Two new ideas from one old one.

Scott Hanson

Scott Hanson

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Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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I had a bit of an epiphany, this is a photo of my personal hunting knife I've been using for the better part of twenty years now. I have field dressed quite a few deer over the years with it and every time I finished field dressing a deer I check the knife and it shows absolutely no signs of dulling, it's just as sharp as it was when it came off the strop. Funny thing about this knife and how it began was it was about 2001 or 2002 I don't recall anymore but it was when ATS-34 and 154cm were leading the pack in cutlery steels and I had just placed and order for some 0.187" thick 154cm and the sent me this 0.125" thick piece of s30v by mistake. Well not knowing anything about it I threw it on my metal rack and reordered the the correct 0.187" thick 154cm not thinking or knowing much about this s30v steel they sent me until one day a few months later I started reading really good things about it, so I decided too make some knives out of it. I soon discovered it ate belts like mad, but the customers raved about how well it held an edge, and for good reason after having used it along side other knife steeling seeing for my self the difference in edge retention. So any how I sold all but this one which was the runt of the litter a kept it for my personal user ever since.

I have decide what I am going to do when I get caught up with my orders. I am, going to come out with two new models 1.) The "Personal" and 2.) The "Elite Hunter".

The Personal will be a smaller 3-3.5" blade EDC or B & T type of knife.
The Elite Hunter will be a a larger 4-5" blade all purpose hunting style knife.

The thing about these now is they will be of the highest quality materials and workmanship I can provideI will be using CPM S45VN steel with a cryogenic quench for the blades and the highest quality stag, mammoth ivory and musk ox boss spacers I can find.

These are photos of the first CPM S30V knives I made almost 20 years ago, and they are kind of the base idea going forward. The new knives will have the best American made steels with the best heat treating available coupled with the finest materials ad workmanship. They will be my very best work in looks and performance to date.

All comments, feed back and ideas are welcome.

The one on the lower left hand side is my personal knife.
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I love it. I was going to ask you what you used.
 
Good looking hunter.
Will be interested to see the new designs.
Any idea what price range might be?
 
Mack said:
I love it. I was going to ask you what you used.
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Thanks Mack, I've been hearing really good things about the new CPM S45VN that Crucible just came out with, it's supposed to pretty much keep up with Elmax in edge retention, and be a bit tougher, closer to CPM S35VN in toughness. Both S30V and S35VN have been great steels, S35VN doesn't have quite the edge retention S30V does but it's quite a bit tougher and in real world use that is important. There will be another post on that later.
 
1066vik said:
Good looking hunter.
Will be interested to see the new designs.
Any idea what price range might be?
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There will be several new designs coming out I have been stocking up on some high quality Red stag, Sambar stag, and whitetail crowns. The prices may vary a bit depending on handle materials. Base price for the Personal would be about $300.00 and the base price for the Elite Hunter would be about $350.00 before options like exotic handle materials meaning Mammoth ivory and musk ox boss due to the fact that they are expensive to start with. Stag and tooled leather sheaths and everything else is included in the price.

I'm going to try something a little different here kind of like Behring made build your own where you can pick what kind of spacer material. Choices would be something like Mammoth ivory, Musk ox boss, natural/brown/green canvas micarta or red paper micarta. You will be able to choose guard material nickel silver, brass, or copper.

I have a couple goals here with this, I would like to have customer input and have the customer be interactive in the build process with thoughts and ideas. I would also like to build the most aesthetically pleasing knife coupled with the highest possible level performance. In other words classic looks with state of the art materials, kind of like putting a 1967 corvette body on a Lamborghini drive train, if it would fit.lol

I will dig up some knife photos of what some of the new knives would like and post them here.
 
