Boker Plus Rampage

Boker Rampage™

The Boker Rampage is the inexpensive commercial version of the RJ Martin knife of the same name. The Boker version does not have the grooved blade that has become an RJ Martin hallmark. The 4 ¾ inch blade is nicely ground from 5mm thick 440-C stainless and it is razor sharp. As you know, I reserve this title for only those knives that truly are razor sharp, not every knife that simply cuts paper. The overall blade shape reminds me of a Rhino with its nose out of joint. There are few blade profiles that are more aggressive than this one. It is a complex grind and Boker has done a nice job.
The handle is less inspiring. Hogged out of micarta, it has the distinct look of a Cub Scout project carved with a dull jack knife in ten minutes or less. It has the potential to be ergonomic but whoever designed it was apparently unfamiliar with how the human hand is shaped. It fits my hand like the new airplane seats fit my body. The grooved thumb ramp should have been higher, so that the thumb rested naturally on it rather than having to be pressed down onto it. The notches roughed out for your forefinger are left too clunky and there are sharp corners just dying to be rounded off. The handle is barely long enough to accommodate my rather small hand. Anyone with big hands need not apply.
The sheath is your typical, thermo-plastic, kydex wanna-be, construct with the ubiquitous Tech-Lok. For some reason there is no retention capacity with this particular sheath. Maybe mine is unusually loose in the sheath, but right now, if I tip it up the knife will fall right out.
Overall the knife is a Plus in the Boker™ line despite the awful handles. I had similar complaints with my Boker Smatchet too. I have to wonder if Boker’s design folks don’t know how a knife is supposed to be held. If the Rampage were scaled up just a bit, like a 7inch blade and 4.5 inch handle, it would be a fantastic fighting knife! I am sure that before too long my Rampage is going to have the handles reshaped or replaced. It is too nice a blade to leave the handles as they are. A little research will find one of these knives for a hundred dollars or less. In that price range it is worth buying.

Filling Emptiness, crossing the bridge

Filling Emptiness, Crossing the Bridge

If you have read our book you will know that I am fairly skeptical of all the people in the martial arts running around with all sorts of titles attached to their names. I have read many of their books and watched a lot of their DVDs or VHS tapes. While it is impossible to learn an art from a book or a DVD, it is possible to get an idea of a person’s intent and their abilities. A man who bought our book said there are two reasons to write a book: to tell something, or to sell something. Gratefully he placed out book in the telling category. This past weekend I watched the latestDVD by a man I consider one of the few real-deals in the knife world. After watching the DVD "Crossing the Bridge" I and came away with an even deeper appreciation of the man and what he had to tell.
Of all the people teaching the bladed arts there is one who has fully committed his life to teaching the art and telling the truth. Master at Arms James A. Keating stands head and shoulders above the crowd. While I have never had the honor of training with Master Keating I have (through various media) watched him explore the diversity of bladed arts from Asian to American and everything in between. What truly makes him a master is his ability to draw them all together, demonstrate the commonalities, and teach conceptually. Master Keating has managed to raise the perception of the knife fighter from the sordid world of thugs, muggers, and salivating pseudo instructors to a more noble art preaching self-restraint over self aggrandizement, awareness of the moral and legal constraints, and promoting defense over offense. In the process you also find, almost subliminally, that your technical skills improve.
I am sure that some of the other instructors out there could cut me to pieces and consider that proof of their superiority. That would still not convince me that they know anything about the art itself, only about violence, and their willingness to inflict more violence than I am. Master Keating’s latest DVD on Crossing the Bridge is what prompted me to write this blog. As he says in the opening, this is not a DVD about techniques, it is one about thinking. Then he goes on from there to break down the concepts of distance, angles, and timing and make it all seem so obvious. This DVD is a masterpiece! In the DVD Master Keating talks about adhering, bridging, and emptiness. These are elements from the warrior arts of the ancient masters literally "bridging" several centuries. When was the last time your instructor, or the instructor on your latest DVD, talked about emptiness? Musashi sama and Munenori sama understood and taught these concepts and ideals. The classes held by our late beloved sensei Yagyu Nobuharu taught these concepts. These are the teachings that transform violence for violence’ sake into a nobler art, and through enlightenment convert the back-stabbing drunken knifer to a thoughtful warrior.
Master Keating has a depth and breadth of martial vocabulary and knowledge that I have not seen in anyone since Donn Draeger. A deep bow and a thank you to Master James A. Keating for the sacrifices he has made in his life to write the books, teach the classes, and make the DVDs that have something profound to tell rather than just something to sell. working with James is Mark Davies from Scotland, a friend and Comtech Instructor certified by James keating .

