The Marttiini M571 knife had somewhat of a cult following while it was in production. Its direct competitor was the Mora 510 or even the Mora #1/#2. The prices were similar of around $10 USD. Ergonomically the M571 won hands down, even though the blade was just a little over 3 inches long. Amazingly, the M571 came with a polished carbon steel blade edge…it’s the little extras that catch my eye. It also felt MUCH better in hand while using than the Moras. The “written rule of bushcraft” stated that you needed a blade that was the width of your palm. Good advice for the most part unless you knew what you were doing when using a knife.
I’m not going to get into the bushcraft aspect and all that it entails…I called it camping since we always did similar things when outdoors. Call it whatever you want.
Since we were dog-sitting this weekend and couldn’t get away, I decided to try my hand at re-handling knives. I had some Cherry, Blood wood and Zebra wood pieces laying around and they were the right size for my intended project. I didn’t take any photos of the process since it’s pretty straight-forward. I measured the blocks, cut a few pieces of leather for spacers, carefully drilled and filed the inlets for the blade tang and then epoxied and clamped everything together. Shaping was done by a bench belt sander to remove the bulk of the wood and final shaping was done by hand with sandpaper. When I was satisfied I applied wood stabilizer and let it dry.
The end results…
For working with softer woods the Scandi grind is ideal but here in the Cross Timbers the convex grind reigns supreme. It’s much stronger and holds up better than the former grind, and you remove a lot less metal when re-sharpening. But I always keep the M571 in my pack since I can use it for cleaning small game, whittling or other simple camp chores.
It was a fun project that kept me occupied for a few hours. I was happy with the results and feel it took the knives to a level that was better suited to my needs.
Thanks for reading….
Velox Seeker 