Post #360630 by Benzart on Mon, Feb 11, 2008 7:49 PM

The blade looks like it will generate a lot of power pushing away from you, but the angle will give it leverage to cut deep points and "pop" them out?

More info about that "Bent knife" or Crooked knife among other names. Maybe I should get one AND I have lerarned a Lot about carving knoves while looking for this Info..

Magazine Antiques, May, 2005 by Allison Eckardt Ledes
"Thousands of years ago, no one knows where, an ingenious person invented the ultimate multipurpose tool--the drawknife. Around 1500 the Woodlands Indians of northeastern North America, who had been using stone tools, were introduced to iron by French traders and with it they produced an improved drawknife known as a mocotaugan. This simple, logically conceived tool is also known by many other names, among them: crooked knife (couteau croche in French), basketmaking knife, bent knife, and canoe knife. Everyone in the world of American Indian studies concurs that, under whatever name it is known, this is one of the most versatile tools ever developed. The user grips the handle with his palm up and his thumb braced at the end of the handle. The blade is usually set at a thirty degree angle to the handle, and the knife is pulled toward the user. Thus, the mocotaugan can be used with great efficiency and accuracy to carve, cut, shave, gouge, and smooth. It was employed to create splints for making baskets, skin an animal, fashion snowshoes, harpoons, spears, bowls, and ladles, and make a birchbark canoe. One gets the idea that no one ever left home without it."

This from "Woodcarvingsupplies.com""You don't have to be working in the Northwest coast style to appreciate a fine crooked knife. At home in hard or soft woods, they are especially useful for hollowing. Treen makers love them, and they are unexcelled in sculpture. Both convex and concave surfaces can be carved with ease. End grain is no more a trick than cross grain. The knife is a dream for fitting two curved surfaces; boat builders, and cabinet makers who lean toward the flowing line, also make ready use of these tools.

The Kestrel knife is a refined version of the traditional crooked knife using fine tool steels hardened and tempered to close tolerance. Like all crooked knives, these tools are intended to be held with the palm up. In this position the wrist has its maximum motion and power. The knife's hardwood haft is formed to give powerful grip and perfect control. The haft's unique curved shape allows the carver's knuckles to stay out of the way.

A major advantage of these tools is economy. The double edge cuts with a draw or a push stroke. The bent shape allows access to areas in a wide variety of configurations. There is probably no more versatile wood carving tool. By turning the knife in your hand and using different areas on the blade, the work of many conventional tools can be accomplished. The crooked knife is one of the two most useful tools he average carver could own, the other being a good straight knife. In the European tradition, a craftsman might own 100 or more carving tools. Northwest coast aboriginals did work at least as inspired and certainly as competent with a half dozen tools.

Kestrel crooked knives shown with a Bella Coola "carpenter" mask. This mask is the first for Adrienne Rice who started it in a Wolf Dancer seminar with Duane Pasco.

The crooked knife is offered in two basic shapes. The standard bent is the most versatile. This blade is bent in an ever-increasing radius of curvature, like a French curve, so hat almost any radius can be carved with it. If you have doubts about which tool to order and do any sculpture or recessed work, order this tool. The not-so-crooked knife hasn't a straight place on it. Use it for detailing and where the recurved tip of the standard bend would interfere with the work. The not-so-crooked is great for planing in areas of limited room.

A major advantage of these tools is economy. The double edge cuts with a draw or a push stroke. The bends shown are approximate and are reduced slightly for space considerations. For many more options in blade shapes, refer to the Components section.

Our crooked knives come with a fully-honed razor edge which will give several hours of carving before needed maintenance. These tools are sharpened on the inside of the bend using slip stones. Each knife comes with a comprehensive explanation of use and sharpening which will enable the average woodworker to maintain he keen edge that makes such magic of wood removal. We sell a variety of stones for edging. Please refer to the Sharpening section. "

D & E) Two Unique Versions
of Early Knives
Some Woodlands men, as late as
the 19th century, used beaver
teeth as cutting/gouging tools.
The large upper incisors were
designed by nature exactly as
man’s earliest knives were used,
for a toward-the-body motion.
And beavers, often as big as
bears, had incisors big enough
for men to use as blades. Some
Natives simply used two such
incisors still attached to their
jawbone. Other Natives set one
large incisor into a curved handle.
Knives like this, excavated
along the Ottawa River, have
been estimated to be some 5,000
years old

The evolution of the mocotaugan
From the top: Early Stone Age knife; the first major advance in the cutting tool; a typical mocotaugan with steel blade; the steel-bladed mocotaugan as usable art.

Since time immemorial, this singular knife, along with the axe and the maul, was one of the most essential survival tools of the First Peoples of the Woodlands. It was a many-purpose tool, adapted to make use of the plentiful wood, reeds and rushes indigenous to the dense wilderness of forest and lakes. The knife was made with the blade attached to the handle at an angle, similar to a half-open jackknife, and was always used in a toward-the-body motion. Of all the many native tribes throughout the Americas, this shape of the knife and the way it was used were characteristics indigenous only to the tribes of the Woodlands.
Over eons of time, the blades were made of stone and, later, sometimes with beaver teeth. (The beavers, when Europeans arrived, were often as big as bears, and they used their incisors the same way the knife was used — in a toward-the-body motion.) Beginning in the 1500’s, the blade was transformed — with European steel.
The new form, almost always with blades made from settlers’ worn objects such as wagon springs and razors, spread swiftly throughout the Woodlands, that vast land that stretched from below the tundra of Western Canada east and south across the Great Lakes to the Atlantic and down the coast to the Carolinas. The knife became more than an essential tool; it became both a striking example of two-way acculturation in the New World and a major medium through which Indian artists expressed themselves in the Woodlands traditional art form — small-scale sculpture.
For more on the nature and history of the knife, see the book, pages