> TEOTWAWKI Blog: Inside View: Edwood's Persian-esque Fighter

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3/27/13

Inside View: Edwood's Persian-esque Fighter


When I reached out to Edwood for his thoughts on tomahawks, he also shared a little behind the scenes on a knife design that he is working on with knifemaker Thomas Pepper. Pictured above, it's a wicked looking, combat-oriented design, meant to be big enough to be effective, but small enough to be concealable.Of course, I had to get a few details around the thought process behind the design.

At some point in the future, this knife design may become available for purchase. Details are to be determined. Edwood is doing initial field testing right now, and I can only imagine what that consists of...

Anyways, enough intro junk and let's get down to business--here's what Edwood and Thomas had to say about their collaborative design.


Edwood:
I have always carried a knife; the reason behind why I carry a blade has changed over the years. During several incidents where I found myself extremely up close and personal with very bad people, I found that I had a need for a dedicated offensive blade as part of my gear, to aid in weapons retention and CQC. I have experimented with a lot of blade profiles and sizes for this specific use in my Libre Fighting training, and I have found that the Persian blade profile is the best for the job in my opinion, it offers the best balance between a slashing and stabbing weapon. And if you add a back edge to the knife it adds a lot of versatility when it comes to reverse edge knife work and weapons retention.
Another point I wanted to cover is the fact that it need multiple carry options, so that you could use the same knife for different jobs like overt operations and covert work.

Thomas Pepper:
Based on input from Edwood, we were looking for a persian-style blade that was 9.5" in overall length. The idea was to be able to mount the knife on a plate carrier or wear it discreetly on a belt. The blade needed to be between 4.5" and 5" to accommodate this, with a handle long enough to get good purchase. At the same time we did not want the overall form factor to be so long that it would not be able to be worn discreetly in plain clothes; we also wanted the knife to be long enough to be useful. We wanted it to be comfortable in the hand, thrust well (specifically in the mandritta and reversa styles), slash well and be usable in forward or reverse grip. The ability to conduct a back-cut with it (or to use it as a p'kal) was desired, so we sharpened the back clip. To combat tip breakage, we maintained a thick spine almost to the tip of the blade. In order to get good slicing ability we used a hollow grind and put some belly into the edge, with an 's' curve. 

At Edwood's request, we used cpms35vn steel and made it .21" thick.  To lighten it we put holes in the handle. On Edwood's example, we used a rubber matting for the handle grips. In another example we used green canvas micarta. The point was to make it not slippery. To aid this we put aggressive jimping on the spine and a deep choil at the guard/ricasso area to prevent a hand from sliding onto the blade.  We extended the pommel from the gripping area (with jimping) to facilitate pommel strikes and thumb capping.  Finally, we terminated the grinds so that there was not an abrupt change in blade thickness, but rather the grind flowed into the jimping and choil in a manner that facilitated thrusting but did not put one's fingers next to sharpened steel.