The Randall #1, "All purpose fighting knife", is forged from O1 tool steel and through hardened to 55/56 HRC. The blade is 1/4" with a full distal taper and weighs 265 g, 465 g in the leather sheath.
This one has an eight inch blade, which is sharpened for 6 3/4" of its length. The blade is 1 1/8" wide, with a sabre flat grind which is 5/8" high tapering to a 0.025-0.035" thick edge, ground at 14-16 degrees per side.
The knife balances one inch in front of the guard. A shot of this well used blade :
The Randall #5, "small camp and trail knife", is forged from 440B stainless steel, through hardened to 56/57 HRC. The knife has a sabre flat grind, 5/8" high on a blade which is 1 1/8" wide. The knife is a quarter inch thick, with a ful distal taper, and weighs 240 g, 380 g in the leather sheath.
The edge is from 0.008-0.015" thick and ground at 15-17 degrees per side. This one is well used and sharpened, this isn't the new in box profile from Randall. The knife balances neutrally on the index finger. A shot of this well used knife :
If you are one of the half a dozen people who have never heard of Randall knives then before reading further check out the Randall Made Knives website.
A few quick tests done to gauge various aspects of the blades performance. They provide solid information about the ability of the knife in a few hours. However they ignore several aspects of performance which can only be evaluated with extended use, such as grip ergonomics and many durability and edge retention aspects.
The Randalls were used so no comments could be made on new in box factory sharpness. There was however no problem in obtaining a razor edge on the knife with minimal effort.
Pointing one inch sections of basswood dowel the Randall #1 was able to rough off the necessary wood in only 8.7 +/- 0.2 slices, and pointed a 2.5x1.5" section of birch hardwood in 8.4 +/- 0.1 cuts, both showing high solid cutting ability. For comparison, the Randall #5 pointed the dowel in 11.5 +/- 0.5 slices, and the birch hardwood in 11.1 +/- 0.3 cuts. The #5 was slightly behind because of the inability to choke up around the guard because it was actually pointy on top of the guard .
The point profile on the #1 Randall is fairly thin, the tip tapers from 0.220" thick through 3.1" at an angle of 2.0 degrees and is 1.2" wide at the start of the tip. The knife achieves 121 +/- 6 pages into a phonebook on a 50 lbs push and 640 +/- 15 on a hard vertical stab. On the #5 Randall, the tip tapers from 0.225" thick through 2.8" at an angle of 2.0 degrees and is 1.15" wide at the start of the tip. It achieves 121 +/- 6 pages into a phonebook on a 50 lbs push and 590 +/- 25 on a hard vertical stab.
The chopping ability of the Randall #1 is low for its blade length due to the light weight and close to neutral balance. Specifically, on birch hardwood, the Randall had 44 +/- 5% of the ability of the Gransfors Bruks Wildlife hatchet when both were used light, swinging from the wrist with a little elbow motion. However when the shoulder was put into the swing, the much greater heft of the hatchet allowed it to pull way ahead and the Randall was now being outperformed several times over, specifically it had 27 +/- 3% of the ability of the hatchet through a couple of dozen sections of wood cut. The #5 is near identical in performance when choked back on the grip to shift the balance forward.
After the stock testing the knives were used in a variety of ways to get a feel for its scope of work, round out the stock testing profile and look at several aspects of continued and long term usage.
In the kitchen the Randall #1 is hampered by a few attributes, mainly the forward balance and the large dual guard. The guard locks the knife off of the cutting board and prevents overhand grips around that section of blade. The blade heavy balance increases fatigue for precision work such as carving vegetables.
It works well as a carving knife making long and deep slices such as carving up a roast or making slices of bread. For crusty bread it works well with a coarse finish, for most meats a high polish works best assuming more of a push is used instead of a sawing motion.
On thick meats, especially on fats and heavy gristle it simply needs to be extremely sharp. As part of a supper preperation the Randalls were used to make some hash browns. For the oil a mixture of butter, olive oil and rendered pork fat was used. The pork fat comes in a large slab and has to be cut into pieces.
The Randalls have similar edge profiles and primary grinds and the only difference in how the knives cut the fat was due to the difference in the sharpness. The #1 had been used for some chopping on hardwoods earlier in the day and was sliding a little on the skin, but still readily cut the pork into strips :
After the pork was further cut into cubes the potatoes were peeled and diced. In peeling the #5 worked better simply as it was more neutral in balance. The cutting and general handing ability is similar in all regards except the more weight in the blade of the #1 pulls down more on the hand and causes more fatigue. Of course peeling a dozen potatoes doesn't break you out in a sweat with either knife and from a camping or survivial perspective isn't an issue.
The main issue is one of ability to make finer cuts, can you make hashbrowns or french fries or would the blade just crack the vegetables apart. Both knives can easily cut up the potatoes into sections, these ones were fairly coarse s I like my hash browns chunky, but finer cuts were easily possible. The only real significant difference was that with a fully optomized kitchen knife with a really thin blade, the potato is just sliced by drawing the knife through the blade running it under the fingers:
With the Randall this wasn't possible with the thicker blade so it had to be turned on its side to make part of the section :
This is a bit more awkward and time consuming, but again just a few minutes more to get the desired results :
Just how much more effort is actually being realized? Well a fully optomized kitchen knife like the japanese utility from Lee Valley will cut a thick potato in less than a pound. On a normal bathroom scale you can't see the needle move, the knife will float through the potato. In contrast the Randall's take 5-7 lbs because they are both thicker in stock and the grinds are shallower and the edges thicker. All of these attributes of course are to raise the overall durability and strength of the knife.
