- Svord mini Peasant
This review consists of :
Knives :
This review consists of : |
|
Maker Webpage : mini Peasant.
Not just any old knife, but the B.W. Baker Peasant Knife. Such an old concept that it's new; so new that it's old. B.W. Baker, Master Cutler, felt that the idea of creating his latest knife range was calling to him from the past. Using old fashioned methods and relying on the oldest low-tech methods, Svord� proudly present their Peasant Knife. What does it do? Well, it cuts. Sure, there are knives around today that sprout scissors, sawblades, an entire motor mechanic's tool kit, laser beams and micro cell phones. Such knives have lost the very reason for their existence - that's high-tech for you. If you want a knife, a knife to cut things with, the Svord� Peasant Knife is for you.
A quick web scan and a few comments :
Basic specifications :
The edge also is heavily convexed. Note the image to the right which shows how the edge goes out of focus quickly that is the extreme curvature which is out side of the depth of field of the scope. This curvature is pretty steep and produces a final apex bevel of over 20 dps which has a few significant drawbacks :
The very steep convex curvature combined with the varying edge thickness and primary grind is going to make jig sharpening very difficult and even without jig sharpening this knife would really benefit from a reprofiling before the edge would become easy to sharpen.
The Peasant knife is a simple knife made for the working or common man and is built for function, though some find visual appeal in the simple, yet rugged design. It is a very basic knife though still very consistent in design which is intended to be :
These are achieved with :
It is a knife so simple in design that many people even take off the plastic handle and convert it to a fixed blade with an enclosed tang. The nature may be simple, but it is consistent in purpose and execution.
This knife is intentionally designed to made in a very simplistic manner and thus the finish is left fairly rough as made obvious by the asymmetric primary grind. The handle also a number of issues and even has :
The asymmetry of the primary grind is also strongly evident in the tip which is so uneven it is almost chisel ground.
Now this knife is made for a simple pocket knife and many of these issues are not dramatic failures of any sort, however it could really benefit from a little work to smooth out all the rough edges and hidden under them is a very nice and yes, high performance working tool.
Measurements :
On 3/8" hemp :
On carving wood compared to the #1260 Mora the mini Peasant is significantly behind.
On some 1" dowel making 2" points with light force (10-30 lbs) :
On some 1x0.5" pine making 2" points with heavy force (50-70 lbs) :
It is interesting to see that the relative performance actually decreases on soft wood which is not expected from the geometry but it based on the low sharpness. The actual roughness of the edge can be felt in the cutting and it significantly reduces performance.
To check the utility application on some random materials :
The performance on these materials is hampered by the low initial sharpness and would be resolved by a decent sharpening
The knife was reground and sharpened :
This was a quick sharpening, jumped right from a benchstone equivalent of a fine india stone to the 3k waterstone and the sharpening stopped as soon as the edge started push cutting newsprint, 1/4" from the point of hold.
The sharpness was now decent enough to get a sensible look at the cutting ability :
Measurements :
On 3/8" hemp :
On carving wood compared to the #1260 Mora the mini Peasant now is in the same class as the Mora :
On some 1" dowel making 2" points with light force (10-30 lbs) :
Note how much larger the wood shavings are now compared to the as-boxed profile and sharpness. This difference is extremely obvious and can be felt even with just a few cuts. No careful measure would need to be taken in order to see it as it is 2:1 in regards to the number of cuts needed.
On some 1x0.5" pine making 2" points with heavy force (50-70 lbs) :
Smooth cutting, no issues. The sharpness difference can be felt on the wood, much more fluid in the wood.
In short, after the regrind and sharpening the performance is significantly enhanced. The blade cuts most materials with a 2:1 difference and in some cases is even higher. However without power grinding equipment this isn't a trivial change to make and it more of a matter of hours vs minutes on stones.
All of the commentary that follows is on the blade with the initial edge bevel removed.
In the kitchen the performance as a paring knife was surprisingly high. Now at first glance it has many attributes of an ideal paring knife :
and the regrind presents a thin edge cross section and the blade is only a little less than ideal in terms of being narrow for ease of turning in cuts. However compared to a Herder or IVO, two almost ideal paring knives, the Svord actually was more comfortable in hand. Now those more narrow paring blades which also have much more slim tips are more functional for things like :
but for the bulk of grunt work, peeling and the like, the comfort of the Svord made it actually considerable as a functional choice.
The grip is comfortable in hand due to the normal expected features of a functional and working handle :
However the main reason is shown in the pictures on the right which is that the handle curves very lightly and it well matches the natural cupping shape of the hand in standard grips. The handle thus much nicer fills the hand vs the straight grips on the Herder or IVO paring knife.
Moving beyond paring uses, as with any short blade the Svord starts to become awkward to inefficient to really only something used when there isn't another choice. Now can it be used for things such as :
Of course, but the lack of length makes it much more sensible as a choice for a knife to make a sandwich vs actually cook a meal. Again nothing more than what happens trying to using a paring knife as a utility knife, it suffers from lack of length. The nice thing about the Svord in the kitchen is due to the high toughness/durability because of the steel and the fact it has a slightly thicker cross section than a paring knife it can do things like :
and even serve as an emergency can opener if needed. Though for that kind of rougher work the initial edge bevel is a more optimal geometry.
In general utility, while maybe not appearing to be very exciting, sharpening a pencil to a fine long point is a fairly telling task. Now it can be done with just about any knife, however to do it well then the knife needs to be able to :
The Svord does this very well and unlike in the kitchen, there is no real concerns about corrosion. If it is going to be used for pencil sharpening significantly, for those fond of traditional writing then the performance can be enhanced by squaring off a section of the spine to serve as a scraper which will make forming the point a much easier and more precise task.
