Burmese Pythons Damascus Hunting Fixed Blade Knife | BMK-171

Description

The Burmese Pythons is a compact fixed-blade hunter with a deep sharpening notch at the ricasso and a figured hardwood grip the color of amber.

Best in the hands of: someone who wants one knife on the belt for a day outdoors. There is no folding mechanism to clog, no pivot to loosen, and nothing to fail when your hands are cold. The handle swells slightly toward the butt so it does not slide forward when it is wet, and the Damascus bolster gives the grip a positive front stop.

Care: a fixed blade lives in leather, and leather holds moisture, so store this one out of the sheath if it is going into a cupboard for the winter. Dry the carbon steel after every outing and oil it. The hardwood is figured and open-grained, and it drinks whatever you put on it, so use a wax rather than a heavy oil or the grip will stay tacky.

Reading the forged pattern

The banding on this blade runs in tight, tangled swirls rather than parallel lines, which is what a twisted billet looks like after it is flattened and ground. The pattern is not a surface treatment. Grind the blade thinner over years of sharpening and the same pattern is still there underneath. Damascus steel patterns explained puts names to the common ones.

The notch behind the edge

The choil at the base of the edge is not decoration. It gives a sharpening stone somewhere to run out, so you can take the edge all the way back to the ricasso without rolling a burr into the bolster. It also gives you a place to choke up when you need close control on a small cut. Knives without one develop a stubborn dull patch right at the heel, because a stone cannot reach in there without fouling the bolster, and that patch is exactly where you apply the most force. Half an inch of relief solves a problem that otherwise gets worse every time the knife is sharpened.

Fixed blade against a tracker

This is a slim knife that skins and slices. A tracker is the opposite argument: mass, a chopping section and a spine designed for a baton. If that is closer to your use, the Moss Talon D2 tracker knife shows what the other end of the range looks like, and knife blade shapes explained covers why the profiles diverge.

FAQs

Why does the specification list fewer rows than other knives? We publish only measurements we have verified on the bench for this model. Anything not listed, ask us and we will measure it.

Is leather part of the order? Yes, stitched by hand and cut to this blade.

Does the pattern wear off? No. It goes through the steel.

Model: BMK-171