Knife review : Finch

The review of the Byrd Finch consists of :

specifications
stock evaluations
general work : food, field, miscellaneous
edge Retention, sharpening
lock
carry
grip ergonomics/security
overview
comments and references

Specifications : main

The overall length of the Finch is 4 3/8" (111 mm), with a blade length of 1 7/8" (48 mm). The length closed is 2 1/2" (64 mm) with a cutting edge of 1 9/16" (40 mm). The weight is 0.5 oz (15 g) with a hole diameter of 11/32" (9 mm). The blade thickness is 5/64" (48 mm). The primary hollow grind tapers to an edge which is 0.017 (1)" thick and ground at 12.9 (2) degrees per side. This one has a FRN grip, it is also available in a stainless steel grip. The blade steel is 8C13CrMoV a high carbon stainless steel with a high hardness and relatively low carbide volume.

Stock testing : main

The Finch tips tapers through 0.38" at an angle of 5.9 degrees. On a 50 lbs push it sinks to a depth of 245 (8) pages into a standard phonebook.

Food : main

As a paring knife the Finch has has solid cutting abiilty and handling as it is very light with a slim and narrow tip. The handle could be a little longer for better control but since paring work is low in applied force it isn't a huge disadvantage. The blade is also a little short which is an issue peeling large vegetables but isn't a factor on apples and potatos. The edge could also be more acute and thinner for such work to raise the cutting ability but it is still well above average for a small folding knife and given the hollow grind it would be easy to adjust the angle flat to the blade for an optimal paring profile.

As a utility knife the main issue with the Finch is just the size. As in general there are few tasks outside of the capability of the knife that can't be solved with imagination and creativity. One larger cuts of meat for example as in filleting the meat off a section of cod, the knife basically has to skin off the fillet because the blade is too short to simply remove it in one cut. It is however still more functional than very heavy knives with really thick cross sections but the time and effort to do such cutting is a many to one disadvantage over knives with suitable blade lengths. It is also difficult to make clean cuts to a cutting board so most work is done with a draw cut backwards through the material. This is limited to fairly small foods like green onions, larger vegetables like turnips are very difficult to section with the Finch.

In general there were no issues noted with corrosion in kitchen use even when the blade was not immediately rinsed after cutting acidic foods.

Field : main

Cutting light brush, the Finch is limited due to size obviously. A larger folders like the Military can just pop off light brush with light chops but this does little with a knife the size of the Finch. To trim light alders with the Finch, if the wood is really small, under a quarter of an inch or so, the Finch can generally cut it with a sharp pull backward. The larger alders and bent and the Finch just pressed through them. It made removal of a few dozen patches of alder much easier than trying to pull them up by hand and the knife was uneffected by the cutting.

For carving, the Finch works well for precision cutting being light in the hand and offering high cutting ability. The tip is also very slim and easily does detailed work. It has little prying ability in wood so any hollow removal is done by a lot of cross hatching and cutting out the wood rather than aggressive prying to dig out the wood. The only significant downside is there is limited ability to apply heavy force due to the size of the handle and there would also be concerns about the pivot if maximal force was used by an average adult male anyway. However it still is very useful for precision carving and shaping such as making small tools like a bark spud. This is a tapered wooden prybar which is used to aid in bark removal. The spud can't cut the bark which is useful to obtain large sheets for construction, just make a couple of starting cuts with the knife. The spud is also more robust than the tips of fine knives and thus can aggressively pry off thicker barks more readily.

Barks heavy with pitch have many uses as the sap can be used to make glue by heating it and mixing charcoal to strengthen and will also burn very readily and thus can serve as an intermediate fuel while larger pieces of wood are gathered. A small piece of sap heavy bark can provide enough heat to burn even fresh woods which are an inch or so thick. The spud makes gathering it very easy, just cut well away from it with the knife and pry off the piece. If it gets on the knife it is very difficult to clean and would be a real mess in the lock.

