Hand-Forged Ring Pommel Knife, Faceted Blade

An ordinary blade is ground with one bevel per side, a single surface running from somewhere on the flat down to the edge, and whether it is flat, hollow or convex it reads as one continuous plane. A faceted grind replaces that with several distinct flat planes set at different angles, meeting each other along crisp lines. The difference in the making is larger than it looks. Each plane has to be set up and ground separately with the blade held at a fixed angle, and the line where two planes meet must be dead straight along its whole length, because the eye picks up any wander in it instantly. A rounded bevel hides a hand that drifts; a facet line displays it. That is most of what you are paying for here, and it is why very few makers offer it.

Carefully, and only on the edge bevel. The trap is treating the whole blade as one surface and running it flat on a stone, which rounds the facet lines and turns a faceted blade into a scratched conventional one within a few sharpenings. What you want is to work only the small bevel immediately at the edge, holding a consistent angle, using a stone narrow enough that it does not ride up onto the planes behind it. A guided system or an angle jig is genuinely useful here in a way it is not on most knives. Do not use a pull-through sharpener, which will not respect any of this. And if you ever want the whole blade refinished, send it back to us; re-establishing facet lines is a grinding job rather than a sharpening one.

It is a finger choil, and on this knife it does something genuinely useful. Put your index finger into it and your hand moves forward, past the handle and onto the blade itself, which shortens the working edge and puts your grip much closer to the point. That is the standard hold for detailed cutting on any knife that offers it. What makes it worth pointing out here is the combination: a ringed knife normally gives you exactly one hand position and will not let go of it, which is the main criticism of the type and one we make ourselves on our other ringed pages. The choil gives you a second. You still cannot reverse the knife or release it quickly, but you can choose between a full grip at the handle and a choked-up grip at the blade, and that is more than most ringed knives allow.

Just looks, and we would rather say so. Angular faceting has become a visual shorthand for tactical, and a fair amount of marketing implies that hard geometry means hard performance. It does not. A faceted wedge does not cut better, penetrate better or hold up better than a conventionally ground blade of the same steel, thickness and edge geometry, and the facets add no strength; the primary grind and the heat treatment decide all of that, and both are the same here as on our plainer knives. What the facets do add is a great deal of hand grinding, a look nothing else in our range has, and a slightly harder sharpening job. That is an honest trade and plenty of people will happily take it. It is only a bad trade if somebody has told you the angles are doing engineering.

We would rather you did not, and this is the one build in our range where we say that. Facets are visible only because each plane reflects light at a different angle, and the crisper the reflection the sharper the boundary between them looks. A mirror polish gives you that. A satin finish scatters light across the surface and softens every line, and a dark forge finish removes them almost entirely, so you end up paying for grinding you can no longer see. If you want a knife with a low-maintenance finish, the honest answer is that this is the wrong blade for it and our pierced blade ring pommel knife takes a forge finish very happily. If you specifically want this blade in satin we will grind it, but we will ask you once whether you are sure.

Same hilt idea, opposite blade philosophy. The Pierced Blade build has a smooth upswept belly with three graduated holes drilled through the flat, so its decoration sits in the steel and the grind itself is conventional. It slices better on a draw, sharpens normally, takes any finish you like, and is the easier of the two to own. This one puts all its work into the grind: hard flat planes, crisp lines, a long acute wedge and a forward choil, and it needs the polish to read. Take the pierced blade if you want something to use and a softer look; take this one if the grinding is the point and you will keep it polished. They are 6 and 6.5 inches respectively, so size is not the deciding factor.

No. On a karambit the blade hooks back so the tip finishes pointing toward the hand that holds it, and every cut is a pull. Here the wedge runs forward and the point finishes ahead of the handle, so it cuts on a push like an ordinary knife. The ring at the butt is the only thing the two share, and a ring is a handle feature rather than a blade one. We forge four karambits if a hooked pull-cutting blade is what you actually want.

No. Field dressing needs a different hold for almost every stage, from a pinch grip for caping to a full grip for long pulls to a reversed grip for opening skin, and a fixed finger ring gives you very few of them. The forward choil helps more here than on most ringed knives, but not enough. Our pierced blade page sets the argument out in full, and any of our straight-bladed hunting knives will serve a hunter far better.

Measure before you order, because on a ringed knife a poor fit makes the piece unusable rather than merely uncomfortable. Wrap a strip of paper around the second knuckle of your index finger, which is the widest part that has to pass through, mark the overlap and measure the strip. You want roughly two to four millimetres of clearance on that figure: too tight and your finger will not pass, too loose and the knife rotates around the ring instead of being indexed by it. Send us the measurement and we forge the ring to it at no extra cost.

We cannot answer that for you and you should be wary of any seller who claims they can. A finger ring is named as a restricted feature in its own right in a good deal of knife legislation, separately from blade length and separately from blade shape, so a ringed knife can be restricted where an identical knife with a plain handle is unremarkable. Rules vary by country and, within countries, by state, province and city, and import rules differ again from carry rules. Check yours before ordering. If the ring is the problem, the plain-handle build costs no more.

5160 high-carbon spring steel, the same stock our smiths use for kukris and swords, forged down from leaf spring in the Nepali tradition. It is oil-quenched and then tempered back, giving a blade that holds a hard working edge but stays tough rather than brittle. It is not stainless. It will take a patina with use and it will rust if left wet, which is the trade every high-carbon blade asks in exchange for an edge that sharpens easily.

Closer than on most of our knives, and further away in one respect. The facet layout is set up to a pattern, so the geometry repeats accurately from piece to piece. But every line between two planes is finished by hand, so their exact crispness varies slightly, and on a design where the lines are the entire point that is the difference you are most likely to notice. Rosewood also varies board to board in colour and figure. What does not vary is the specification: length, steel, construction, heat treatment and sharpness are held to the same standard on every piece. Our kukri machete page explains in more detail what can and cannot differ between two blades from the same bench.