Month: May 2013

Gebhard Solutions has some interesting training blades for small folders.  I want make one like this but I think I will make a pattern from scratch. Mostly as a learning experience.

Finally got a chance to take pictures of the second loveless prototype. First thoughts are that the white under wrap with black over wrap did not look as nice as I was hoping.

I still want to try a flat under wrap – which should let me space out the over wrap a little better,  and father apart. Regardless the top side insert was about 4-4.5mm too long, leading to the notch of empty space by the lanyard hole.

I do think this blade fits better in my hand. With the insets the wraps make the handle about 4mm thinner. I think I could take it down another 2mm and then weight the handle to shift the center of mass back into the hand. Before I do any major reshaping of the design I think I will make the next blade from steel and see how that impacts things.

So the second bit of feedback I got from my knife fighter friend was that her training blades always get banged up in knife to knife fighting. I made the blades form 6061 aluminum, and was curious how it would hold up.

I mounted some scrap stock in a vise and did some slash cuts on it, then let my friend do the same. I marked the blades with sharpie so that the damage would show up better.

*Ahem* I looked like I was waving a tiny baseball bat around with one hand and her strokes looked like she was performing an appendectomy. The result of both our cuts though was gouges on the blade. So while 6061 Aluminum is probably fine for training knife defenses, I think I will want to make the final training blades from tool steel so that they can also be used in knife to knife training.

This blade design is inspired by the keen-edge blades 9 inch loveless. After the handle felt fat in my hand, I took a second look at their pattern. I double wrapped my handle – so right off the bat my dimensions were bigger than theirs by 6mm. So I figured I would cut the same knife but with either side of the handle inset by 3mm on each side. (Inset shown with the red arrows).

I also added a small guard on the back side of the blade opposite to the finger guard. The idea is the extra guards and insets would simultaneously make the blade thinner even after I added a double wrap, and help keep the under wrap from sliding around on the handle over time. All in all I think I want to play with this idea more. I like making the handle feel thicker with a double wrap – but without its feeling wider.

Unfortunately I dropped the knife off at the dojo for people to play with before taking pictures of the new design.