Chisel Tips

Chisel Tips

One of my favorite old-wives tales is that during WW-II men who were issued commando knives purposely broke off the needle-like tips. This was done to prevent the knife from lodging in bone and getting stuck during a thrust, so one story goes. The other tale is this modification was to prevent the accidental bending or breaking of the tip which would make the knife useless. I have owned two WW-II knives that had the tips broken and sharpened across the blade, not re-pointed. Unfortunately I re-pointed them using a whetstone. Over a period of time I wondered why they did not reshape the point to return the knife more to its original look. This, coupled with the purchase of a Razel, made me wonder if those soldiers knew something about stabbing and cutting that I did not. I asked my good friends Brent Sandow and Peter Parkinson, both of Auckland, NZ, to build me a "chisel-tip" version of the Fairbairn Sykes commando knife. Due to a misunderstanding I ended up with two different blade profiles. One is the standard double bevel with four flats (knife on right). The other knife has a yari-ground blade with three flats (knife on left).
I asked Peter to build me a "mule", a bare bones test knife. What I received were two fully finished knives in tactical black. These are beautiful knives, ser. number 002 and 002A. When I showed them to Gwynne she said with a smile, "Looks like two broken knives to me." My test medium for the stabbing test was a stack of clean corrugated cardboard. I had no idea how far the knives would penetrate so I stacked the cardboard about 9 inches deep. I did not contrive any sophisticated machine to apply an even force so the results may not be accurate to the mm but they repeated in kind, from knife to knife. Using old fashioned arm-power I tried to drive the knives into the stack with equal force, pretty much as hard as I possibly could. I performed the tests three times and averaged the results. The mil-spec coating showed no signs of damage or scuffing.
As a control, and for comparison, I also tested a new Linder 3rd Pattern knife to represent a modern factory-made adaptation of the F/S.
Here are the final results from the stabbing tests performed on the stack of corrugated cardboard with four different knives.

Linder 3rd pattern style with 3mm blade avg. 81mm

Parkinson 1st Pattern style with 6mm yari style chisel tip 81mm

Parkinson 1st Pattern style with 6mm double ground chisel tip 65mm

Parkinson damascus 1st Pattern with 6mm double ground std tip 60mm

Knives in photos

Damascus knife far left, Linder, Yari, Std chisel tip

I was surprised at the difference in penetration between the Parkinson yari ground vs double ground blade. The yari-ground blade penetrated the deepest and was also the best cutting blade despite the very steep bevels. The Linder blade being only 3mm thick, versus 6mm for the Parkinson knives, pretty much insured it would cut better. I also expected it to out-penetrate all of the Parkinson knives. As you can see it was matched by the yari blade.

My standard test cutting medium, pool noodles, was used for the cutting part of the experiment. The biggest variable in the cutting tests, with the Parkinson knives, was not blade style or thickness but sharpness. The sharpness of the Parkinson knives varied from blade to blade and edge to edge. I suppose this is due to them being hand ground. I should have checked the edges before test cutting but my primary concern was penetration. Keep in mind that William Fairbairn originally designed these knives with penetration in mind not fileting fish. As an additional side note I would mention that out of over 100 original WW-II F/S fighting knives that I own, less that 10% were sharpened at all!

Conclusions: The thinner blade on the Linder will definitely take a finer edge, as would any thin bladed knife. I did not try it, but I expect that test results of an HG Long or a J Nowill and Sons F/S would be comparable to the Parkinson knives without the blade strength and elegance of a Parkinson knife. Perhaps at a later date I can test a broader range of manufacturer’s products. In fact I have two of the new Solingen-made F/S on order right now. Once they come maybe I will expand on my tests.
I would not want to trust my life to a 3mm thick blade in combat no matter how good it cuts! Next test I will spend a little more time sharpening the Parkinson knives. Did I learn anything useful? There is another Yari-ground, chisel-tipped, 1st pattern on order from Peter and Brent right now. I am convinced they are beneficial improvements to one of the world’s great knife designs. With all due respect, I wonder what W.E. Fairbairn would think?