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- Feb 28, 2007
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This week I received one of the 2010 Scagel knives, the drop-point style medium bowie from KSF.
Derrick and Wendy Bohn recently acquired the Scagel name and have had a few models, including two slipjoints and a fixed blade bowie knife, developed for them based on the classic Scagel style. The bowies were manufactured by Bark River Knife and Tool and come in 2 models, a more classic bowie with a long clip and slight swedge and a drop point (pictured below and the one I received).
The specs are as follows:
Overall Length: 10.125"
Blade Length: 5.5 Inches
Blade Steel: A-2 @ 58rc
Blade Thickness: .217 Inch
Weight: 7.5 oz
Grind: Full convex
Handle: Stacked leather with red, black, white spacers and aluminum pommel and guard
This style of knife is not normally the kind I tend to procure. Most of my knives are full tang and lacking a guard. However, sometimes its good to try some 'out-of-the-box' style thinking and get a feel for something different.
The sheath that comes with the knife is very beautiful with a lot of stylistic touches. One of the things I'm not usually fond of is having a strap retention system as this one does on the sheath because you have to be careful not to cut the strap when withdrawing the knife. This one comes with a unique solution that I probably wouldn't have believed worked had I not kept trying it out. As can be seen in the first photo, the snap part is actually leaf shaped and the leaf edge catches the guard of the knife when you remove it, pushing it back and under the blade. This is very cool. I tried removing the knife several ways and the strap was always out of the way when removing the knife. You still have to take a bit of care re-sheathing the knife but that is less of an issue and I think this little technical solution is really cool. The knife is well retained by the sheath and the two of them look great. The snap on the rentention strap has 'Scagel' written on it. A nice touch!
As received condition. I couldn't find any flaws with the knife manufacture as received. The guard is fitted nicely to the blade with little visible gap. The sculped pommel and guard have no scratches or marks. The knife was hair shaving and push cutting sharp. However, I did find a small flat spot (about 1/16" in length) that might have been a slight roll as it reflected light about midway into the blade and this spot did catch on paper when cutting at that point. I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't catch this, but it was something that showed up when I inspected the edge carefully under sunlight. The roll didn't come out on a strop, so I worked the entire edge on sandpaper-mousepad, starting with 800 grit and moving to 1000, 2000 and then the strop. It took very little time (5 min) to remove the flat spot on 800 grit so I suspect it was just a slight roll made after the knife was made and probably a minor little fluke. After sharpening the edge, I had a mirror polished bevel that went from hair shaving to hair wiping sharpness. I'm very impressed with the edge this thing took and given the aggressiveness of the convex grind, I think I have to eat some of my earlier words where I was critiquing thick-spined knives!
Since this knife, like all my knives, is expected to be a user, I took it out for a day hike and to try it out on some bushy type stuff. So, off to the prairie with Beta (my dog) I went!
First, I found myself a nice piece of cottonwood with the intent to shape it into a bowdrill kit. Even though I wasn't intending on doing a bowdrill today, I find that working up a kit forces you to do all the things a good bushy knife should do. Here is the piece I found and extracted (I used my SAK saw to cut it).
A couple of shots of the knife in hand. The handle is a touch thicker than I usually like but it really feels great. Here is where a hidden tang really comes into fruition in terms of being able to shape a handle with great ergos. The leather is also very warm to touch. Despite the cold, it felt great in my bare hands.
On the top section, the handle is rounded and smooth in shape. On the bottom, there is a slight center hump for purchase.
A close-up of the classic Scagel logo. Good looking stamp!
Okay, back to some bushy chores. Gotta do a bit of batoning. While this is a hidden tang blade, the thick spine left me with few worries and the fact that the tang reaches to the back of the handle and is screwed in place by the lanyard ring. Here, the length (5.5") makes working through wrist sized pieces effortless.
As I wasn't intending to do a bowdrill today, I still decided to shape a spindle and notch the hearth to just get a feel for the behavior of the blade. The knife did a great job and was effortless at carving away the soft cottonwood to shape the spindle.