For fire: the wood carving ability rapidly produces a pile of fine shavings and combined with some thick pitch bark provides a fire which will readily burn for a half an hour. This gives time to split up any gathered thicker wood. The Finch is too small to do this directly and thus wedges are carved if necessary and used in either existing cracks in the wood or driven into cuts made by the Finch.

Miscellaneous : main

The main use of the finch is on small precision cutting. It has a very fine point and the cutting ability is relatively high in general due to the grind. It worked very well to create a pair of improvised sandals to allow some eager nephews some time playing in a local river and sparing a pair of decent sneakers from getting water logged. The knife easily trims two soles from a placemat, cuts a few sections of rag to make pseudo laces, trimms the holes for the laces and binds up the two sandals. A much more durable and functional sandal can be made from non-steel belted tires.

Edge_retention : main

As a rough check of edge retention, the Finch was benchmarked against a non-name chinese stainless steel folder which had an edge at 0.021 (2)" thick and ground at 21 (1) degrees per side. It is the blade shown on the right. No distinct microbevels were used and the blades were finished on 600 DMT 1/4" stone. The cutting was done on a slice with 3 cm of edge through the ridges on 1/8" thick cardboard. The blades were basically roughly sharpened with a time constraint of one minute per blade to simulate an actual field sharpening during working conditions. The sharpness was measured by cutting light cord under 45 grams of tension. The results :

The results of the fit show the Finch to be quite superior in both initial sharpness and extended aggression, not a surprise. It was about 50% sharper initially and was able to cut about 150% more material before reaching the same level of blunting. As noted this was a time constrained sharpening and neither blade is close to optimal sharpness. Both would of course shave air hair and push cut newsprint initially however they could be improved with more time spent to minimize the burr. The no name was especially very difficult to sharpen because it formed a burr quite easily. This can also be noted in detail in the full data because there is little initial blunting responce :

quick edge retention comparison of Finch vs no name
Cardboard	No name	Finch
meters	centimeters
0	63 (7)	40 (3)
0.2	63 (5)	40 (4)
0.5	60 (5)
0.7	70 (5)	50 (5)
1.1	83 (7)
1.6	75 (8)	63 (5)
2.2	83 (7)
3.4	93 (6)	65 (5)
4.6	105 (9)
5.8	125 (9)	75 (7)
8.2	125 (12)
11.1	175 (15)	95 (6)
14.1	213 (18)
17.1	283 (21)	125 (12)
20.0	315 (27)
23.0	390 (39)	188 (21)

Note that edge retention is quite sensitive to edge angle, both primary and secondary so this isn't a comparison of the steels but rather of the knives with stock edge angles, well the no-name was slightly modifed.

Sharpening : main

The thin and acute edge of the Finch allows it to be honed readily on most jigs and v-rods. Freehanded it responded well to a variety of hones.

Lock : main

The lock back of the Finch was stable under spine impacts, torques and white knuckling, consistent with the performance of other Byrd knives.

Carry : main

The Finch is a keychain class knife which is near weightless due to the FRN handle. It doesn't have a clip and comes with a small chain. It has little drag even in a shirt pocket and rarely generates an adverse reaction even to people usually not friendly towards knives as it is so small.

Ergonomics / security : main

The only significant issue with the grip is the size. This is a very small knife and thus there were issues of leverage if the cutting required heavy force, but of course in such situations a larger folder would in general be more productive. For its size the grip was very ergonomic and secure.

Overview : main

The Finch works very well as a keychain knife, handling precision cutting with ease. It can also be pushed into heavier work as noted, though when cutting moves beyond heavy cardboard a large grip would be more productive to reduce fatigue in the hand during the cutting. There were no issues with corrosion resistance of the steel or complaints about edge retention, see the blade materials section on 8C13CrMoV for more information on the steel. The lock was secure and stable approaching forces which looked to be able to significantly damage the handle.

Byrd Finch