More of the cheap, sharp ones...

Okay. Sorry but we've got to do this again...
This is Joe Walsh:


This fuck... well, let's hope he dies or changes his name.
Didj'a know... he owes over a hundred-grand in back child support"


"Job creators". Would that include your ex-wife's attorneys?
I would think they're in a pretty sweet spot right now.

Okay, enough grab-ass. Back to bid-ness.
I was brought up short - and legitimately so - by Andy and Kevin (They play Jiminy Cricket to my Pinnochio) regarding some glaring omissions in my discussion of the down-and-dirty, functional and therefore beautiful, peasant knife (Post immediately preceding).
And, I hasten to add, that faithful reader and commenter, Anonymous, raised another glaring omission.
All things in their season.
Andy mentioned the Douk-Douk, a French equivalent to the Higonakami - although it's a bit higher-tech than the Japanese version.
It's majorly tricked-out. It's got a back-spring and all kinds of uppity stampings... But, essentially, it's a cheap functional knife.
It was intended for the SE Asian market, hence the name.
So, in the interest of marketing, it was designed so that the handle depicts a "douk-douk", or a "Melanesian, spirit incarnation".
I hope that I'm not being insensitive but I can't help thinking of Hugo Ball, the founder of the art movement known as Dada another odd offshoot from the Great War.
Seriously. Check the photo.
Twins separated at birth?

Moving right along, another that faithful Andy slugged me with was the Okapi (Never heard of it).
But, another shank designed to be cheap and easily produced for sale to the third world.
Don't get above your raisin' folks, that's where we're headed.
Anyway, it's got some added complexities but all the elements are there: Blade, handle, pokey goodness.
Another Kevin brought up was yet another that I'd never heard of (I lead a very sheltered existence), the Mercator.
It's a step up the complexity ladder from the Douk-Douk. in that it actually has a locking mechanism.
Still, the handle is the same folded, metal we've come to know and love in the Higonokami and the Douk-Douk.
And here I'd thought Mercator was just that funky world map that made Greenland as big as Africa just so the longitude lines would behave and lay parallel like those obedient lines of latitude.
Keep it simple, stupid.
Okay, Kevin's last contribution and maybe my favorite the erroneously titled New Zealand peasant knife.
Erroneous in that it's based on Bavarian examples from the 15th and 16th centuries but it is made in good old En Zed.
It is, to my addled mind, both-ends-and-the-middle of the shit.
It's got everything. butt-simplicity, reasonably low cost (They are sent from way the fuck down there) and are just a giant fuck you to the Lynn Thompsons of the world.
Woo-Hoo! Sit on it and spin, you pudgy fuck.
Okay, at long last, and unfairly late because he was asking an important question, we address the issue of the Mora blades.
These are knives, made in Sweden since the middle-ages, using a type of laminated steel developed at the time. Steel which, at a far more reasonable price, is identical to the over-priced (and over-rated) San-Mai steels that knife geeks wax orgasmic over.
They do make some stainless crap (isn't that redundant?) but their real knives are a lamination of two layers of mild-steel sandwiching a chunk of UHB 15N20.
Okay, another incomprehensible steel designation.
It's a nice steel, about 75 points of carbon and 2% nickel.
Quote:
"...is a 0.75% carbon Ni alloyed steel and is ideal for the
heavier size range. It has 2% nickel, which assures a
homogenous structure of fine-grained martensite through
the complete cross section."
Sorry folks, this is a valve steel. There are no super-duper knife steels.
They're all industrial steels developed for industry which - sorry - ain't makin' knives.
I bought a Mora knife way back when I was a lad. It was all it claimed to be.
Anonymous, if that really is your name, buy with confidence.