To my delight, the knife was also excellent at producing a notch. On this chore, I have to say that the blade behaved more like a small knife then a mid-sized knife. I usually have a hard time with the notch on a 6" knife, but this one offered a lot of detail control. It required me to place my thumb on the spine over top the slight lip of the guard. I was at first worried that this would be uncomfortable (I hate thumb ramps for example), but on using it this way it just felt natural and unconstrained.
Just for the heck of it, I also decided to drill a hole through the hearth using the tip of the knife. This worked fine even though the tip is a bit delicate on this blade. Its a real sharp tip, but held up really fine to some direct drilling.
A little bit of fuzzy making. The edge was very good at this, but here the guard was a bit in the way. The guard allows you to make full power strokes with comfort and security and this is how I was shaping the spindle. However, on making fine fuzzies, the guard does constrain your grip a bit. Here, I put both thumbs on the spine to establish good control of the knife with very light pressure to make fluffy fuzzies.
Recognizing the above activities were on cottonwood which is pretty soft, I then went and found a piece of oak to work on.
Again, I was easily able to make decent fuzzies on the split oak.
Using the spine of the knife, I was also able to scrape my Going Gear firesteel and get those larger fuzzies to take some flame. While, I did get the knife to spark the steel and managed to get a flame, it wasn't the most comfortable. Although the spine is nice and squared, this knife is a bit too long for scraping a firesteel and again the guard tends to get in the way in terms of controlling the spine edge during scraping. Then again, I do tend to prefer using a dedicated scraper rather than my knife spine with a firesteel. However, it is good to know that spine on this one works.
I then decided to spend some extra time creating shavings. I shaved down most of the split half of oak and captured those shavings into my hat. This took a good 10-12 minutes of shaving. Again, the edge did excellent at creating shavings. I will admit to a bit of hand fatigue at this more intensive activity as a result of the wider handle than I'm accustomed to. However, I'm one of those guys who tends towards thinner handled knives and most people would find this one more comfortable. Still, this was a minor concern given the continuous effort I put into making shavings. The handle itself is so smooth that I did not feel any hotspots and produce any blisters.
Using the other piece of oak, I used the edge perpendicular to the stick to make scrapings. Then sparked it to flame with the spine of the knife/firesteel and fed the shavings to create a little hand warming fire.
For those of you who like comparison shots, here is the Scagel bowie with a bunch of other knives arranged by size: Marchand S-Curve, Breeden Peacemaker, Scagel Medium Bowie, ESEE-4, ESEE-3, Culberson EDC.
Here is a profile shot comparing the handle width and spine thickness of the Breeden peacemaker (0.125" thick), Scagel (0.217" thick) and ESEE-4 (0.188" thick).
Parting comments. This is a nice little-big knife. At 5.5" blade length it is long enough to process wrist sized wood with ease yet at the same time its length does not seem to handi-cap it on fine detail chores like making notches in wood. Partly this is due to the fact that the blade height isn't excessive which lends to its good maneuverability.
I love that the blade has a near continuous belly which really helps in slicing chores. Despite its thick spine, the convex grind is very aggressive producing a very acute and sharp point. The bottom guard got in the way on a few of the fine chores like making thin fuzzies but wasn't as obtrusive as I feared it would be. The top of the guard does protrude a little bit higher than the spine, but this lip is shallow enough that you can easily place your thumb over it and onto the spine to aid in detail work. That fat spine is also very comfortable on the thumb.
As for a hidden tang, I really don't have any misgivings about using this one. I've worked my mora's very hard and this blade is a going to be a heck of a lot more robust than a mora. Given the thickness of the spine (presumably the tang is also 0.217" thick) and fact that it is a full through tang fixed to the pommel with the screwed in lanyard ring, it should make for a very strong design. I won't pry with it mainly because the tip is more delicate on this blade nor will I baton wood bigger than wrist size, but that isn't much of a restriction when it comes to bushy-type chores. The knife felt completely solid when I was batoning through the oak piece.
The handle is very comfortable in both forward and reverse grip. The stacked leather handle is warm to the touch. I do wish it were slightly thinner as its width does contribute a bit of hand fatigue after prolonged use but this is a personal issue and one that probably won't affect many other folks.
Overall, I have to rate this knife as very good to excellent. Its a unique size and good all-round blade that looks gorgeous, feels great and comes with an amazing sheath. This one is a keeper!
