Making a boning knife

AVigil said:
Chicken and turkey are easy peasy for just about any knife.

Hell I break down a chicken with a santoku

But how you use a knife does not change the name of it. A boning knife is what it is. What you do with it is your business.
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Ok. But I don’t think sabatier and other manufacturers wil listen to that ... :-(
 
AVigil said:
I was not talking to them ;)
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But perhaps you should be ... because otherwise they will keep on calling that short inflexible blade a boning knife ... and carry 95% or so of the buying public right along with them...
 
Cushing H. said:
But perhaps you should be ... because otherwise they will keep on calling that short inflexible blade a boning knife ... and carry 95% or so of the buying public right along with them...
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Zero Phooks Given lol
 
Not quite sure what that means - but I will run with it :-). I’m really just yanking your chain. :-). Mostly I am taking note that apparently we have here the same name applied to two very different styles - one style for the professional butcher, the other style for the in-home cook. I don’t think I have run across that before...
 
They have make both flexible and stiff boning knives ... they make straight and curved also it just depends what you prefer.
 
S obsessed said:
I made these two knives last year and was sharpening them the morning we butchered the last deer which was a large older white tail buck. The blades are 1/16" (measured as .070") thick 1084 from Aldo quenched in parks 50 and tempered at 385f. The blades measure 5" on both. The handles are just poplar with a wax finish as they were for testing only on comfort and function. The swept blade is modeled after a Victorinox fibrox and the straight blade is after a wusthof. The handles are my own design as I have found them to fit my large glove wearing hand as well as xtra large and womens hands. We found them to hold an edge about 50% longer then the victorinox fibrox knife which is the x50cr mo stainless at 56rc. The first deer we did was a similar buck and was cold meat but not froze and the victorinox knife did the whole deer all by itself with no touchups or resharpenings. The second deer that these knives got to do along with the victorinox was quite frozen and we sharpened all the knives at least 4 times. So unthawed 1 edge did a whole deer and pretty frozen but workable took 10-12 sharpenings. That is a big difference. The victorinox is slightly thicker at the beginning of the blade and if I remade these I would not use the .070" thick since I think it is just a bit too flexy and start with something around the .090" mark and distal taper it to around .060" leaving the tip not too thin as they will break off in the meat or if hitting a bone it seems. The grind could be a full flat grind to around .020" behind the edge which seemed to handle smacking some bones. I sharpened these first at 10 dps with a 15 dps microbevel and found that not to be quite enough as it rolled the edge when bumping bones so then put an 18 dps microbevel on them and it worked great. If anyone wants the actual outline from cad as shown below I could certainly post a pdf somewhere or email it. The handles worked great and were real comfortable with no hot spots. The 5" blade seemed too short a lot of the time and 6" would be ideal. I have a Fibrox in the 6" also but it is swept up much more and not comfortable to use so I will be making a few 6" ones in the same sweep as in the drawing this year. The swept blades were much more favored over the straight blade or a regular style hunting blade. Hope this helps.
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So I’m curious, how does 1084 hold up at 1/16 thickness? Is that reasonable for 1084? I mean obviously it’s worked for you so far but with not much experience as some of you here I get nervous about thin knives. I guess I haven’t entirely learned to trust the steel and heat treat?
 
Cushing H. said:
But perhaps you should be ... because otherwise they will keep on calling that short inflexible blade a boning knife ... and carry 95% or so of the buying public right along with them...
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It's still a boning knife, just a traditional European/French style. Serves the same purpose just a slightly different style. You will find this style used a lot in restaurant settings, particularly fine dining/traditional French.

I do a heap of butchery and prefer a trailing edge knife but on the stiffer end of flexible. The trailing edge and fuller handle on the modern style makes working with a point down/pistol grip easier. With a straight knife you can't see the point when working the pistol grip.
 
Boning knives and fillets are very similar and can be either stiff or whippy. A lot of serious hunters that i know use filled knives or something similar for breaking down a deer.
 
Diego_B said:
So I’m curious, how does 1084 hold up at 1/16 thickness? Is that reasonable for 1084? I mean obviously it’s worked for you so far but with not much experience as some of you here I get nervous about thin knives. I guess I haven’t entirely learned to trust the steel and heat treat?
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It holds up great. No difference from thicker material just more flexy. These will flex 20 degrees no problem but I have not tested how far they will go without breaking them. I will likely test some in the future at the full tempered hardness as these are just to see how far one can flex them without breaking. These are 3/4-1" in height at the scales and I would say around 1/2" tall there and lots of flexing could cause the scales to break their bond but that is with any steel type. Easy to make knives out of this thin stuff as there is less to grind but they don't feel as good as a thicker steel cause they are so light but that is subjective.
 
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