All About Pocket Knives

Hey all,

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Bark River Knives, but they’re a fairly new knife company on the scene. I purchased my first knife from them three years ago (or was it two?) and I must say I was not all that impressed. Not due to workmanship or material - in that respect, they were great. I thought the knife blade itself was way too thick - I mean, jaws of life pry the barn door open thick!

We are so unforgiving. It was not until recently, after reading a post in knifeforums.com, that I took another look at them. Way impressed! They have come out with some great new patterns, new handle materials, and have slimmed down the blades on several models that I think will be winners.

This one is called Cumberland Trail. It’s scheduled for production in 2008. It’s sleek, slim, and functional - and on it’s way with me elk hunting in Colorado come October.

Give them a look………………………..

http://www.barkriverknifetool.com/aboutus.html

seeya…………………….

Very nice.

Very nice, indeed, gmusic.

Here's a question that Jim may be able to answer...what is it with that Michigan UP? Bark River, Marbles, Northwoods, Rapid River...is there something in the water up there around Gladstone/Escanaba? Those yupers (oopers/yoopers?) make some mighty fine knives!

Ralph, I don't know what it is with that area. It seems like every five hundred feet you drive past a knife store, and all of them seemed to have top quality knives. It does sit on Little Bay De Noc though, maybe that has something to do with it. I know if I would have had more money to spend, I would have bought more. It really was a beautiful drive up there. Most of it was a long the shoreline of Lake Michigan, and just great scenery.

That's an attractive knife, Gmusic !

Quick question - how does it balance, in your hand ? It gives the appearance that it would be pretty butt-heavy ??

Take Care,
JR

G; Bark River makes some Great Knives! They make a Cool little

knife called the "BLACKWATER BOOT KNIFE" It's one of my favorites!

Hey thanks guys............

Jr, good observation! It is a little butt heavy, a sweet knife none the less.

Great looking boot knife Mitch!

I just bought one this morning with Sambar stag handles, can't wait for it to get here!

seeya.....................

Had a couple more Bark Rivers come in.

This one is a sweet little Sambar boot knife, same pattern as the one Mitch showed us. It's really a cool little knife.

This one is called the North Star, here's a bit of info on it.

BRKT was originally asked to produce a knife for the Elite Marin Recon unit. The Bravo-1 was the result--and no one has been disappointed.
A couple months later, BRKT was asked to develop a second knife for the Force Recon folks that would be used in salt water environments where the A-2 would not be suitable.

Bark River's stainless, 12C27, is not available in any stock that is thicker than .187". The Bravo-1 is .215" thick so they can't duplicate the exact knife.

Mike was so sure that the thinner 12C27 was tough enough, that he supplied them with some test knives in the 12C27. They took them to test (read ABUSE) -- these knives are a cross between the Bark River Nebula and the Bravo-1.

Remember that these are just Protos to test two things.

1.--Will the thinner steel take the abuse?
2.--Can they go to a hidden tang?
To build this knife Bark River took the Nebula Blade--Custom made a hidden tang-two piece handle of black G-10--epoxied and bolted it.

All of these are hand contoured and hand ground.

The blades are in satin finish and the handles are sandblasted.

Each one is marked with the Bark River-12C27 logo on the left facing and the word "Prototype" on the right facing.

Here are the specs:

Overall Length:9.6 Inches
Blade Length:4.6 Inches
Blade Steel: 12C27 @ 58rc
Blade Thickness:.165 Inch
Weight:6.1 Ounces

Balance point is right on the first finger.

24 of them were made--6 for the recon guys and the other 18 went up for sale.

G; Very Nice! Where did you get it? I didn't even know that

they made them with Stag. I have only seen them in Bone Stag

Try this guy Mitch, his name is Derrick, a really good guy. He gets alot of knives from BR, some very interesting stuff.

http://www.knivesshipfree.com/


gary

Thanks! Gary; Iam on it!

I'm kinda surprised that they use 12C27 made by Sandvik in Sweden, it's a lower end stainless for them and used commonly on cheaper Puukko knives.
o.6 carbon, 0.4 Manganese, and 13.5 Chromium. Pretty simple steel, clean, not a lot of impurities and 58 Rc is about as hard as it gets. I don't have any experience with this steel, but it is a little bit better than 440A, from all that I have read.

A steel I like better would be Sandvik 19C27, I do have some Canal Street Cutlery knives designed by D'Holder and they perforn quite nicely. 19C27 is also a simple stainless similar to 12C27 only the carbon content is about 0.95 to 1.0. The additional carbon makes it easy to harden to 60Rc without being brittle and hardens well to 62Rc. Pretty much the difference is the carbon content. It would be regarded as being a little better than 440C.

I'm just waiting to see if this one is going to be a hit with the Seals. They are out putting the knife through its paces. The Bravo-1 that BR made for the Marines was a huge success, it passed all the tests, and they couldn't destroy the thing. It was made of A-2.
We'll see.....................

Long time lurker, first time poster.....

Nice Pics Gary.