Derrick and Wendy Bohn recently acquired the Scagel name and have had a few models, including two slipjoints and a fixed blade bowie knife, developed for them based on the classic Scagel style. The bowies were manufactured by Bark River Knife and Tool and come in 2 models, a more classic bowie with a long clip and slight swedge and a drop point (pictured below and the one I received).
The specs are as follows:
Overall Length: 10.125"
Blade Length: 5.5 Inches
Blade Steel: A-2 @ 58rc
Blade Thickness: .217 Inch
Weight: 7.5 oz
Grind: Full convex
Handle: Stacked leather with red, black, white spacers and aluminum pommel and guard
This style of knife is not normally the kind I tend to procure. Most of my knives are full tang and lacking a guard. However, sometimes its good to try some 'out-of-the-box' style thinking and get a feel for something different.
The sheath that comes with the knife is very beautiful with a lot of stylistic touches. One of the things I'm not usually fond of is having a strap retention system as this one does on the sheath because you have to be careful not to cut the strap when withdrawing the knife. This one comes with a unique solution that I probably wouldn't have believed worked had I not kept trying it out. As can be seen in the first photo, the snap part is actually leaf shaped and the leaf edge catches the guard of the knife when you remove it, pushing it back and under the blade. This is very cool. I tried removing the knife several ways and the strap was always out of the way when removing the knife. You still have to take a bit of care re-sheathing the knife but that is less of an issue and I think this little technical solution is really cool. The knife is well retained by the sheath and the two of them look great. The snap on the rentention strap has 'Scagel' written on it. A nice touch!
As received condition. I couldn't find any flaws with the knife manufacture as received. The guard is fitted nicely to the blade with little visible gap. The sculped pommel and guard have no scratches or marks. The knife was hair shaving and push cutting sharp. However, I did find a small flat spot (about 1/16" in length) that might have been a slight roll as it reflected light about midway into the blade and this spot did catch on paper when cutting at that point. I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't catch this, but it was something that showed up when I inspected the edge carefully under sunlight. The roll didn't come out on a strop, so I worked the entire edge on sandpaper-mousepad, starting with 800 grit and moving to 1000, 2000 and then the strop. It took very little time (5 min) to remove the flat spot on 800 grit so I suspect it was just a slight roll made after the knife was made and probably a minor little fluke. After sharpening the edge, I had a mirror polished bevel that went from hair shaving to hair wiping sharpness. I'm very impressed with the edge this thing took and given the aggressiveness of the convex grind, I think I have to eat some of my earlier words where I was critiquing thick-spined knives!
Since this knife, like all my knives, is expected to be a user, I took it out for a day hike and to try it out on some bushy type stuff. So, off to the prairie with Beta (my dog) I went!
First, I found myself a nice piece of cottonwood with the intent to shape it into a bowdrill kit. Even though I wasn't intending on doing a bowdrill today, I find that working up a kit forces you to do all the things a good bushy knife should do. Here is the piece I found and extracted (I used my SAK saw to cut it).
A couple of shots of the knife in hand. The handle is a touch thicker than I usually like but it really feels great. Here is where a hidden tang really comes into fruition in terms of being able to shape a handle with great ergos. The leather is also very warm to touch. Despite the cold, it felt great in my bare hands.
On the top section, the handle is rounded and smooth in shape. On the bottom, there is a slight center hump for purchase.
A close-up of the classic Scagel logo. Good looking stamp!
Okay, back to some bushy chores. Gotta do a bit of batoning. While this is a hidden tang blade, the thick spine left me with few worries and the fact that the tang reaches to the back of the handle and is screwed in place by the lanyard ring. Here, the length (5.5") makes working through wrist sized pieces effortless.
As I wasn't intending to do a bowdrill today, I still decided to shape a spindle and notch the hearth to just get a feel for the behavior of the blade. The knife did a great job and was effortless at carving away the soft cottonwood to shape the spindle.
To my delight, the knife was also excellent at producing a notch. On this chore, I have to say that the blade behaved more like a small knife then a mid-sized knife. I usually have a hard time with the notch on a 6" knife, but this one offered a lot of detail control. It required me to place my thumb on the spine over top the slight lip of the guard. I was at first worried that this would be uncomfortable (I hate thumb ramps for example), but on using it this way it just felt natural and unconstrained.