The difference in force changes through various vegetables of course. On smaller ones like broccili stalks while the Japanese knife takes 1-2 lbs, the Randall's are much closer and take 4-6 lbs. On really thick vegetables like turnips the Randalls will take a lot more and need at times the off hand needs to be used to force the blade through the cuts, here the sharpened top edge on the #1 is problematic.
In short, the Randall's are functional on food prep, they are not optomized for it due to being designed for a wider scope of work, but with a little thought to method there is no reason they can't handle what ever is necessary both in the kitchen and in the field.
The Randalls were used to construct lean-to. As the chopping ability is fairly light, a location was scouted for to find a setup which would require a minimal amount of chopping, and which had a decent supply of soft woods which if needed would be cut effectively. The location chosen had an adequate supply of felled woods, plus a number of fresh alders and some decent fir.
Making the basic frame took about ten mintutes to gather the necessary dead fall for the ridge pole and interlacing of supports, all was wind blown except for two long peices of alders to serve as main supports. Alder is a very soft wood, even softer than white pine, and the Randall #1 had no problem cutting even a two to three inch section in just a few chops. The basic setup :
On top of this framework a layer of boughs were set, starting from the top with a dozen long branches capable of almost reaching full to the ground. This alone were enough to break the overhead sun and give solid shelter from the wind. Added to these were a few arm fulls of smaller branches which filled in the large gaps and started to increase the protection from the rain and snow. A shot after ten more minutes :
The inside :
In order to make the shelter decently rain resistant , about three times as many boughs would need to be layered on. The #1 is much more efficient at this work simply because the longer blade allows it to function much better as a small machete.
O1 is a decently tough steel and when left fairly soft at 55/56 HRC is very tough and ductile. The #1 Randall was used to dig a decent sized hole in rocky soil with only minor denting to the edge. There was no chipping or significant damage. It dug the hole on the right, and yes those rocks were leveraged out :
Similar work with the #5 yeilded similar results :
The digging was done fairly carefully, no power slams, just using the knife to work into the soil and loosen it, so it could be scooped out with the hand. On the larger rocks which were wedged in solid, the sides were excavated until the main rock could be popped out with just wrist leverage applied to the knife.
The Randalls were used for a variety of work to guage its edge retention through a wide range of media.
The Randalls were used alongside the Manix to cut some 1/4" ridged cardboard. All knives were sharpened with edges formed with a 20 degree microbevel from the medium Sharpmaker rods. The following is an average of two rounds of cutting :
| cardboard | Manix | Randall #1 | Randall #1 | |
| S30V | O1 | 440B | ||
| 59/60 HRC | 55/56 HRC | 56/57 HRC | ||
| (meters) | length of edge required to cut light cotton | |||
| 0 | 0.41 ( 7) | 0.44 ( 6) | 0.62 ( 8) | |
| 3.75 | 0.83 ( 6) | 1.37 (13) | 1.17 (11) | |
| 14.95 | 1.22 (11) | 1.88 (18) | 1.75 (13) | |
With its higher wear resistance and hardness the S30V Manix was able to cut about three as much cardboard as the Randalls other two knives and retain the same level of sharpness. No significant difference was noted between the stainless and carbon Randall.
The Randalls were used alongside the Manix and for some rhubarb cutting. The carbon Randall was slightly behind the stainless one which well matched the S30V Manix. Corrosion was likely a large factor in the blunting as the O1 #1 took a visible patina.
The Randalls were used alongside the Manix and to scrape some birch, one hundred scrapings were made by each knife through a three centimeter section of edge. The carbon Randall was significantly behind the stainless one which was slightly outperformed by the S30V Manix.
The Randall's are soft enough to be readily filed, the O1 #1 responds faster to a file than the stainless #5. After the above hole digging it took less than five minutes to restore both edges to a hair shaving finish. The only real sharpening concern is that since the steels are soft the edges will roll easily on rods and thus it is difficult to get a crisp edge on narrow hones.
The handles are well shaped for comfort in extended use irregardless of the nature of the grip as they are not indexed for any particular orientation. Of course the disadvantage of such a neutral shaped grip is that since it doesn't index highly the security is reduced. This isn't a factor for normal grips with a clean hand, but if the grip is compromised with oils or fats it becomes difficult to control the knife and keep it from rotating. Randall does offer grips with more prominent finger grooves which aid in security at the cost of grip versatility.
The large full guard does prevent certain grips such as thumb on spine for control as the top section of the guard is in the way and digs into the thumb :
However a modifed version works well :
As does a full split which is used for draw knife work and other precision carving :
The latter two grips are functional mainly as the guard is so well rounded that it can be worked around with little discomfort. The grip on the #5 is very siilar with the lack of an upper guard, the top of the guard is however a little pointy.
The leather sheaths for both knives are extremely well constructed and still solid after many years of use. The knife glides into the sheath effortlessly. There is about 1/8" or so of space around the knife at the sides which allows it to enter so smoothly. However it tighens around the choil region of the blade and the knife is held tightly. Once the belt loop is engaged the knife is held very securely.
Comment can be sent via email : cliffstamp[REMOVE]@cutleryscience.com or by posted to the following thread on Bladeforums :
More information can be found on the Randall Knives website.
| Last updated : | 07 : 15 : 2005 |
| Originally written: | 07 : 15 : 2005 |