Okay, some photos of what some of the new models will look like. These first photos are about what a base knife with no added mammoth ivory or musk ox boss would look like. The spacer pattern combinations is endless.IMG_2318.jpegIMG_3382.jpeg
 
These photos are some with Mammoth and Musk ox spacers, again the spacer combinations are almost endless.IMG_0507.jpegIMG_0359.jpeg IMG_2883.jpeg

Also note that a knife with a blade less than 4" long doesn't have a sheath long enough for the animal portrait there is just not enough room to fit it, so the other option is one like these or a rattle snake inlaid sheath can be made.IMG_3407.jpeg
 
Any chance of seeing a fat bellied blade something like this?
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Mack said:
Any chance of seeing a fat bellied blade something like this?
RUANA28CD-300x300.jpg
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Yes, I think we talked about this before I have a template at the shop I’ll dig and post a photo of. I’ll actually be heading to the shop tonight.
 
Okay, I found that little pocket skinner template unfinished in my template drawer, so I cut it out and took a quick photo. It has a 3" blade but that could be easily stretched to 4" or more inches if needed.
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Perfect. Yeah, I'm sure we've talked about it but my memory ain't what it used to be.
 
I knew I forgot something, I forgot post the actual size of the original knife. OAL is 7", blade length is 2 3/4" x 3/4", handle length is 4 1/4" long by 3/4" diameter, which realistically makes this knife a little too small as far as I am concerned for EDC and general field use. I have a medium large hand and it's just a little too small (diameter wise) to get a good firm grip on it. I think about 1" or so diameter handle 4 1/2" long with a 3" x 1" wide blade for the small Personal the larger Personal would be about the same with a 3 1/2" long blade. This is a photo of the knife along side a ruler to show actual size.
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Very exciting stuff Scott, I'd love to be able to get on your list for something like this.
 
The little CPM s30v drop point worked like a charm this past weekend gun deer season in Wisconsin. It field dressed three deer and brushed out a ground blind and is still hair popping sharp. I did notice one small shiny spot on the curve of the edge that I can hardly notice, but it still cuts paper effortlessly. The only problem is at 2 3/4" blade length. My friend Pete and I are going to skin and butcher these two deer I got tomorrow afternoon after he gets back from up north. I'll be trying an experimental knife blade shape made at the same time I made the my personal knife that I use now. It's a 5" drop point with a wasp shape blade profile to give it a little more belly area to help it function better as a skinner. The knife is actually in the same original photo as my personal knife, I made this knife and never got around to trying it out, it will be interesting to see how it works, I'll let you know in a day or two.
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Scott Hanson said:
The little CPM s30v drop point worked like a charm this past weekend gun deer season in Wisconsin. It field dressed three deer and brushed out a ground blind and is still hair popping sharp. I did notice one small shiny spot on the curve of the edge that I can hardly notice, but it still cuts paper effortlessly. The only problem is at 2 3/4" blade length. My friend Pete and I are going to skin and butcher these two deer I got tomorrow afternoon after he gets back from up north. I'll be trying an experimental knife blade shape made at the same time I made the my personal knife that I use now. It's a 5" drop point with a wasp shape blade profile to give it a little more belly area to help it function better as a skinner. The knife is actually in the same original photo as my personal knife, I made this knife and never got around to trying it out, it will be interesting to see how it works, I'll let you know in a day or two.
View attachment 1461398View attachment 1461399
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That one looks fantastic. Belly, point and stag. What else does one need?
 
The experimental knife skinned and quartered two deer this afternoon without any noticeable dulling or damage to the edge. I even did a little vertebrae chopping after skinning the first deer to see how the edge would hold up and no issues noted, neck vertebrae are pretty soft compared to most other bones. I skinned one deer and my friend Pete skinned the other deer with five inch drop point blade. Pete is an avid hunter and shoots one to two large bucks each season with gun and bow, he is also a taxidermist and skins 25-30 or more deer per season. I thought the experimental blade design worked well but Pete thought maybe a 4 1/2 inch blade length may work better, and he did like the shape of the new design, now for a few pics.

One deer skinned and boned and vacuum sealed in bulk packages.
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Both deer finished and in cooler ready for ice.
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One thing I forgot to mention was knives without a crown stag handle can have a Loveless style pouch sheath. The reason being is knives with crowns have a tendency to get caught on brush and pulled out of the sheath.
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Those sheaths are as knice as the knives. Your leatherwork is amazing.
I'm not surprised that it kept it's edge. The ones I have are still lazers.
 
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