And the edge is perfect. No wobbles. It is perfectly centered looking down on the blade, the top of the sharpening is perfectly parallel. That's not something you're going to see in a 250 or even a five to $600 knife, you're just not, that's what you get when you start looking for the real Grail, you get that special quality.

What are we talking about here? Six times harder working than the ZT or Benchmade, I think heck, it's not the answer. This will certainly be a knife that can be used very hard if you so desire, but, I mean, man. A mirror polish like mine I don't want to see is just beautiful and this is only on the production side. This is not a one of a kind custom knife. You could also get into things like this Greg Lightfoot here, this is a $2,000 knife or almost as much to make no difference or my truck, you always have to mention that.

Won't you sit on the bench of the truck to check yes? There's nothing there that's even funny. I'm sorry, friends. No air bags. But Thomas is going to put it on anyway. But you know, when you talk about special quality, this is what we would call a one-of-a-kind custom knife, like Lightfoot does everything here. He may not make the individual bolts, but everything else here is put together by one man. There is something special about that handmade quality. This is a custom or one of the custom Empire models of him. Should add me, check out that clip.

The subjection is happening there. Very cool. Desert ironwood in this handle too. The Nitro V sword here, that's what you're paying for when you get into the Grail theme, is that special feeling? So if that's what you want, I'm not even going to say you did wrong with this, if that's what you want, do it. But it wasn't bad to buy these other two knives because when you saw them you liked them. They made you happy. There is no right or wrong way to collect knives. Well, I say that. Do not dojuggling with custom knives. Brightly colored pakkawood blades made in Pakistan today that you can find at a flea market.

That might be the wrong way to collect knives. Maybe, maybe there are some good things out there. There is a niche for everyone. The next question comes from James Hughes' question. Cutting cardboard is one of the most common EDC tasks I encounter. But every time I cut cardboard I always hear comments that it is one of the quickest ways to dull the knife and that it should be avoided. Or those who hate cardboard, right? Does it only apply to those who hate the less premium Steel cardboard? Man, these people are just raging against the big cardboard machine.

I'm confused if you're not supposed to cut cardboard. What is the night for Thomas to make sense there? What we'll get to, yes, cardboard is and can be an especially abrasive material for the edge of a knife, silicone clays and things that will be in your candle, the edge of a knife, but what is a knife? If not, why not cut? Let me see here. Let me let me how should I do this? If these people that you know, when you talk to these people, they're afraid of cutting cardboard, because it's going to dull their edge, I would say maybe they learn to sharpen a little better.

Once you know how to sharpen and maintain a knife very well. You won't hesitate to cut some cardboard. I mean, especially some of these knives here with really thin blades that are made for this kind of thing. And budget steels were what were your words, or does it only apply to less premium steels? Well, not all less premium steels are created equal. Look we made a video of the cardboard hunters. I guess it was last year at this point, where we pitted various knives against each other, including premium steel, including non-premium steel, even simple stainless steel cases, when it's in the right type, a really thin blade with a flat grind can still work very well. .

But this CJRB Crag with its D two blade, is a sub $50 knife for just under $50. The D two steel worked phenomenally well against the cardboard and today you can get D two knives for around $ 30. So no, it doesn't just apply to less premium steels, just as it doesn't apply to more premium steels, especially if you know what you're doing with a good or strong sharpener, but don't be afraid to cut cardboard with a knife maybe maybe you've heard this from old guys, especially before, but a lot of them are dealing with really soft steel slip joint knives that yeah, you can use them like a box cutter or something, but we can do better nowadays .

We have a lot of cool things we can play with as knife enthusiasts. Clearly, as we can see before us, maybe it's not that no, I can't play with that either. I would love to, I couldn't, I couldn't make a lightning bolt now that we get to Maureen Leahy, the best Grail bushcraft knife money can buy, well, quote unquote, best is certainly up for debate, but it's probably the most Grail that you can get in the kingdom of bushcraft would be something like a Woodlore knife made by Alan Wood, which is something he designed with Ray Mears there in the UK. extremely difficult to achieve, but it is something that will get you to a very similar ballpark and will generally be more achievable.

Check out the Casstrom Lars Falt bushcraft knife. Unfortunately, we didn't have one on the shelf today when we were filming, but on page 69 of his book, there's a nice photo of that particular knife, so I'll show it to you here and then maybe Thomas can cut some. B reel of when we filmed that knife before the guy shows up there. Beautiful, beautiful, simple and elegant. Bushcraft all the way, yes, if you find yourself able to pick up an Alan Wood Woodlore and have the means to get your hands on one, I would recommend skipping it. I would certainly be excited, I've never had it.

