Tips Sail

A while back while working on my first crooked knife blade from an old file, I got discouraged with the speed of progress without power tools. In a moment of self-doubt about whether I could finish the project, I ended up ordering a crooked knife blade from Orien MacDonald after coming across his page on Etsy. I liked look of his blade, especially the fact that it was offset from the tang allowing for a greater and more comfortable angle for carving. Here is the blade he made for me with a traditional, bent tang.


New Crooked Knife Blade
When working out ideas of the handle, I had collected some pieces that were promising options. For this knife, I decided on the yellow birch handle (2nd from top) in the photo below:


Handle choices
It was shaped with some rasps and a spoon carving knife to hollow out the thumb rest area. I decided the decorate the birch with some basic woodburning patterns to mimic the chip-carving I've seen on various knives. Here's one angle of the completed knife handle.


Decorated Handle
The bottom was chiseled out to fit the tang and the blade secured with leather lace. Here's the finished knife below showing off the offset angle of the blade from the handle as well as the curving angle of the blade from the horizontal view.


Offset from handle's axis


View from the horizontal plane
Here's a comparison shot of the new "Orien Crooked Knife" and the homemade Olive Crooked Knife. The homemade blade is longer, thinner, and flat and I can see it working well when shaping canoe ribs and larger surfaces like a paddle blade. For all around carving though, the Orien Knife would look to be more versatile to carve out paddle grips, the shaft, spoons, bowls, and other bushcraft items.


The budding crooked knife collection

While sharpening the homemade crooked knife and practicing on some scrap cedar a while back, the lashed blade began to jiggle and loosen. I quickly realized that the knife needed to be more secure if I was going to use it as a serious carving tool.

One thing I had forgotten to do when originally assembling the knife was bend the tang of the blade at a sharp angle to hook onto the handle wood and prevent movement. After quickly heating up the tang in the cottage fireplace, I bent it up slightly to conform to the angular shape of the handle then bent a sharp hook at the end. The piece of wood selected for the knife had a knot right at the bottom and by sculpting out a hole (with an awl), the hook fit securely into place. The original waxed thread whipping was replaced with flat leather lace I had on hand...much more comfortable. Even though the bottom of the knife looks ugly, the whole thing is amazingly secure with this change.


Bent tang in place


Hook end inserted into carved hole
I had also decided to decorate the handle by burning on a sort of chip-carving motif. The whole decoration was first sketched using pencil and that's what you see in the pics.


Chip-carved motif on handle
This was my first time burning on olive wood and sure enough, the naturally oily material gave off a slightly sizzling aroma. Unfortunately, it also burned unevenly and required constant cleaning of the metal nibs. In the end the pattern turned out too blotchy and I ended up sanding the whole thing off in frustration at the poor quality of the image. Here's the plain, refurbish version ready for some carving...


Resanded to remove the intended pyrographic decoration


Perfect fit for the one-and-only user