Sasquatch-Style Butterfly Knives

Sasquatch-Style Butterfly Knives

Perhaps the most valuable Randall knife is the big Sasquatch recurve designed by Doug Kenefick.  They sell for about $1100 to $1300 per single knife on eBay.  I have one on order from him, but meanwhile I got to thinking about what a nice Wing Chun chopper an enlarged, modified Sasquatch style blade would make.

The blade started out as a 15 mm thick piece of 9260 (carbon) spring steel.  This was then hammered down to 5/16″ using a power hammer.  The hammering aligns the crystaline structure of the steel to improve resilience.  We used a regular carbon steel for these sharps because there is another company out there chortling over their new luxury grade carbon steel blades so I wanted to play too.  Normally we use weapons grade stainless, or D2 (a really great semi-stainless carbon steel) but the spring steel should be more resilient even though it needs more maintenance.  While there are less spring steels out there, a famous U.S. katana maker chose 9260 for his top-end swords, so we tested it along with a number of other carbon steels and our forge recommended trying this. The final shape was then cut and ground then professionally heat treated (vacuum heat treatment).

Kenefick/Randall Sasquatch Blade Type BJD made by K. Ali, designed by Modell Design LLC w/Permission from Doug Kenefick.

This is the most complicated grind we have done; I can tell you that getting those curved grinds to meld together takes a lot of skill and patience and my hat is off to Randall for putting out their Sasquatch knives.  We lost six blades to cracking during heat treatment, which is a pretty expensive hit but these are really special knives.  It was also a major pain welding the carbon steel.

There is a wide, deep hollow grind with a sharp primary edge.  The spine swage is unsharpened and the knife flippable to the reverse grip.  Randall originally decided to make their Sasquatch knife using a Satin finish because there were a lot of big glossy finish knives floating around and they wanted to do something special, so these are Satin finish blades.  Blades are around 12″ in length.

The D Guard is AISI 304 stainless.  We had to make a thicker version of the Hung Gar sword D Guard to accomodate the extra thick steel.

The handles look like gorgeous wood but are actually a subtle paper micarta that takes a great glossy shine.  Eight pins and glue hold the scales to the full tang.

Each product consists of two knives and a nylon 2-in-1 sheath.  There is a special edition logo on this run that includes, along with Ali made, a logo showing Vulcan holding a hammer.  He is the Roman’s blacksmith god.

These need to be kept oiled when not in use.

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