Ergonomics : as noted in the above the handle is in general very comfortable as it is well rounded with no sharp edges the curve of the handle well matches the natural cupping shape of the hand. It might seem that the lightly protruding tang would be abrasive however in general use it is rarely if ever felt.
Security : this is the bit downside of not only this handle but this style of knife in general, a friction folder. As the knife does not resist closing aside from support pressure from the hand on the tang, care has to be taken with dynamic cutting in general, especially tip work. How much that this is a factor just depends on how much cutting is done in a very rapid/forceful manner. Interestingly enough the lack of a lock means that in extremes, prying and blade impacts there is little to break aside from deforming the handle. In many ways this makes this little knife able to handle work which is abusive to many modern tactical folders.
The handle does have a nice texture to it, similar to a coarse bead blast which gives it a little retention but again there is no guard or dropped blade and it is only a partial length handle - care has to be taken in use to keep the fingers off of the blade.
Durability : the grip is a simple plastic which means it is very resistant to heat, chemicals, water and general abrasion. However it is far less durable than Micarta or G10 in regards to impacts in the cold. The knife is so light though that it can still easily take impacts from height with no more ill effects than minor impacting and scraping of the plastic.
Nominal composition of 15N20 :
15N20 is a similar steel to the L6 family of tool steels.
Nominal composition of L6 :
The high-carbon low-alloy tool steels, represented by AISI L6, are designed to provide oil-hardening capabilities and higher toughness and resistance to tempering than available from plain carbon steel steels. Carbon levels are above 0.65 percent to achieve the required hardness and wear resistance. hardeningabiliy is obtained by sing at leat 1.5 percent nickel and 0.75 percent chromium, sometimes supplemented by molybdenum and vanadium.
As 15N20 lacks the chromium and molybdenum of most L6 grades it doesn't have the same hardenability and requires a faster quench, but otherwise is similar in material properties being a very tough steel which is able to reach a high hardness and has low to moderate wear resistance.
Ease of sharpening is high with mini-peasant as the blade is inherently easy to grind and has minimal burr formation. It can be both easily ground and the apex set with minimal technique on even the most basic of sharpening stones. There is no need for expensive stones with modern super abrasives to sharpe the steel, weak bond stones to minimize burr formation.
As this has a dropped blade and the grind goes right to the end of the blade it is trivial to sharpen the full length of the blade and there are no concerns with a recurve developing. The high grindability means it is also trivial to maintain the custom applied zero convex grind. The entire bevel is easily reset in just 25-50 pps on a coarse stone, ideally using plateau sharpening. The apex can then be set with as low as 5-10 pps with the desired finishing grit.
In regards to edge retention, as a quick initial check the Svord was used alongside an EDC blade from Ozark Traditional Knifeworks in K390 at 64 HRC to cut some used garden hose. Both knives were used to make hundreds of cuts through the hose and checked for sharpness on slicing paper and cutting foods. There was no significant difference in behavior for the two knives as the hose simply could not make any significant difference to either steel. In extended runs slicing cardboard, it performed similar to other mid-carbon, low alloy steels at a mid hardness level 1 and was outperformed many times to one by harder and more abrasive steels. However as the cardboard became more abrasive and dirty the performance became much closer and it was only outperformed by about 2:1 3 .
If this sounds a bit contradictory then consider that in general edge retention happens due to a combination of :
As 15N20 has little to no corrosion resistance, in the kitchen, especially on acidic foods (like onions) the edge retention can be very poor. However the high fracture toughness can lead it to have high edge retention in very demanding applications, at least in the relative sense. For example while it was found to be significantly behind a much harder 10V blade in slicing hemp and cardboard, it was able to match it slicing used polypropylene rope 2 .
The reason for this is that on very harsh materials such as the dirty ropes the apex tends to blunt readily by fracture as the actual grit in dirty materials can contain silica and silica-like particles (commonly found in dirt/clay) which are harder than the steel. As 15N20 is very tough as will strongly resist fracture, it is able to have comparable edge retention to 10V inspite of the much higher abrasion resistance of the PM steel. In that case, the wear resistance isn't a significant factor.
The mini-peasant was also used with a burnishing rod to maintain the sharpness and it was found that it could equal the performance of steels which would otherwise outperform it in edge retention 4 . That is to say that when burnishing was used, the difference in edge retention was removed.
As for durability, this is inherently a very tough steel (low carbide volume, mid-carbon content, high nickel content) and the mid hardness hardening of Svord only serves to enhance the toughness. In use the edge will tend to deform even in hard contacts and the blade easily can be used for heavier work if needed, even hammering on the spine with a hammer to make heavier cuts as the toughness of the steel is very high.
Overview :
Personally, while many aspects of this knife are strongly appreciated it tends to not be heavily carried due to issues with :
A modern clip-it is simply in many cases easy to carry, just clip in a pocket, and the strength/security of modern high end locks means that fast/hard cuts can be done with lower risk of accidental injury.
Comments can be emailed to Please Use the Forum or by posting to the following thread :
Most of the pictures in the above are in the PhotoBucket album.
1 : Edge retention slicing cardboard, various steels
2 : Differences in edge retention as a function of the harshness of the material cut
3 : Differences among steels in edge retention slicing harsh/used cardboard
4
: The effect of burnishing on edge retention
| Last updated : | |
| Originally written: | 26/07/2013 |