My new SWAK, and SWAK discussion

[Geoffrey]

Hi guys, just wanted to make a post based on my newest knife. After reading all of the great things people have been saying about the Swedish Army Knife, I finally decided to pick one up for myself from CanRanger here on the forums.

CanRanger is based here in Canada and was a pleasure to deal with, I also ordered a custom Kydex or Concealex sheath from Normark or On/Scene Tactical.

Well the knife and sheath arrived on Tuesday of this week, my first thought was :yikes: I spent $30US on that??? By this I mean I would have spent twice that to get a setup like this one. For the $30 I got the knife, custom sheath, and shipping!!! :super: The knife is, well, WAY MORE THAN I PAID FOR!!! This knife screams of quality, the one downside is the spine is in very rough condition, but that can easily be fixed with a bit of elbow grease and a file, stone, sandpaper, sander, you get the picture.

Speaking of picture, hope this works, its a BAD QUALITY pic of the knife and sheath.

Second, a bad pic of the knife out of the sheath.

Now onto the sheath. This sheath was made by Normark or Eric E. Noeldechen of On/Scene Tactical. To say this sheath is well made and thought out is an understatement. This sheath is a masterpiece to my simple mind. The sheath can be used without the belt loop for easy tip up neck carry with a piece of para cord. With the included, and very well designed, belt loop you can adjust this sheath for either left or right hand carry, 45 degree cant, horizontal carry, upside down, all kinds of ways, and many more I am sure that I have not found yet.

Here is another bad quality picture of the sheath and hardware.

Secondly, here is a pic of just the sheath.

So far I have sharpened this knife, using sandpaper, two sided tape, and a piece of board. Stropped it on some plain leather, whittled tons of fuzzies, peeled apples, potatoes, sliced and diced. There is one draw back in my mind to the Scandi grind. It is not the best for hard food work, it will easily cut hard foods, just not as well as a Swiss Army knife or Opinel, or any other thin flat ground blade. However for general "bushwork" I do not think it can be beat! :biggthump

Well that is my findings to this time, I will post more pics and info once some of the snow melts and I can get back into the woods.

I would love to hear the opinions of others here, if you have one of these knives you know how good it is, if you do not contact CanRanger and Normark, or any dealer in your area and try one of these things out. You will not regret it.

Now to learn, what does anyone here do with their's. What is your preferred method of sharpening, does the spine through good sparks from a man made firesteel?

CanRanger can be found here. http://home.cogeco.ca/~aelias/

On/Scene Tactical can be found here. http://www.mnsi.net/~nbtnoel/

Thanks for listening.

Geoffrey.

:chill:

 

[tomtom]

Its a great knife isnt it.. i didnt know the swedish army used them

i think for food prep (veg wise) its the thickness of the blade rather then the grind which cause its less then wonderful preformance..

and i also think you right in saying for bushwork you cant beat it.. i think you can probably equal it (and spend hundreds even thousends in doing so) but its defo one of my favorites!

does anyone know if a leather sheath is avalible for this 'un?

 

[Geoffrey]

Hey TomTom, not sure if its the Swedish Issued knife, but I think that is what SWAK stands for. About the leather sheath, I was planning on making one, but I feel that leather has some limitations,

1) the sharp point of this blade would really be easy to put out throught the side of the sheath

2) leather sucks when soaking wet

3) you just cannot, IMHO, make a leather sheath as safe, and secure as a shaped "plastic" sheath.

These are just my opinions, but these are the reasons I went with this sheath. I have been making my own sheaths for a while now, I like leather, but am starting to like kydex and concealex.

ack:

 

[ESpy]

Eric does do some very nice stuff, doesn't he? I'm not entirely convinced on the arguments over Kydex vs Concealex, I'll cheerfully use whichever is on hand. There are, however, some knives that are just plain *wrong* in plastic, I just don't think that is one of them!

 

[Keith_Beef]

i think for food prep (veg wise) its the thickness of the blade rather then the grind which cause its less then wonderful preformance..

I think that the angle, therefore the grind, makes most "scandi grind" knives less than optimal for hard fruit and vegetables like apples, onions, carrots, turnips and swedes.

I've a knife with a thick Steen Nielsen blade. It makes a great knife for cutting meat, but acts like a wedge in onions. It will peel an apple nicely, because the thin peel will flex away from the blade, but wont slice an apple in two halves.

Imagine slicing a carrot. After cutting a certain distance, the blade acts like a wedge, and splits the carrot before the edge gets all the way through.

A blade of the same thickness, but lets say three times the length of bevel, would slice without forcing a split like a wedge.


Keith.

