The Realm of the Dark Blade

Ok, so I’ve been looking for a few good all around large wilderness knives, large blades, like machetes and the like, things I could substitute for an axe. My personal philosophy for wilderness excursions is to carry a large blade instead of an axe, because while an axe is really, really good for heavy duty chopping, unless you are doing something really involved, like building a log cabin, you could probably get by with a large knife instead.

And in addition to that, there are a gazillion things you can do with a large machete that an axe would just be too unwieldy for. My personal benchmark, my reference blade, my standard for any large blade that can double as an axe, is the Nepalese Khukuri. And I actually did find a Khukuri to add to my outdoor kit. That blade, however, is the topic of another post.

Today, I’d like to talk about one of the more popular machete type tools I happened to run across during my search: The Woodmans Pal:

Woodmans Pal

Now this is one of the more unique machete designs I’ve happened across during my ramblings across the internet, and for the most part, I like what I see. Good solid construction, no gimmicky features, like some of the other specialized machetes I’ve blogged about in the past. I will admit that in my opinion, this machete does carry a little bit of bloatware on board, depending on how you plan to use this useful not-so-little blade, however this ends up working in it’s favor, which I will talk a little bit about later on.

So, lets start from the bottom. The Woodmans pal comes in two flavors, one with a nice hardwood grip, and the other with the premium, and very nice looking compressed leather grip, with an integrated D shaped knuckle guard, as shown later below. Me personally, I like the leather grip and knuckle guard, but depending on how you plan to use the machete, the wood may be a better choice, for reasons I’ll also get into later.

But perhaps the most distinctive feature of this machete is it’s blade. The woodmans pal features an interesting forward swept design, with the blade getting a little wider, as it gets towards the top. Interestingly the edge is not sharpened all the way to the top, but stops just short of the wide, flat tip. However at the top of the blade, opposite the unsharpened top edge, we have a billhook jutting from the spine.

The billhook sits in a depression stamped into the top of the hook, so as to ensure that, when oriented correctly, the blade of the hook is always lower than the blade of the machete, which should make it easier to catch limbs and brush with. I thought was a very clever design feature, though this is also where my little nitpicks begin.

The Woodmans Pal

Here’s the thing. This design is quite innovative, however it suffers from a few shortcomings. For instance, if you opt for the model with the leather grip and knuckle guard, you may find that your options for using the billhook are actually a little limited. Because as clever as the design is, that depression makes it biased towards one hand over the other, depending on whether you are a southpaw or not, and also depending on how you use a machete.

If you are one of the unfortunate few for whom the placement of the depression for the billhook makes it a little harder to use, you may want to opt for the wood grip, since the knuckle guard will generally only aggravate this problem, and the wood handle is actually much better designed to allow the machete to be used upside down. I also found that, at least based on the way I use machetes, there was only a marginal advantage to having it. A lot of what I might do with the billhook, I could do with just the machete blade alone.

However I will say that the bill hook, in combination with the slight flare of the blade as it rises towards the tip, provides the tool with a top heavy balance that should give it rather khukuri-like qualities in terms of chopping power. Perhaps with not quite the same kind of elegance that the Khukuri carries, but some semblance of it’s chopping ability nonetheless.

Now individually, none of these features are particularly unique. However put together, it makes for one heck of a well balanced, exotic gardening implement! The wood and leather, where used, appear to be of great quality, and the steel is a good quality tempered carbon spring steel, so no demerits in that area either. All in all, a really great machete, if you are in the market for something of this nature.

Equally confidence inspiring is that Pro Tool Industries, the maker of the Woodmans Pal, offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee or your money back. I’m tend to be a bit leery when I see things like that, but based on what I’ve seen of it, I’d be willing to bet few have ever taken advantage of this offer.

So really, apart from the whole billhook thing, I can’t really knock this. And it even comes in black. I wish they made one without the billhook.

But then I guess it just wouldn’t be a Woodmans Pal.

‘Tis a shame really…

The Woodmans Pal – [Pro Tool Industries, Inc]

A fellow DarkBlader (Many apologies, I do not recall who) recently turned me on to this absolutely beautiful dark sword from the excellent Kult of Athena Site.

