C PERSIAN YUMA Knife 9″ Long 4.5″ Blade” 10.5 Oz Damascus Steel Fixed Blade Hunting Knife Brown Calcite Spacers Black Mamba Hand Made World Class Knives USA Made | BMK-111-B

Description

Brown calcite between antler and steel. Calcite is a mineral, not a resin and not a dyed bone, and cutting it into spacers thin enough to sit in a handle stack is fussy work that a lot of makers will not take on.

Its brief: a display-grade hunting knife that is still built to be used. Ten and a half ounces with a four-and-a-half inch edge, so it has the mass for jointing and the curve for skinning, and the handle stack is the reason most people pick this one over its plainer relatives.

The mineral in the handle

Calcite is soft. On the mineral hardness scale it sits around three, which puts it below a copper coin and well below glass. In a handle that is fine, because the spacers are sandwiched between antler and metal and nothing touches them in normal use. It matters when you clean the knife. Anything abrasive will scratch those bands, and anything acidic — vinegar, lemon, descaler, some kitchen cleaners — will etch them, because calcite is calcium carbonate and acid dissolves it. Water and a cloth is the entire approved cleaning method for that part of the knife.

What the layer count is and is not

The specification records a folded billet of two steels. High layer counts make a finer, tighter figure in the finished blade, and they are an indication of how many folding and drawing cycles went into the bar. They are not a measure of cutting performance. A blade with a quarter of the layers, ground the same and heat treated the same, cuts the same. Buy layers for how they look, and buy heat treatment for how the knife works. We wrote out the arithmetic in what the layer count actually means.

Keeping it in one piece: the blade and its Damascus bolster are high-carbon and want the ordinary discipline — dried after use, a light film of oil before it goes away, patina left alone. The antler wants to stay out of water. The calcite wants nothing at all except to be left dry and untouched by chemicals. That combination means this is a knife you clean with a damp rag and never at a tap, and it should be stored outside its sheath so that nothing is held wet against anything else.

Reasonable questions

Will the spacers chip? Not in use. They can if you drop the knife handle-first onto stone, and a chipped mineral spacer cannot be filled invisibly.

Is it hand forged or cut from a bought bar? Forged and finished here. How Damascus steel knives are made covers the sequence.

Anything smaller with a horn handle? The Hornback buffalo horn skinner is a pocket-sized version of the same idea.

Model: BMK-111-b-c