I personally like that book, there are a lot of pictures, yeah, I'm sure I have nowhere to go with that except to say yeah, Thomas, you're stupid. But why would I do it? I just did very well. That helps. Next question comes from the guy with the 2112 knife Hi DCA, being a fixed blade guy like you, what folders are there? Do you think it would be nice if a fixed blade was as good as a fixed blade too? I think of the fixed cold steel SRK and the SR 1 as the Spyderco Yojimbo two folder version and the run into as the fixed blade version.

What you say? If you're just talking about designs, you know, I don't see the connection there. As you know, you could design something like a binder and design something like a fixed sheet, which is better? Well, that depends. But if you're wondering which folders are almost as strong as a fixed blade, nothing will be as strong as a fixed blade if you have a folding knife, after all you know, the joke is on you. I'm talking about a pre-broken knife right when you're talking about a folder, but you were on the right track, the Cold Steel triad lock would be the one I would put the most faith in, for that side of strength. things.

And on the SR 1's, great knives, especially the SR1 Lite, it's like a $56 knife and it's Chunky. I don't know if you'll get a better use fixed sheet or, sorry, our excuses folder. For that kind of money, I mean, tons of muscle in there. Nothing is ever as good as a fixed blade or as strong as a fixed blade. In fact, Cold Steel, you know there was a controversy with them at one point, they went after other knife makers for equating their folders with fixed blades before even Cold Steel acknowledged that the fold is not going to be as strong as a fixed blade. could be.

So keep that in mind. You can try it and we will have fun watching all the knives break. We will either break or not and say ooh, very impressive. Any Daily Question: When I started using knives, I wanted everything from every brand. It's hard to get excited about something new now. What do you do when you need inspiration? So I tend to do the things that led me to the knives in the first place. I'll go camping, I'll do some cooking myself, I'll find a dish that requires some prep or a lot of knife work to prepare.

Things that put me off using blades. It centers me again. Also, this FAQ series honestly keeps me grounded, keeps me in the realm of what brought me to knives in the first place because I'm exposed to other people's needs and other people's points of view. other people about things. It makes me think about knives and less about you know, here's another schedule, here's another presentation of what's new this week or you know the best of this type of knife. I can get a little geeky. So these KniFAQs videos are kind of knife therapy in a way, sometimes going out and making knives in my shop in the garage is another thing that gets me out of this YouTube presentation mentality.

It takes me back to basics. This is your therapy. Should I send you the invoice? No. I had to try. Good. If you did, you would have over $2,000 in a truck. Which brings us to our most serious question of the day, which comes from Pani Sava's most serious question: what fixed-blade bushcraft knife does the honorable DCA use to shave and keep that beard in shape? From the way you wrote hon, I assume we have a person from the UK here. Thomas. Are you zooming in on my beard? Yes. Strange. In fact, I have a funny story before I had a full beard.

I shaved once with Fiskars' equivalent of this Gerber axe, which if you're interested is the free Gerber getaway for about $50. Can be done. I came in here and shaved the sides. However, I chickened out when I got to the neck area. I'm sitting there, you're holding this big thing and you're like oh no, we're not going to do that. But I made the sides and it worked. I'd go with something smaller like this Hults Bruk here. What is this guy? This is the premium Jonaker Hults Bruk ax that does really good things. It's premium 164 But man, look at that mirror-polished convex edge there.

Yes man. Maybe it could be something like Fremont right here. The Farson Ax Survival Tool. It's like a cross between Ulu and an ax in that for $60 for this type you can get much finer control for neck work. (Don't try it) Thank you. I was about to say almost exactly that. This is what I recommend not to recommend for homework. Here we go. Or just let it grow. Was it enough cyanide? Anyway, but that's all the time we have the first questions that we have prepared for today. If you'd like a chance to have your question featured in a future episode, simply leave it in the comments section below.

In the meantime, there will be links in the description where you can check out these knives at KnifeCenter.com. Be sure to sign up for our knife rewards program while you're there, because if you're spending your money on one of these guys, you might as well earn some free money to spend on the next one. I'm David C. Andersen from KnifeCenter. That's Thomas, and we say goodbye. See you next time. weird beard