Another Boning Knife

This is my next attempt at a boning knife. the blade is 1/16 inch D2. It is the first time that I have made a knife out of D2 that thin. The blade is about as flexible as the same size/shape boning knives that I have made from ATS-34. The handle is green canvas Micarta with Loveless style fasteners. So far I am happy with the way it looks and feels. It will be interesting to see how well it performs.

Personal Boning Knife

I designed and built this knife to be used on Whitetail deer. It has the same five inch by 1/16 inch ATS-34 as the one listed earlier. However the handle is shaped a bit more with dovetailed brass bolsters, brass bolt style fasteners and a .22 magnum shell. The handle material is canvas micarta.

Micarta Boning Knife

This boning knife is my attempt at an all-in-one hunting knife. It is to be used for field dressing, skinning and butchering. I am curious to try it out. The blade is five inches long and 1/16 inch thick made from ATS-34. It is stiffer than I expected, but it is light and feels great in the hand. The handle material is Black Paper Micarta with brass bolt style fasteners and a .22 magnum shell.

Kit Knives

These are some knives that I purchased the blades already ground, heat-treated and finished. Some would call them kit knives. From time-to-time I will do this. The blades that I purchase however are not marked with my "DVW" initials.

The fillet knives have seven inch long blades of AUS-8A and are very flexible. I actually purchased them to try as boning knives. I ended up selling the first two to friends before I ever got to try one out. I have made a few more and one of them I am going to keep for myself. The top one has a canvas Micarta handle. The middle one has a wood handle. The second to the bottom one has a black paper Micarta handle and the bottom one has a Diamondwood handle.

These knifes is actually sold as a steak knife. The blade is five inches long and 1/16" thick. It is fairly stout and I thought that it would make a good boning knife. I am guessing that the steel is either 440A or AUS-6A. For the top knife I installed a black paper Micarta handle and a canvas Micarta handle on the bottom knife.

Boning Knife

In the past few years my family and I have taken up deer hunting. This has provided me the opportunity to field dress, skin and butcher about a dozen deer. This experience has proven to be very useful in making hand made hunting knives. One thing that has been interesting though, is that by far the most time spent with a knife is during the butchering process. The field dressing and skinning hardly take any time at all. It is amazing to me how much emphasis is placed on the size and shape of a hunting knife when it is really used for such a short period of time. On the same thought is how little you hear about butcher or boning knives. I'm sure that a lot of this is due to the fact that many people have someone else do the meat processing for them. I was quickly looking for a good boning knife design and even better yet would be one knife that I could use for all three processes (field dressing, skinning and butchering). I noticed that many professional butchers will have a favorite knife that they use for just about everything. This includes skinning a deer when or if needed. Below is my first attempt at making such a knife. It worked quite well, but it is not my final revision. The blade is 1/16" thick by four inches long ATS-34 and had a fair amount of flex. It was a little too stiff and short for filleting some of the silver skin off of the larger cuts of meat.  The blade shape worked quite well for skinning. The up-swept point wasn't too dramatic for gutting, but I did have to be extra careful not to puncture anything that I would regret. The handle is canvas Micarta with dovetailed brass bolsters. It provided an excellent grip in all cases. A spent .22 magnum shell dutifully serves as the thong hole tubing. Hopefully soon I will be able to show you my next two revisions of this idea.