I've read the basics on HG blades and understand how they are created and the obvious benefit if being exceedingly sharp, great for slicing, which translates well into skinning & dressing a deer.

In general, do you guys insist on HG blades, have a few as go-tos for certain tasks, or not put muchgstock into the HG approach?

I'm just interested in how much of a 'must-have' the HG blade is on a hunter.

I prefer a hollow ground knife for field dressing and skinning. The obvious benefit to hollow grinding is as it's sharpened up the width of the blade, it's thinner. Flat ground is going to get thicker as steel is sharpened away. So just for slicing, you have a thinner sharper edge. For heavy gorilla work it's not the best.

this discussion is really about personal use. i like both types but have to give the edge to flat grinds used for chopping & rough usage. for sharp i guess the hollow ground razor answered that question over a century & a half ago.--cranky72

Flat ground tools are good lot of people use them to split wood!!

For an all-around hunting knife, I prefer a fairly thin, flat-ground blade with a convexed edge.

I haven't carried a hollow-ground blade for many years, though they work great for gutting and skinning, ... you just want to be a little more careful with them when working around bones and joints.

Professional butchers mostly use flat grinds, because they are practical and efficient.

I prefer hollow grinds although am happy using high quality flat grinds. It has been a couple of decades since I last damaged a blade, took a notch out of a blade while removing an elk ivory.

I prefer a thin flat ground blade....I do not like the thick spine most leave on the blade when hollow grinding.

having ground both and used both extensively I much prefer a hollow ground blade. Done right, a hollow ground blade is just a better design.

Good picture of a flat ground. Also how I feel about it!

I have made and used both, Hollow ground and flat ground. One seems to work as good as the other, but the most important aspect is that it be very sharp.

If you are getting a knife to display in a collection, no knife looks more classy to me than a satin finished flat grind.

At a knife show one time, a person asked me why I hollow ground. My answer was that I thought a hollow ground blade cut better. What I didn't tell him was that I could not do a flat grind very well.

He told me that a hollow ground blade would not cut cheese. I guess he was talking the big chunks of cheese they used to display in stores, where the customer cut off a big hunk.

I've never compared the two, but I guess that if you were in the cheese business, a flat grind might be better.

If you are going to use the knife under rough conditions and abuse it, logically it seems that a flat ground would be stronger, but a knife, any knife is a cutting tool and not a pry bar or chopping tool.

I got a cheese cutter who does it for a living. He test 6 foot pieces all day. I will see if he has some pictures. With knives at work.

probably the most superb cutting edge was the true nonbelved japanese combat swords . they came from the very top of the blade down to a perfect v with no micro bevel. a perfect intersection of the 2 sides of the blade with no hollows or bevels. of course this was very difficult to achive but this grind had the least resistance of any other i know of. early master swords were said to be able to cut completely thru the pelvic girdle of seated criminals that were too be executed for crimes & used as test subjects. cranky72

Right, the next time I am cutting some cold mutton from a roast for a sandwich I shall be able to commiserate about not having a you-beaut-nifty-prisoner-hacking sword to swing around.

Is there a special tool/approach to sharpening a HG blade once dulled or do any of the standard approaces (whet stone, sticks, lansky) still work?

Any of standard sharpening methods will work. I think it might be a bit easier to sharpen a hollow ground blade.

As far as taking off a lot of metal and having to reshape the edge, knives made from modern steel and hardened to the high 50s or low 60s will last a very long time without having to take off very much metal to restore the edge.

I have read of people re-profiling and thinning the edge and honing out nicks with a whet stone. I don't see how they can do it with a knife at Rc 61. I can't, or if I did, it would probably take a month of constant honing.

I prefer a hollow ground blade up until the venison is in the kitchen, then its flat grind for me.

Very compelling argument, there, Rick.


A couple more flat-grinds, here, and how I tend to think of them:

One of the few flat-glinds I made was for a knife like what your useing. Vince has it. I think its the only way for material over 1 1/8 tall. Truly it makes know difference to me. I just like to get guys going. I think on a hunting knife hollow is diff the way to go just for sharpening purpose. I do like the look of a flat ground knife on bigger knives.

Also i use a big contact wheel 14 inch. This makes a big diff in hollow grinds. Miller use's I think a 16 and Bose is useing a 20. These big wheels you get the best of both worlds. Behind the edge it stays thin and as you go up its more like a flat grind so its tuffer. I think you will see more maker's going to this. Its much harder to grind on the bigger wheels but you really get great cutting tools! I use to grind on a 8 inch- It made very nice grinds but left to much material up high on the spine.

This is an interesting thread. I make and use both flat and hollow ground blades. My preference for a hunting knife is a hollow ground blade, but many of our knives are made for people that prefer a flat grind for hunting. I haven't noticed one type of grind being more difficult than the other, but I would rather grind a flat ground blade... just because. We use a 14" wheel for all of our hollow grinds and I agree with Rick that it makes all the difference in the world. The hollow grind is carried up to the spine of the knife without going through the spine. Hollow grinds can have thick edges if the customer wants one that is sturdy or it can be super thin. We have made them so thin the edge could be rippled with a thumb nail.

This is a 3.25" blade hunter with a blade that has a hollow grind made with the 14"wheel.

I use an 18 inch wheel to grind on. I like how the shallow hollow goes all the way down to the edge in one continuous sweep without any place to stop it. I know when Rick grinds you can be cut by his blades before he sharpens them.
It comes down to if the lands are continous without any hinderance to the edge.
If you look at a lot of my blades I also like to hollow grind the tip so as you cut it will slide through easier. I don't like it when grinders leave a heavy thick tip on the end.

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.