BlackSword

It is quite fittingly called the Blacksword.  And man… What a sword!!  There are few swords that truly capture the both the flash flaire of the many finely mirror polished swords out there today, while still being subtle, dark, understated and, most importantly, evil… and this is one of them.

The Blacksword is made by the outstanding Windlass Steelcrafts, and is an absolute work of art. 32.5″ of slim, dark, hyper blued, sinister steel, with a simple fuller running down it’s center, into a simple diamond flare at the ricasso. The hilt is equally charismatic, with a simple elegant, upward curving cross guard rising from the simple center shield-like emblem.

The spiral leather wrapped wood grip presents us with yet more sinister but oh so tempting darkness, bordered at each end by silver studded bands, and finishing at another equally simple pommel.  A simple, beautiful, dark, sinister but breathtakingly magnificent sword.

When I look at this sword, I think of the Drow, The dark elves of the Underdark. If your average, highly polished sword were a fair-skinned forest elf, this sword would be the light haired, dark skinned Drow equivalent.  I’ve probably said this before, but I wonder what it would be like to have a dark, beautiful Drow girlfriend. A dark irresistible beauty whom you knew could turn and plunge a knife through your heart at any moment, for any reason, but who was just too stunning to say no to.

Probably 7 circles of hell all wrapped up in a single Evil Drow Beauty…

Man… Evil can be soo tempting… o_O

The BlackSword by Windlass Steelcrafts – [Kult of Athena]

Don’t have a whole lot of time today, so I thought I’d throw some eye candy your way to distract you, and then while you were looking the other way, I’d skedaddle. Let the game begin…

The topic of todays’ post? Stilettos. Monster Stilettos. Monster Folding Stilettos. Yeah. Don’t believe me? Here Ya go:

Monster Folding Stiletto - Natural Wood Scales

Would you just look at this thing? It’s like a freaking short sword… 13″ long, 6″ blade. Ok, maybe a short sword is exaggerating a bit, but still, how many 6″ folders do you run across?

Monster Folding Stiletto - Pearl Handle

Honestly, stilettos have some of the most sexiest blade profiles around. Actually I think a few of the Fairbairn-Sykes profiles are similar, and much more evil, but nonetheless, the stiletto is a classic. The narrow 6″ blade, with the false edge, and the sharp point, is, as the website suggests, the stuff of classic 50′s gangstas. But I bet none of them ever carried around a 15″ stiletto…

Monster Folding Stiletto - Midnight Blue Handle

Absolutely beautiful…

Now just keep your eyes on the pretty flashy not-so-little knives…

Custom 13″ Oversized Folding Stilettos – [True Swords]

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I have an abiding love of curves. Lots of different kinds of curves. I’ll leave the specifics up to your imagination. However this site was started for one specific brand of curves. Those of the sharp, shiny and dark steel variety.  And these.. curvy steel implements… can in fact carry curves so *sexy* that if you happen to be the religious type, you might well need to go to confession for just looking at them.

OK maybe that’s just me.

But still. There are some knives that I find almost immoral… Kinda like this one:

Fighter

Yeah… The Fighter. From the South African site Herbst. And more evil, seductive lines I have not seen, barring those of elven design. Not to mention the level of detail, fit and finish on this knife is just absolutely mind blowing. Look at the grip on this blade. Incorporating an integral, twisted iron patterned full hand guard, the grip sports a set of beautiful polished wood scales, capped on either side by finely detailed gold and silver accents.

Fighter - Grip

The gold treatment even goes between the scales and the blade, all the way up to the top of  the bolster. Just absolutely amazing detail:

Fighter - Bolster

The pommel is equally well treated, but also sporting a rather evil point:

Fighter - Pommel

On either side of the blade at the ricasso, the guard flows into a highly polished flourish, that contrasts excellently with the flat finish of the ricasso area.

Fighter - Ricasso

And from there on up, is one of the most sinful blades I have ever come across:

Fighter - A Sinful Blade

A double scalloped spine, meets the smooth complex curve of the front edge of the blade in a beautiful symphony of shiny, curving steel, with curves that just, don’t stop… Absolutely eeeeeevilll… *droool..* Errr.. Ahem.

Yes… I, err, I think I need a cold shower now. Not that it will do me much good, but…

The Fighter – [Herbst]

Show of hands, how many of you have heard a parent or guardian utter the words…”Don’t make me take of this belt…”

Huh… I thought there would be more… There’s just no discipline anymore these days dagnabbit! The world is going to hades in a wicker basket. A pity they let the old punishment die… Was a time detention found you hanging by your thumbs in the dungeons… Man, do I miss the screaming. Bah!

