Are moras good carvers?

J

jhany

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Apr 7, 2014
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I am new to bladeforums and the carving community, and was wondering if any moras are made with a convex edge, and if they don't make any with a convex edge, do scandi edges roll easily. I've been using a opinel #10 and have beat the living snot out of it. I always hated convex edges, but had never used one. Now I love convex edges, as they're extremely strong imho. Thanks for your opinions!
 
Mora's are very good carvers. I would recommend the robust as a user knife. The scandi grind bites into wood extremely well. It's easy to resharpen with a stone. The scandi in my personal experience will not roll or chip. It seems to be pretty strong and I've abused it.
 
Moras carve wood like lighting in my opinion. Yes you can roll the edge under hard use but the blade geometry is so thin they keep on cutting.

Processing wood and cutting rope is exactly where the Moras shine. I use a Mora for general camp and outdoor chores and filed dressing game. They do those jobs well while being lightweight and cheap.

They sharpen up so quickly and easily I do not worry about edge retention. I run them over a leather strop frequently and sharpen as needed.

I have four Moras and will likely own more in the future. Something about their affordability and simplicity is very appealing to me.
 
I think it depends on what you want to carve... notches and points on a stick they are great... wooden ducks, prolly not...
 
For carving you want a Mora 120 knife. It is a great wood carver and very easy to sharpen. If you are carving make sure you have a strop. Using a strop often will keep the blade sharp for a longer period of use. Have fun!
 
Most people I know who carve and whittle use a much smaller and thinner blade than a Mora.
 
brownshoe said:
Most people I know who carve and whittle use a much smaller and thinner blade than a Mora.
Click to expand...

It depends on the type of carving and whittling you're doing. If you're making ball in cage, and chains, maybe so. If you are making spoons, bowls and tool handles, then a full sized Mora does fine. Mora makes the 120, as billym mentioned. Also, you can choke up on the blade.

A Mora is a great carving knife.
 
I've used my stainless Companion to rough out spoons and it works great. Obviously it's best for larger wood removal, but for shaping and roughing it's been my go-to knife lately.
 
I keep a Mora among other tools in my garage and use it quite regularly. I also keep it sharpened in the true Scandi style...
So the last time I shared my personal opinion of Mora and Scandi grind on this site that got me into quite an argument. The majority of the knife users here do believe that Scandi grind is strong and that it is easy to sharpen, while according to my personal experience Scandy edge rolls quite easily if used, let's say, without proper care and that it takes a bit longer to restore the grind than with other knives. But then it turned out that most of the people here also put on a secondary bevel, so we were not talking the same animal after all...
But again, I might be wrong and all the Moras that I have got are lemons by some strange coincidence and I suck at sharpening Scandi grind by hand even without knowing it: after all I only talk about my personal experience.
So Moras are very good for working with wood, there is no question about that. But if you managed "to beat a snot out of" something like Opinel 10, I would probably not recommend it. At least not in its original Scandi grind form. If you like convex grind because it is strong (and that is true), you could go for Falkniven F1 (though I do not imagine it a good knife for wood carving because of its size and blade shape). Or you can go ahead and use Mora, but with a secondary bevel or with a convex grind: that probably would be the best.
 
My Mora Companion came with a very small secondary bevel as i believe they all do. It's held very well even carving some maple and oak, and I've only had to strop it or hit on a ceramic rod once or twice.
 
Yes they are wonderful carvers...for detail, stick with a #2-#4 opinel but...moras, all day evrry day worth every penny and than some
 
I went on a camp trip and brought a couple of knives to carve with. I brought my Fallkniven f1 as well as my mora classic 2. Mora pretty easily out-carved the f1. It probably should, it has a much thinner blade and a nice scandi grind. My fallkniven was not dull by any means. This experience definitely has influenced my carving choices in future trips, I think you would be very happy with a carving mora.
 
They are more or less made for carving! If you're from Sweden that is kind of obvious. It is such a common use for the knifetype in question. Moras, the traditional ones, are not exactly a hunting knife :)

Here are a picture of a whittler. Even more specialized:

Mora%20whittler%20b.jpg


Regards

/ J
 
dogstar said:
It depends on the type of carving and whittling you're doing. If you're making ball in cage, and chains, maybe so. If you are making spoons, bowls and tool handles, then a full sized Mora does fine. Mora makes the 120, as billym mentioned. Also, you can choke up on the blade.

A Mora is a great carving knife.
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The 120 and 122 models make great carvers, and have done fine on ball-in-a-cage type work for me:

eRKTBTN.jpg
 
^^^^yes those Moras! The 120 and the 122, they also make curved knives I believe.
Is the 122 larger?
Nice balls BTW. :)
 
evilgreg said:
The 120 and 122 models make great carvers, and have done fine on ball-in-a-cage type work for me:

eRKTBTN.jpg
Click to expand...

Yes, Mora makes smaller dedicated carving knives. Some people may not know about these. Thanks for posting the photo.
 
Thank yall for helping me, but in the end I got a mora classic #2 in red birch, not the norm for carving, but I decided it'll be an all purpose knife. Now that its in my hands, I couldn't be happier, and blame all of you for making me catch the mora bug.:D
 
I carved an axe handle with my Mora, I'd say very good carver wood worker!
 
If you are interested in spoon carving, here is a vid I made using hatchet, Mora, and Mora spoon knife.
[video=youtube;NzEpFzK8L1M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzEpFzK8L1M[/video]
 
Yes, the Moras created specifically for carving are great carvers. The Mora 120 is my goto knife for whitting. Extremely sharp and easy to get the edge back to razor sharp. Their curved knife is not as well thought of. You might want to look at curved "bent" or "crooked" knives as they are sometimes called from Del Stubbs, Pinewood Forge or Kestrel Knives.
 
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