Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Hollow Ground Blades - opinions...

He's right. If the block of cheese is taller than the height of the hollow-ground blade, the blade will bind badly. A thin, flat-ground blade works much better.

I've also found that a fully convex-ground blade will slice through a block of cheese with much less effort than will a hollow-grind, but it is difficult to control the direction of the cut. The blade wanders, side to side, making it near impossible to get slices of uniform thickness.

I use an 8 inch wheel, mainly because when I first started I didn't know there was anything else.

I start grinding at the edge, and remove material with the wheel all the way to near the spine. The way I grind, when finished, the contour of the wheel does not fit the contour of the hollow grind, although I try to make a smooth transition from the edge to the spine, or halfway up if I am doing a Sabre grind.

Depending on what the knife will be used for, I vary the thickness. For a general purpose utility camp knife, I usually leave the blade thicker, from the edge to how far up blade the grind goes. I seldom grind all the way to the spine on a blade of this type.

By grinding this way, I can hollow grind different thicknesses of stock, 1/8 inch, 3/16, .211 or 1/4 inch and still blend in the grind marks for an even contour.

I have ground blades from 1/4 inches wide up to 1 1/2 inches wide with the 8 inch wheel and the grind marks will blend in.

On knives used for dressing and quartering game animals, I grind them very thin. Hopefully no one will try to hack bones or pry the pelvic bone apart with one of them. Or pry nails out of a tree, as one customer did. This blade didn't survive, the only one I know of that broke during use.



This is my version of a general utility knife, patterned after an enlarged version of a Russel style knife. The blade is about 6 inches long. It has been abused, greatly, but that is why I made it that way, leaving the grind thick.

The scratches were made from cutting shingles the last time I re-roofed my house.

Mike, that is a good observation about the point of the blade. It applies to flat ground as well as hollow ground and point geometry must be taken into consideration when talking with the customer about the use of knives. A thicker point will cut just as well if sharpened correctly but is probably harder to re sharpen. It also is less likely to break if used incorrectly. For an experienced knife user the thinner point is definitely the way to go, and it does just look better.