In any case the topic of todays post is not whips, chains and/or thumbscrews. Just belts. One particularly interesting belt. A belt with a blade…

Belt Knife

Yep, A belt knife! Yeah, I’ll bet non of your parents had one of these… Then it would be like, “Eat your food or I’m gonna hafta cut ya.” Or “Clean up your room. Don’t make me come up there and cutcha!” or the all time favorite: “Child, I will whip of this belt, right here in this mall, and…” You can just imagine the rest… Ah… the good old days… *sigh*

Anyway there are actually a lot of belt knives on the market today if you know where to look. What I found very interesting about this particular design was the very beautiful wood grip. This I do not see very often. Also this belt knife is not a belt buckle, like many other designs and does not require you to remove your belt in order to get to the knife. The knife is stored in a separate sheath area in the belt.

Belt Knife - Deployed

My only complaint would be that the angle of the a blade to the grip is a little odd. However given a choice between no knife and a knife with a funky blade angle, well… there’s really no choice.

As a side note, while this is certainly one of the more stealthy ways to carry a blade on your person at all times, this will *not* make it past any security worth their salt. very few belt knives would. But I thought it was still quite an interesting design nonetheless.

Belt Knife – [True Swords]

If a woodchuck could chuck wood? Ah yes, the quintessential question of the nature of a creature that has apparently been inappropriately named. There is no answer… And yes. My whimsical reverie was spawned by an actual weapon. A rather unusual weapon, in that it is made primarily of wood, though this doesn’t make it any less menacing in appearance…

The Leiomano

[view full size]

Now you might be wondering what this weapon has got to do with wood chucks chucking wood… Well I’ll tell you. There are a number of sites I encountered that listed this weapon as a “Hawaiian Throwing Axe”. Get it? A wooden throwing weapon? So like if a woodchuck could chuck wood, (and this woodchuck also just happened to be a weapons fanatic) this is probably what they would be chucking. Right at your head. Ouch. Except for one thing. This isn’t really a throwing axe.

Yeah, sorry. This is in fact a Hawaiian melee weapon. Seriously, if you look at the design, you can see that it would be ill suited to throwing. Weapons designed for throwing usually use harder materials, as many a throw could end up hitting something hard, like a rock, the ground, etc. This weapon uses wood, cord, and shark teeth. Shark teeth fastened in place with a twine of sorts. And while shark teeth are great for ripping up soft flesh, they would not survive an impact with a hard place, much less the leather thong or twine holding it in place.

Here’s another example:

[view full size]

As you can see from the pic, the teeth are aligned just right so that any blow from this, glancing, pulling, cleaving, etc would almost certainly draw blood. And while it might not be as effective as a sword, you better believe that a battle with combatants taking repeated hits from this would get torn to shreds and bleed to death.

And if you take into account that the heavy wooden head could probably deliver pretty hefty blows all by itself, even without the benefit of shark teeth, you can see how this would make for a very effective melee weapon. Here’s a closer look at how it’s all put together:

[view full size]

That is one lethal and mean looking weapon. Even if it’s made out of wood. And string. And shark teeth. No self respecting woodchuck would go anywhere near one of these…

Leiomano – [Kumulau.com]

Today I thought I’d talk about a very old weapon. The good old stick. Yes. You know, your basic tree branch. Club. Truncheon. Baton. Night stick. Yep. A blunt impact weapon. Yes, yes, yes, I know its not a bladed weapon. But I thought it was worth a post, especially since I recently ran across a reproduction of an interesting feudal Japanese variation of the ubiquitous stick, in the form of a class of weapons called Jutte.

Ikkakuryu Jitte (Wrapped Steel Grip)

Jutte or Jitte (ten-hand) are, for all intents and purposes, short steel clubs. But they are very special clubs. They are the medieval Japanese equivalent to the modern day billy club, or night stick. And they were engineered to be used defensively against one of the more lethal weapons of the era, the equally ubiquitous sword.

