canoe maker

Orien Blade Crooked Knife

A while back while working on my first crooked knife blade from an old file, I got discouraged with the speed of progress without power tools. In a moment of self-doubt about whether I could finish the project, I ended up ordering a crooked knife blade from Orien MacDonald after coming across his page on Etsy. I liked look of his blade, especially the fact that it was offset from the tang allowing for a greater and more comfortable angle for carving. Here is the blade he made for me with a traditional, bent tang.


New Crooked Knife Blade
When working out ideas of the handle, I had collected some pieces that were promising options. For this knife, I decided on the yellow birch handle (2nd from top) in the photo below:


Handle choices
It was shaped with some rasps and a spoon carving knife to hollow out the thumb rest area. I decided the decorate the birch with some basic woodburning patterns to mimic the chip-carving I've seen on various knives. Here's one angle of the completed knife handle.


Decorated Handle
The bottom was chiseled out to fit the tang and the blade secured with leather lace. Here's the finished knife below showing off the offset angle of the blade from the handle as well as the curving angle of the blade from the horizontal view.


Offset from handle's axis


View from the horizontal plane
Here's a comparison shot of the new "Orien Crooked Knife" and the homemade Olive Crooked Knife. The homemade blade is longer, thinner, and flat and I can see it working well when shaping canoe ribs and larger surfaces like a paddle blade. For all around carving though, the Orien Knife would look to be more versatile to carve out paddle grips, the shaft, spoons, bowls, and other bushcraft items.


The budding crooked knife collection