Prior to coming to the Yard and to Bussekin knives in general my use of knives that I had for field work had shown a few features which generally assisted in doing bushcraft type tasks. Taking my Woodlore knife as a starting point this has some good features but the knife still needs tweaking a bit...



The blade comes with a Scandi grind which is partly hollow ground and the spine has slightly rounded sides...taking the edge to a water stone and making it a proper flat grind on the edge and flattening off the spine for a sharper edge angle to use the ferro rod with really helps...



once done this knife works very well and really is the bench mark I assess my other knives by.

Of all the Bussekin knives I have had....and that is a fair few now...the knife that came the best prepared for field work is my DFLE...



This knife had a great factory edge....really very sharp...and the spine had nice sharp edge angles...and being a satin finish instead of painted it really takes sparking a ferro rod perfectly and the satin finish makes using the knife very easy...you can see perfectly whether the blade needs cleaning and this helps a great deal on food prep work. Make no mistake...the ideal nice weight of this knife at 16 oz's and it's perfect balance make this knife very hard to beat in any company...a justified flag ship for the Yard! But it is slightly big for some tasks...

This lead me to looking for a smaller blade...of those I have had I really liked the Ratmandu...



The only problem for me was that the knife came painted and needed stripping and had a very rounded spine which did'nt help with using a ferro rod for fire lighting....now I appreciate many don't see the need for having a knife able to use a ferro rod and are happy with using a lighter or matches or even having a ferro rod with a striker. My preference is to have a knife that can use these tools though...it is a nice way to always have the ability to make a fire...and I suppose for me I like the challenge of using basic equipment like this.

To improve the RMD for this purpose I decided to give it a sharp swedge....



This along with stripping it makes the RMD for me a great small knife option.
Putting a sharpened swedge on some of my Bussekin knives has now become a preffered alteration to make them better for field work. I will post some pic's in another post as I might be at my limit of pic's for a single post...but am interested in what others do or how they like to modify their knives for field use.

I'm curious how the sharpened swedge helps for field work. I personally hate the things because they mess up batoning. I've batoned with just about every knife I've taken into the woods - including folders <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

Other than my RMD I have put a sharpened swedge on a number of my Busse knives...some like my Jackhammer had a swedge already on the blade but it is not sharpened...it did'nt take much though to bring the swedge to a proper level of sharpness...



I really like the JH as a field knife but some reports of the CE finish being prone to rust have an unsettling effect...although so far I have found if looked after well this blade has never rusted on me at all...however I have given some consideration to keeping some of my Busse knives with the coating on.

I took some pictures on a very bright day of my Double Cut Bead Blasted finish on my knives when angled into the sun and they do still give off a fare bit of glare...



So I thought I would try and pick up some blades with suitable coatings on them and see if I could work with these just as well as my knives which have a Satin or Bead Blasted finish. I was able to pick up a RMD in sage and having done a swedge on this the knife works just as well as it's twin which is stripped...





and have to admit that I am now becoming quite interested in seeing how well I can adapt some of the useful painted finishes to work just as well as a plain metal finish.

To answer your query MM I have'nt found batonning to be a problem with a sharpened swedge...yes they cut into the baton but hey...there is usually plenty more sticks to use...and the knife goes through logs and splits them just the same...more importantly for me though if having prepared wood for a fire...I can at least get some sparks going to light it without reverting to using the main edge as a strike point. Some might say...use a striker or lighter etc...but I like to have my knives able to work with spark strikers...these tools work for years on end and always throw sparks...matches or lighters are less reliable...but it is a personal thing I suppose.

Edit...going down the pub to play in the Pool League...will post some more pic's later.

Excellent pictures and write up!
Thanks Steel Fan

For a striker I took a two inch section of hacksaw blade and smoothed the corners, put a piece of duct tape over the teeth and attached it to my ferro. This setup throws lots of sparks and the bit of hacksaw weighs next to nothing.

whhat is that knife with the rubber handle?

who makes the woodlore?

it is a nice write up. I like the mods

The knife with the rubber handle is a Jon Voight Amazon...it has an ATS 34 blade at .25 thick and a 7.5 inch blade...the handle is Ryanite...the same polymer used on early M16 pistol grips...bought this in 1989...it has been my
belt kit knife for nearly 20 years...been bead blasted 4 times to restore the finish...seen loads of use...but since Jon Voight passed away the guy who sold it to me told me I should look after it as he only made a few...infact this "replacement" search is how I came to Bussekin.

The Woodlore is made by Alan Wood and was designed by Ray Mears...it is 01 Tool Steel and is the original "Bushcraft" knife...pretty rare compared to the demand for them...they go for silly money on E-bay...but the design is a good one for doing field work/bushcraft and has been copied hugely.

Yes I have a coated NMSFNO and the rounded treatment makes it pretty hard to find an area for striking a ferro rod....so I have re-attached the striker which is like the one you have made above and I tuck this into some paracord wrapped round the sheath...it stops it rattling around...but it will probably shred the cord in time and I fancy putting some of those dimple grip points in the upper thumb groove as a strike point...like those on the SAR4.

That makes sense, to use the swedge for striking fire steel on a coated knife - do you have any other camp chores where the swedge comes in handy? I always thought of it as more of a fighting-based enhancement, and am trying to think outside the box...

Yes, if you need to ream a bowl or a hole in wood for either a fire drill on the "bowl" or a "hole" for making cord attachments for spoons, or cups or a chopping board for food, with a swedge you can turn the knife against the swedge edge rather than the main blade edge and preserve this for game work.

I find "reaming" to be a sure fire task to blunt the edge on the main blade near the tip...or roll it over...and having a sharp edge here is great for gralloch work on deer or any varmints...especially for cutting around the anus to detach the bowel so it can be pulled back through to the stomach cavity or for doing the windpipe in a similar vein...so it helps on these tasks.

Also if you ever "nap" flint for arrow heads using the swedge edge preserves the main one...this definately can "roll" your edge...and ideally if you can collect a selection of nice shaped stones for this task it helps. Napping flint can also be handy for making supplement spark strikers...although there are very cool sparks from flint....and they need special tinder. Some dried fungus usually works best.

Finally on a military aspect if you are trimming fuse wire or trip wire I use the swedge as it just unnecessarily blunts my main edge and carrying pliers just for this is unwanted extra weight...my Leatherman is the "secaturs" version as I use these more on foilage.

The swedge has many uses...some doubtless I have forgotten...but they were always valued on Bowies. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />