In July of 2002 my son Gerard and I attended Joe Bigley's (Aboman's) Primitive knifemaking class.  Aboman furnished (Brusletto) laminated steel blades, antler, leather, artificial sinew, and the tools necessary to work these materials.

We were at liberty to design our knives as we wished, within the limitations of our materials.  The knives my son and I constructed are pictured below.  Gerard made the top knife, while I constructed the lower one.

The smaller knife is the one I call the wasp.  The blade length of the wasp is 3".  Handle length is 6.25" from the blade join to the end of the tine.  It is constructed from the end tine of an antler.  A branch antler was cut off, leaving enough of a stub to form a low subhilt.  The subhilt design provides many of the advantages of a conventional hilt without requiring a projection near the blade that would interfere with finer paring knife work or carving.

The long handle and subhilt allow a number of effective blade lengths depending upon the way the user grips the handle.

In each of the grips pictured above, the subhilt will prevent the fingers from sliding forward onto the blade.

The knife can also be gripped with all fingers below the subhilt.   This grip provides a long enough moment arm for quick swinging cuts of blackberry canes.

The knife can be held in a reverse grip with the thumb braced on the subhilt.  This is a useful grip for carving, as considerable pressure can be put on the blade with minimal danger of the hand sliding forward onto the blade.

I have now used this knife for a couple of months.  Tasks have included meal preparation in the kitchen, butchering turkeys, cutting blackberry canes, carving wooden signs, scraping paint, processing large quantities of apples, and assorted garden chores.  The design functions well as a paring knife, while providing additional advantages of variable effective blade length and grip security.  The carbon steel blade will dull relatively rapidly when processing acidic foods like apples.

The sheathes that house the knives were constructed in a dangler style, suggested by Aboman.  This style has proven very comfortable to wear.  The sheath is free to swing out of the way when sitting down or driving.  The longer handle of the wasp design provides good security in the pouch sheath, while still providing enough exposed handle to allow for easy extraction.

The wasp dangler is suspended by a cord of braintanned buckskin.  It was inserted through a hole in the sheath and twined together in the manner often used  for making cordage.  It's strong and it feels and smells great.

The dangler type sheath is very comfortable.  As well as swinging out of the way when you bend, it also allows the sheath to be inserted in a pocket.  Lately when I head into town I put the sheath into my front pocket and insert the antler tine under my leatherman sheath.  The knife is pretty unobtrusive when carried that way.

October 2002

I bought a knife of similar design on e-bay that came from an estate sale in northern Saskatchewan, Canada.

The seller described this knife thusly:  Here's an old handmade, stag handled hunting knife. Nice feeling and very well balanced. The blade appears to also be homemade as there is no markings and has an unusal finish to it. The stag handle is attached with a brass pin The blade itself measures 5" long and 1 1/4" wide. The overall length is 11".
 
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