Mukade Tanto Fire Utility
Im indebted to
The Levin Lance for his gracious gift of the Mukade Tanto v2 and over the course of the next few weekends I will be putting her through some necessary chores. Im a little more likely to use a knife around the property vs a sword. In fact i often carry two or three of various sizes for anything from bushcraft to butchery to hacking chagas or starting a fire.
The Materials: i took a small piece of leftover pine & my handy magnesium and fero rod.
Mukade tanto and an oak base. Leftover winter assorted grassss complete the firemaking fun for today.
I will split the pine and shave a little bit down to have a pile. I can light the pile with the rod and magnesium combo.
This, in turn, can light the winter grass and leftover combo in the fire dish. It sounds easy but from experience each step of the path can suffer failure from finding a soft spot on the edge during splitting to not being able to spark the fero rod.
**safety warning** when I first ran this test it was -15C and I had a pair of light synthetic gloves on. They did not grip the handle as well as an old pair of buckskin gloves to which I switched to prevent my fingers from slipping up to the blade.
Mukade tanto on buckskin, cherry, pine, oak and a rope for a different test.
A pile of magnesium underlying some pine shavings along with some thinly split pine.
As testament to its dangerous nature, do not drop the tanto.
Though my chair is very old, once the pomel pierced the seat the weight alone was enough to pass the whole knife through as if it werent even there...twice.
The pine split easily, as expected as its pretty dry (i like to carry a small piece of cedar/pine and a small piece of fatwood double ziplocked in my pack for firestarting). The weight of the tanto makes for easy splitting with either a baton or drop-n-twist method. A similar experience with a piece of oak (not pictured, not used in the fire). Im not concerned with splitting wood with this knife. Next I will step it up and split some light firewood and maybe try her on a small log. Tinder is one thing but logs are quite another.
Shavings were larger than i usually get from my thinner knives but the thick blade and secondary bevel angle account for that.
She chops quite well due to this geometry (see spatchcocking a chicken).
The Mukade performed well at scraping down the magnesium block. The spine of the tanto was finish-ground after the sides leaving a slight overhanging shelf of metal which grips into the block providing for quick removal of small, easy to pile shavings
By using the spine of the tanto to spark against the rod, the magnesium quickly flares through the pine and the pine then lights the winter surprise bundle.
Believe it or not, ive had a few knives that simply would not spark the rod.
I could keep this fire rolling with the addition of some brush and leftover assorted shopwoods now.
At this time of year its nice to have a burning fire to warm up with and drive off the damp chill of spring.
We also feed a winters worth of scrap wood and burnable materials of all sorts into the burning barrels and firedish to start the spring cleanup.
Its always fun to collect the ash to make lye for soaps.
An unorthodox test when compared to the water bottle cutting tests of my contemporaries, or the standard measurement review but i believe the utility of a blade should be tested along with its combat value.