Just for the heck of it, I also decided to drill a hole through the hearth using the tip of the knife. This worked fine even though the tip is a bit delicate on this blade. Its a real sharp tip, but held up really fine to some direct drilling.
A little bit of fuzzy making. The edge was very good at this, but here the guard was a bit in the way. The guard allows you to make full power strokes with comfort and security and this is how I was shaping the spindle. However, on making fine fuzzies, the guard does constrain your grip a bit. Here, I put both thumbs on the spine to establish good control of the knife with very light pressure to make fluffy fuzzies.
Recognizing the above activities were on cottonwood which is pretty soft, I then went and found a piece of oak to work on.
Again, I was easily able to make decent fuzzies on the split oak.
Using the spine of the knife, I was also able to scrape my Going Gear firesteel and get those larger fuzzies to take some flame. While, I did get the knife to spark the steel and managed to get a flame, it wasn't the most comfortable. Although the spine is nice and squared, this knife is a bit too long for scraping a firesteel and again the guard tends to get in the way in terms of controlling the spine edge during scraping. Then again, I do tend to prefer using a dedicated scraper rather than my knife spine with a firesteel. However, it is good to know that spine on this one works.
I then decided to spend some extra time creating shavings. I shaved down most of the split half of oak and captured those shavings into my hat. This took a good 10-12 minutes of shaving. Again, the edge did excellent at creating shavings. I will admit to a bit of hand fatigue at this more intensive activity as a result of the wider handle than I'm accustomed to. However, I'm one of those guys who tends towards thinner handled knives and most people would find this one more comfortable. Still, this was a minor concern given the continuous effort I put into making shavings. The handle itself is so smooth that I did not feel any hotspots and produce any blisters.
Using the other piece of oak, I used the edge perpendicular to the stick to make scrapings. Then sparked it to flame with the spine of the knife/firesteel and fed the shavings to create a little hand warming fire.
For those of you who like comparison shots, here is the Scagel bowie with a bunch of other knives arranged by size: Marchand S-Curve, Breeden Peacemaker, Scagel Medium Bowie, ESEE-4, ESEE-3, Culberson EDC.
Here is a profile shot comparing the handle width and spine thickness of the Breeden peacemaker (0.125" thick), Scagel (0.217" thick) and ESEE-4 (0.188" thick).
Parting comments. This is a nice little-big knife. At 5.5" blade length it is long enough to process wrist sized wood with ease yet at the same time its length does not seem to handi-cap it on fine detail chores like making notches in wood. Partly this is due to the fact that the blade height isn't excessive which lends to its good maneuverability.
I love that the blade has a near continuous belly which really helps in slicing chores. Despite its thick spine, the convex grind is very aggressive producing a very acute and sharp point. The bottom guard got in the way on a few of the fine chores like making thin fuzzies but wasn't as obtrusive as I feared it would be. The top of the guard does protrude a little bit higher than the spine, but this lip is shallow enough that you can easily place your thumb over it and onto the spine to aid in detail work. That fat spine is also very comfortable on the thumb.
As for a hidden tang, I really don't have any misgivings about using this one. I've worked my mora's very hard and this blade is a going to be a heck of a lot more robust than a mora. Given the thickness of the spine (presumably the tang is also 0.217" thick) and fact that it is a full through tang fixed to the pommel with the screwed in lanyard ring, it should make for a very strong design. I won't pry with it mainly because the tip is more delicate on this blade nor will I baton wood bigger than wrist size, but that isn't much of a restriction when it comes to bushy-type chores. The knife felt completely solid when I was batoning through the oak piece.
The handle is very comfortable in both forward and reverse grip. The stacked leather handle is warm to the touch. I do wish it were slightly thinner as its width does contribute a bit of hand fatigue after prolonged use but this is a personal issue and one that probably won't affect many other folks.
Overall, I have to rate this knife as very good to excellent. Its a unique size and good all-round blade that looks gorgeous, feels great and comes with an amazing sheath. This one is a keeper!
...looks like you and me see eye to eye on this one. 