Ikkakuryu Jitte (Wood Grip)

As you can see, the Jutte (or Jitte) is basically a steel club with a single, forward facing prong, called a Kagi. Much like a Sai, except with only one prong. Incidentally, a Sai is also a form of club. Not a dagger. But I’ll reserve that discussion for another post. Back to Jutte. The kagi on the wooden handled jitte above is oversized, as it was designed for sword catching practice with thick bladed wooden swords called boken. In essence a Jutte could be used to block or parry a sword strike, and then the prong could be used to trap, or even break, an attackers sword.

The beauty of the Jutte was that it could be used to subdue both armed and unarmed attackers in a nonlethal way. You could say it was one of the first nonlethal tactical police weapons. (Heh.) It was a versatile and effective. I daresay they would be as effective today (if not a little more intimidating) as it was back in feudal Japan, if our modern police force were of a mind to use them.

• Ikkakuryu Jitte – [Jin-1 Jutte Kobo]
• Jutte – Weapon of the feudal Japanese police – [e-budokai.com]

Ok, so in spite of my reservations about knife makers trying to cash in on the popularity of one of my favorite X-Men, (Who? Well Wolverine of course! Duuuuh!), I went looking to see if anything new was out there. Stupid idea. I should have known better. I ran into yet another set of wannabe “Wolverine” claws.

X-Men Wolverine Claws Style 2 - Wood Grip

“Type II”, as it shall be known for the remainder of this post, is more or less a simple bear-like (imho) claw design. A set of curved blades pinned to a simple hardwood handle. No attempt at style, and unfortunately, no originality either. Wolverine fans need not apply. How, in the name of all that is sacred in this world, is this supposed to look like “X-Men Wolverine” claws? After ingesting a controlled substance? If so, I’ll need some of whatever the designer was smokin’, ’cause whatever it is, it’s pretty freakin’ good… Gonna need a little help understanding this one…

While this design doesn’t get any points for aesthetics, the design is reasonably functional, though I’m not so sure how well that wooden handle would handle any real abuse. So far as marketing, they should have left Wolvie alone and stuck to the tried and true “Ninja weapon” marketing ploy. It would have been more plausible.

Almost as if to mock me, I found yet another variation of a set of “wolverine” claws that I had blogged about previously. Specifically, the “Special Edition” version of the Pantera Claw.

Anderson Cultery "Special Edition" Pantera Claws

Funny thing though, as far as I can tell, they are exactly the same as the old ones, except for the grip material being better, gold plated grip screws and either polished or plated blades. I’ll give props on the improved grip material. It would certainly improve the functionality of the weapon. But as for everything else, as you already know, I’m not particularly into the shiny stuff. I suppose most people don’t mind paying big money for a little bling. But I don’t get it… Gold plated screws? What? Why!?

<RANT>

OK Wolverine blade designers. Come on. This is not difficult. Wolverines claws, while unique, are not entirely impossible to replicate. And nobody is asking you to design an enclosed mechanism housing a set of retractable steel claws for surgical implantation, though I am sure there would be *many* takers if you did. Here, let me help you out:

1. Wolverines claws come out of the back of his hands, between his knuckles. NO “Wolverine” claw replica may have blades that emerge between the fingers.

2. For the sake of simplicity, replicas do not even need to have the ability to automatically extend or retract the claws (though this would be a rather large humongous plus). You may optionally make the blades removable.

3. A correctly designed replica must use a bracket with blades attached to a plate that could be strapped to the back of the hand with a handle underneath. Optionally, X-Men gloves/gauntlets can be provided to conceal the attachment mechanism.

4. The claws must be fairly long. At the very least 10″, and relatively thick for it’s width, with one mild continuous curve. Alternatively they may be completely straight with a fairly sharp downturn for the last fourth of the blades length. Either design is acceptable. No funky divots, no high-angle curves, no short, wide, cat/bear-like claws. Please.

5. points 1-4 MUST be met in order to gain Phyreblades seal of approval.

That’s it Bub. How difficult is that? Lets see you give it the old “college try”…

</RANT>

Update!:
I have put together a guide that lists some of the common wolverine claw replicas and memorabilia in this post. Should save some of you a few clicks on teh intarwebs…

“Wolverine” Claws (Type II) – [True Swords]
Pantera Claws (Special Edition) – [True Swords]

PhyreBlades Ultimate Wolverine Claw Reference Guide – [Realm of The Dark Blade]