Sunday, February 9, 2014

Small Integral Loveless patterns



 
A number of knife makers have made "Integral" Loveless pattern knives. They are nice but in my mind there was something missing.  You can make a knife to a specific silhouette/profile but still completely miss the mark if short cuts are taken.

The most noticeable thing missing is a ricasso.  The second thing I felt was off is that a a specific thickness of steel was used and there was not any real difference between the handle and the blade.

I have been playing around with them in my spare time and here are a few finished.


New York Special

With snap

Older pattern large City Knife with rounded/contoured handle and hand rubbed finish. 

Newer pattern small City Knife with facetted handle and tumbled finish. 




Sunday, February 2, 2014

Having fun with Loveless patterns



Loveless knives...polished blade, red liner, green Micarta handle.  That is what most people think.  When you make them full time you begin to think, "What if?"

What if the proportions were changed?
What if the blade finish was changed?
What if it folded?
What if Bob did a collaboration with...?

So I have been goofing around with some different things:

The Loveless Stiff Horn made into a modern frame lock; The Frame Horn. The 3 above have the drop point patterned blade. 
 Frame Horn with the clip point blade; This was only seen a few times on the fixed blade Stiff Horn; There where 5 blade patterns associated with the Stiff Horn; modified Wharncliffe, clip, drop, semi-skinner, caper. (photo form AZCK) 
A model I call the Saul Hunter; this knife was derived from the handle of a 3" Drop Hunter and the front section of the 4.5" Utility Hunter.
This knife was featured in the March '14 issue of Blade. It is a Dixon fighter profile with a grind similar to a Chute knife.  IMHO a much more balanced knife visually and in the hand. The extended Chute typically only had 1" added to the blade so the clip appeared out of proportion. 
The "Solution", this knife was intended to be a Big Bear but I wasn't paying attention and didn't set up the guard location and intended grind lines correctly.  Instead of throwing away a 14" piece of CPM154 I made it into a mortise tang fighter,  This knife was a combination of a 8.5" Big Bear Blade and the Wilderness handle. 
And this is what I call the L&L Fighter. This what I imagined would come of  Lum/Loveless (or vice versa) collaboration. The handle and blade length are derived from the Loveless 5" Fighter with a blade I designed after studying pictures of Mr. Lum's fixed blades.
I have a number of other things in the works...I'll try to do a better job on my entries.

David