Bushcraft Style Knives - The Guardian

The Bushmaster

This my #1 knife with a handle made from Orange Linen Micarta over white fibre liners. I altered the blade handle on this blade to accommodate a 'blood and gooey muck' channel.

The Micarta handle extends beyond the bottom of the handle tapering from between 2mm and 3mm to act as a channel for blood and other gooey muck. As this is RWL-34 steel I shall actually use this knife for when I go fishing.

BUSHMASTER BLADE DIMENSIONS

Length overall: 220mm

Blade length to Ricasso: 110mm

Blade length from start of grind: 103mm

Handle length to Ricasso: 110mm

Blade width at Ricasso: 30mm

Blade width at start of grind: 27mm

Depth of grind: 7mm

Thickness of blade: 3.2mm

NB: The sizes given are as accurate as I can measure them. Therefore, they're approximate and there might be some very minor variations in the stated sizes from blade to blade.

BUSHMASTER IN

SAMBAR STAG AND OLIVE WOOD

Sambar Stag at the front, Olive wood in the middle and Coronet antler at the back. Combination of Red and Black fibre liners with 8 brass pins and a brass lined Lanyard hole.

The handle design of this Bushmaster was inspired by a photo of a knife that someone sent me. Finished up looking very nice, but the crosscut Olivewood is not really the ideal wood in this instance, so I might alter it yet.

Bushmaster in Leopard Wood

This is #10 blade which I made up to see how well Leopard wood works out as a finished handle. In my opinion, it turned out very well, although the photo doesn't do it full justice. Leopard wood a slight 3D effect to it, giving the finished handle a good depth to it.

Dave Stewart's Bushmaster

Dave got one Bushmaster blade from me and as you can see from the completed knife, he did a grand job of it.

He used Curupay wood and used the lower of the two pre-drilled lanyard holes.

#06 Bushmaster

Composite handle in Desert Ironwood and Sambar Staghorn with Mosaic pins. Standard British style sheath.

#07 Bushmaster

Black Buffalo Horn over red fibre liners with Mosaic pins. Sheath with extension loop.

Origin of the 'Bushmaster'

My original objective for the Bushmaster was to have it along the lines of the Wilkinson Sword Woodlore style blade profile, but larger all round and made from RWL-34 steel. My aim was to have a sort of a super Woodlore style blade 'with attitude'!

When I start a new knife blade project, I normally send in my design details and have a couple of prototypes made just to confirm that all is well. With this project I didn't do that and ordered a batch of 10 blades from the outset. Unfortunately, owing to a slight 'miscommunication' problem I ended up with a batch of blades that are a cross between my DL1 Mk2 and a 'Woodlore' type blade.

The blade part is very similar to the Woodlore and the handle is similar to my DL1. It's not often in life when a mistake turns out to be a good thing, but in this instance the way things turned out I could not have wished for better. These blades are really nice and, bearing in mind that at the time I ran out of Talisman and DL1 blades, they couldn't have turned up at a better time for me!

The 'Bushmaster' is in 3.2mm RWL-34 steel and made for me by my friend Brian Sorenson - so quality is assured. It's a very rare thing that I sell any of my blades, but I did part with two of these blades; one went to Big Kev for his son and the other one went to Dave from Northern Ireland. However, I shall not be parting with anymore as I'd rather offer them for sale as complete knives. You can check out the ordering details here.

Both of these are Bushmaster blades, with the top blade in standard version and the bottom one is my own #1 blade, the handle of which I altered to suit an idea that I have in mind to allow for muck and blood to be channelled in a groove at the bottom of the handle.

Basically I'll achieve this by making the handle extend beyond the bottom of the original knife handle, tapering it from around 2mm at the front to 3mm at the back. I've done this type of handle on Skinners before and it worked out very well; so why not a do the same for an all round Bushcraft type knife? The result is as shown in the photos above.

Here you can see the 'Bushmaster Mk1' (top blade) and the 'DL1 Mk2' (bottom blade). Both are in 3.2mm RWL-34 steel and are not too dissimilar in profile. There's a little bit more blade on the Bushmaster, with its cutting edge also about 2mm longer than the DL1's.

Once this current batch of Bushmaster blades are gone, I'll not be making anymore of them as I want to go back to the original design concept of a more substantial Woodlore style knife blade, i.e. the Super Bushmaster.

Want to know more about RWL-34 steel? Then check this link and get the facts:

http://faq.customtacticals.com/datasheets/rwl34.pdf

Here are the full batch of 10 Bushmaster blades. The holes are pre-drilled for a reason. The whole blade is industrially hardened and anything less than Tungsten steel drill bits will hardly scratch the surface.

In terms of quality, this batch of blades is equal to all my other RWL-34 blades. But, I've set my mind on working with three types of blades, all very distinctive from each other. Namely the Talisman Mk2 (in 4.2mm thick 52100 Bearing steel); the DL1 Mk3 (in 4.2mm RWL-34 steel) and the 'Super Bushmaster' (also in 4.2mm RWL-34 steel).

Therefore, I'll only have the Bushmaster that is in 3.2mm thick RWL 34 steel to work with. I have no plans to continue with this model, so once they're gone, they're gone...