 

[Andy]

Just a bit on kitchen work with the mora

The edge is about 12.5degrees per side (average for the bevel as it's a hollow grind) Kitchen knives tend to be 20-25degrees per side. They are often as thick as a mora (if not thicker) but the thing with a full flat with a secondary edge bevel is you keep the blade thin for quite some distance so the food doesn't have to bend as much. I've convexed the transition of my mora for a bit better food prep

 

[tomtom]

as it's a hollow grind

...to start with

 

[tomtom]

I think that the angle, therefore the grind, makes most "scandi grind" knives less than optimal for hard fruit and vegetables like apples, onions, carrots, turnips and swedes.

I've a knife with a thick Steen Nielsen blade. It makes a great knife for cutting meat, but acts like a wedge in onions. It will peel an apple nicely, because the thin peel will flex away from the blade, but wont slice an apple in two halves.

Imagine slicing a carrot. After cutting a certain distance, the blade acts like a wedge, and splits the carrot before the edge gets all the way through.

A blade of the same thickness, but lets say three times the length of bevel, would slice without forcing a split like a wedge.


Keith.

well i got this

and its great for veg and fruit because its nice and thin! i would call it a scandi grind.. though im not certain of the definition.. so while i do think a flat ground knife is best for kitchen work you can get a perfectly passable scandi ground kitchen knife.

 

[RovingArcher]

It may be called the Swedish Army Knife, but I read somewhere that they furnished their own blades. I like the SwAK, it's a fine little knife. Not as good a cutter as the M2K, but still a good bush knife. I do need to get one of those sheaths. Actually, I'd like to get one for the Mora 2000 as well.

 

[RobertsonPau]

I got one of these knives from the Ray Mears website, it's sold as a Frosts Mora for about £10. It came with a plastic 'utility' type sheath that just doesn't look right IMO. I made my own leather sheath and cut down the plastic sheath as a liner. It now looks a lot more bushcrafty.


In terms of performance the knife has been superb and done everything I've asked of it. And it's cheap enough that I don't worry about having to replace it. I've worked on it to give a flat grind, and a quick wipe through a Gerber Ceramic sharpener keeps it razor sharp.

 

[rapidboy]

I carry a stainless version in work everyday and i go through one about every 6 months.
The stainless version is a pig to sharpen and dulls quickly but i use it for prying ,as a chisel etc etc and i never expect or want it to be shaving sharp.
I wear snickers trousers (the work trousers with the knee pads and loads of pockets in them) and the knife in it's standard plastic sheath fits nicely into a long thin pocket on my right leg but the plastic sheaths wear and knives become loose quite quickly.
I have never had a kydex sheath before ,although i am looking forward to trying a couple of Allan Blade sheath's soon but does kydex wear as quickly as plastic ??

I did have a carbon version and the edge was very soft and prone to "rolling" but i think it just a bad knife as most people seem to rave about them,

I made this sheath for my fathers carbon version quite some time ago (and before i bought any proper tools or leather) and while it's far from perfect it's still in use every weekend and show's that a usable sheath can be made from a scrap of leather and without any tools.

 

[Geoffrey]

nice sheath, I have found my SWAK very easy to sharpen so far. I have not used it much yet though, so I am not sure of the edge holding ability.

Why do you have to replace yours every 6 months? Do they break, wear out, what?

Thanks.

ack:

 

[Bob]

I made a leather sheath for my Mora about 18 months ago. I also cut down the original plastic sheath and built it in, together with a firesteel pocket. A picture of it was kindly posted up by someone (my apologies - I can't remember who!) but I'm sure it can be tracked down if anyone's interested in it!!

Bob

 

[CanRanger]

Hi Geoff thanks for the kind words. Normark does do quality work he has made some customs for my own collection but I can't seem to keep my hands on a swak model sheath they keep geting sent out.

I heard a few of you mention kitchen knives just to show you Frosts also makes a line o kitchen knives I get some in for all the slauter houses in the area.

 

[rapidboy]

Why do you have to replace yours every 6 months? Do they break, wear out, what?
ack:

They just end up with bits missing from them ,bent blades or sharpened to the point that they are unusable.
They are cheap and save my good knives from rough treatment.
I was doing a bit of DIY at home today laying a foundation for a new garden path and i was using it to cut open bags of stones ,sand and cement and i wouldn't like to use anything more expensive.
I was using it as a chisel yesterday and it got hammered through a stud wall !
Don't tell anyone over at British Blades or they might excommunicate me for crimes against a blade ):

 

[zackerty]

Too late, yer excomunicated!!!



Ah, wot the heck... we forgive ya...

 

[Pict]

I recently bought three Frosts Mora Swedish Army knives to loan to students on an informal wilderness survival course that I teach. I had originally ordered a SWAK and a plain red handled Mora for T&E but liked the SWAK so much upon opening the package that I ordered two more and a green handled Clipper. At $9 US they really can’t be beat!