As to the 12C27 steel that Bark River uses....Mike Stewart has done things with the steel in heat treat that the manufacturer says can't be done. He has it performing up with many carbon steels. It is quite impressive. It is easy to sharpen and holds a great edge--better than many of the "better" steels.

Gary--I talked to Bark River today and they said the Marines are liking the knives--they are impressed with the ability of the thinner steel to hold up. I suspect they will make some changes to the production run, but Mike said they like this one so far.

Thanks for the update Derrick,

This wet enviro knife is just sooooo sweet! Balance is perfect, blade length perfect, awesome grind, it feels so good in your hand I may have to buy one to actually use!

seeya....................

okbohn wrote:As to the 12C27 steel that Bark River uses....Mike Stewart has done things with the steel in heat treat that the manufacturer says can't be done. He has it performing up with many carbon steels. It is quite impressive. It is easy to sharpen and holds a great edge--better than many of the "better" steels.

Thanks for the info Derrick and welcome to AAPK

I know heat treating has come a long way in just the last couple of years with stainless steels. D'Alton Holder, Paul Bos, Mike Stewart (I really don't know much about him, but would like to). D'Alton Holder and Paul Bos (51 years of heat treating) are names I'm more familiar with. The enemy in heat treating stainless steel is oxygen forming scale on the blade. It's tough to remove and tough on equipment and belts.

Home heat treaters still do it this way, they make a foil pouch of heat treating foil (.002 thick foil) with the knife blade inside. Try to get the foil as air tight as possible and air quench to room temperature before tempering. This is done between 2 large pieces of plate aluminum. My plates are 1.25 inches thick and about 3 feet long x 1 foot wide, cause I don't have a source to cut them and I'm not going to use my metal cutting bandsaw to cut these plates down to size. I would love to have a water jet cutter close by, shipping these is out of the question.$$$ Together they weigh nearly 90 LBS, but I have found other uses for these big pieces, so they will jus stay big.

Heat treating is being done a few ways on stainless and there is more out there than I know. 2 that I do know involve a regular heat treating kiln and they use Argon (inert gas). They flood the oven with Argon to displace all the oxygen and there is very little if any real problems with scale. Another system involves a vaccuum system and sometimes they will flood the vaccuum chamber with an inert gas a couple times before pulling a final vaccuum. In the quest to get rid of oxygen during the heat treat some have found that they have made great improvements in the quality of the blades they produce.

With the use of new heat treating methods, cryo-tempering along with standard heat tempering the quality of the finished blades have improved greatly. Even though they have been able to get the blades harder, some have found that they are still easy to sharpen.

Well, that's kinda the tip of the iceberg, there is a lot more out there. I'm always looking to learn more.

wow...believe me you are in WAAAAAY deeper than my poor brain can understand. Mike doesn't publish his method.... People rave about his results--he was telling me that the company that makes the steel cannot get it to perform like he does.

Anyway, all I know is how it works, and it works better than many of the high end steels I have seen.

okbohn wrote:wow...believe me you are in WAAAAAY deeper than my poor brain can understand. Mike doesn't publish his method.... People rave about his results--he was telling me that the company that makes the steel cannot get it to perform like he does.

Anyway, all I know is how it works, and it works better than many of the high end steels I have seen.

Thanks, I'm well read, make knives and every now and then some things actually stick - even if I can't remember what I did 10 minutes ago.

As far as high end stainless steels go, some that I like very much do have some problems. Such as CPM S30V, many people out there have poor sharpening skills, this is one steel where that is unforgiving. If you can't keep the same angle on every stroke on both sides, buy a tool OR buy another steel.

I am following some articles in Blade about D2 where they can bend the blade 120 degrees without breaking it, soft spine and blade, with a cutting edge near 65Rc and great edge retention. I need to finish reading that.

I know this is an old post but I just went to the Bark River site and was really impressed with their customizations! I just wish they showed pictures of their knives with handle materials other than black G-10 on their main pages. At first I thought it was the only handle material available and kind of plain. Then I see you can select all different kinds of handle options, I REALLY like their Search and Rescue knives! Check out their site and play around, you might be impressed.

The only problem I have with Bark River is that I want one of each. I would love to see everyone's collections of Barkies. Right now a rampless Gunny is on my wish list.

Here is my first Bark River - it will not be my last.

Picked it up just this week. It is the Northstar model in CPM 3V - reported to have very fine grain structure, great toughness and the ability to hold and take an edge on a par with the Carbons …

It is designed for bushcraft work, but very versatile - perfect as my new camp knife - going to put her to work this weekend … I am stoked.

This knife feels so good in the hand, and the Desert Ironwood Burl is just hypnotizing … a bit pricey, but am I glad I sprung for it!

I had no idea how nicely made it was ….

~ Edge

Absolutely stunning scales. I have the Aurora in Osage from the bushcrafting line. Have you ever met a Barkie you didn't like? I haven't.

Thanks, Tank!

As I said, just gettin to know Barkies - suspect I will be picking up a couple more …

~ Edge