Price of the Blade

[Steve]

(12 January 2014, 03:44)CharlesHarris Wrote: How large a fixed blade is allowed to be carried in the person, not in the city, but in the case of a farmer or gamekeeper on land which he is working?

No limit, you can carry an axe or a machete around all day on private land you're working on, but walk into a public place with anything more than a 3" non-locking folder and you need a good reason, like you just bought it or are on the way to a job to use it.

I recently did a side-by-side comparison of some of my knives whilst butchering 5 very large ewes. I used a stainless Morakniv, carbon Frosts Mora, SOG skinner, Kyocera ceramic carver, Global cromova18 carver.

The stainless Morakniv was a useful size for skinning and the fine point was useful but it needed sharpening regularly. The carbon Mora was the same, just a little sharper.

The SOG sninner has a very useful gut hook which I used on each animal, and the more curved end of the blade was good for running down between the flesh and skin because I couldn't get the skin to separate by hand. If anything it was a little too sharp, and it went through the skin on several occasions where the Moras didn't. It held the edge quite well too.

The Kyocera, like all ceramic knives I've used, starts off not a sharp as the best steel knife, but just doesn't blunt at all. Too fragile to use for boning out.

The Global was a revelation, I've owned a set for a couple of years so know how sharp they are. After a lot of kitchen use I gave it a quick sharpen on the Sharpmaker before I started. I used it to carve and dice nearly 500kg of meat, and it was still razor sharp afterwards. The only problem is that the grip gets slippery when cutting loads of fatty meat, if it had the handle off the SOG it would be great. I had to wear gloves for safety.

Now, if I can find a "bushcraft" style knife made from the Globals Cromova18 steel I'll consider it.