Mine have the standard green plastic sheath. I wasn’t happy with retention, as these will be worn on the belt in the wilderness. I solved this problem by adding a paracord lanyard to the handle. I attached a BSA Hotspark to the lanyard. For security while carrying the knife the lanyard and steel are slipped under the belt. It provides enough retention that the knife doesn’t slip out but also does not impede the draw.

There is enough cord on the lanyard that the firesteel can be used without removing it. I did have to square off the spine of the blades with a fine mill file. They spark extremely well now.

Since I live in a tropical climate I’ve been using the SWAK for a variety of tropical survival knife tasks. In my three-day course each student gets a SWAK and a Tramontina machete. These knives won’t have to do any chopping or digging, just detail cutting and whittling.

I tested the SWAK against a huge, dry palm branch/leaf today. Dry palm branches give you several good shelter-building resources. The woody central stem is a great structural support pole. The wide base of the branch provides about a 1 meter by 50 cm waterproof shingle. When they are dry palm branches can be extremely woody. I managed to cut all the leaves away from the center rib. Afterwards I could see small impact marks on the edge but nothing that hindered the knife from functioning. In the field I would use a machete for this but the SWAK did just fine on its own. It also separated the wide cardboard like base from the branch with some forceful cutting. It did balk at cutting the stem into a shorter length. That took several hard swings from the machete so the SWAK is forgiven.

I’m sure the SWAK would do better on fresh green palm leaves but I can’t bring myself to pull one down off the tree in my front yard. They sound too nice outside my bedroom window.

This past weekend I tried it on bamboo. For felling green bamboo you need a machete. To work bamboo into useful shapes any saw is far superior to any knife. The SWAK did about as good as knives ever do on bamboo. I used the SWAK to fashion a fire saw. This required splitting seasoned bamboo, shaving the edge, carving a notch, and drilling a small hole. The SWAK took this in stride. As an aside I actually did make a coal, twice.

The SWAK did surprisingly well opening green coconuts. Before starting to open the coconut I shaved off a slice of the outer husk to use as a spoon for eating the meat. The SWAK, razor sharp from the factory, sliced the spoon off in one easy sweep of the blade.

I then shaved off several half-inch thick slices from the top of the nut. Once the inner water-filled portion of the nut was in easy reach I used the point to carve a cone shaped hole out of the top. The short blade was very easy to control. This operation opened up a one-inch hole allowing the water to be drained into a canteen cup. It filled the cup to about ¾ full, 400 ml.

Placing the knife blade into the hole I then cut around the nut from the inside forcing the blade straight down and around the circumference splitting the nut into two even halves. My three kids then devoured the meat and drank the water.

I found the SWAK very easy to use to open coconuts. The thin, sharp blade required very little force. The procedure was very safe and allowed complete use of the nut. I was surprised how efficiently the SWAK opened the nut. I had expected to work harder at it.

The SWAK is as near to perfect for my purposes as I can ask from a nine-dollar knife. Mac

 

[Geoffrey]

Hey guys, I made an error before hand, I meant $30US for the entire kit, sheath, knife, and shipping. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

Geoffrey.

 

[Martyn]

Just a bit on kitchen work with the mora

The edge is about 12.5degrees per side (average for the bevel as it's a hollow grind) Kitchen knives tend to be 20-25degrees per side.

Isn't that the wrong way round? It would make the kitchen knife have broad, fat bevels like a woodlore.

 

[Martyn]

well i got this

and its great for veg and fruit because its nice and thin! i would call it a scandi grind.. though im not certain of the definition.. so while i do think a flat ground knife is best for kitchen work you can get a perfectly passable scandi ground kitchen knife.

It's a bit of both TomTom. Though most outdoor knives have a thickness of 3-4mm. With a blade of this thickness, the bevel angle is the primary influence in how good it is at cutting carrots - exactly as keith describes. It's acknowledged that scandis are poor in this respect because they wedge apart and split hard vegetables rather than slice.

Also, the kitchen knife in your photo does not have bevel angles the same as a mora. While it looks like a scandi grind from the side, in reality the bevels are much thinner. If they were the same angle as a mora, they would only go 1/4 inch or even less up the sides of the blade as that blade is so thin.

On the left, you can see how 2x 20deg bevels make up a 40 degree edge, typical of scandi's - doesnt matter how thick the blade, the edge bevel is the same angle. On a very thin blade, the edge would simply stop a few mm up the sides.

On the right is a more typical kitchen knife, 2x 12 deg bevels give an edge angle of 24 deg, much better for slicing.

Obviously blade thickness influences things, but if the blade is typically 3-4mm thick, it's the angle of the bevels that will be significant.

Another good illustration of form v function...

Profile D is a typical scandi - poor for slicing carrots because of the fat edge bevels (A, would be best, followed by B, then C and then D), but it's the same fat edge bevels that makes "D" bril for woodwork & woodcarving - for carving wood, you can reverse the order, with D being the best and A the worst.

:biggthump