Something interesting

the golden mean is a very interesting thing. When I was drawing up my first Bowie I kept feeling like it was just “off” in some way that i couldn’t put my finger on.

I called one of my mentors and was discussing it. He told me to go back over the drawing dimensions and compare what I had to the golden ratio. The length of the edge vs the length of the clip, the height of the blade vs the height of the ricasso, overall length vs blade length vs handle length.

In each of these dimensions I was close, but off. Adjusting these relationships was a very subtle adjustment, with an immediately substantial impact. The tiniest of tweaks made a whole new knife.

From there you can change lines for style. We don’t have to be slaves to ratios completely, but using proven ratios is definitely a great place to start.
 
John Wilson said:
the golden mean is a very interesting thing. When I was drawing up my first Bowie I kept feeling like it was just “off” in some way that i couldn’t put my finger on.

I called one of my mentors and was discussing it. He told me to go back over the drawing dimensions and compare what I had to the golden ratio. The length of the edge vs the length of the clip, the height of the blade vs the height of the ricasso, overall length vs blade length vs handle length.

In each of these dimensions I was close, but off. Adjusting these relationships was a very subtle adjustment, with an immediately substantial impact. The tiniest of tweaks made a whole new knife.

From there you can change lines for style. We don’t have to be slaves to ratios completely, but using proven ratios is definitely a great place to start.
Click to expand...
John, you bring up something that haunts me every time I work on a new design.... Is it proportionally correct. It sure would be nice to have thread dedicated to design. Building a hunting knife seems easy for me, I used to hunt a lot. I've never chopped down a tree with a bowie knife so designing one would be difficult. Would anyone else like to see a thread dedicated to design?
 
Ty Adams said:
John, you bring up something that haunts me every time I work on a new design.... Is it proportionally correct. It sure would be nice to have thread dedicated to design. Building a hunting knife seems easy for me, I used to hunt a lot. I've never chopped down a tree with a bowie knife so designing one would be difficult. Would anyone else like to see a thread dedicated to design?
Click to expand...

Me! I've thought about making one but didn't know if anyone would care about it or not.
 
A thread like that would be great, particularly for newer makers. I don't know anybody who didn't struggle with handle size. We obsess over the blade and put so much effort there. Then you go to put a handle on it and the handle ends up being goofy because you try to match it proportionally to the blade and that just doesn't work. The little lessons like that can have you running around in circles until you figure out that the handle has to be "x" length and the blade has to grow out of it, not the other way around.
 
Dont forget that it dosent all work with figurative proportions of handle to blade length. A capping knife, a skinner and a butcher knife all have different uses and very different blade proportions to each other and not all would come within the golden ratio and they can all look right without doing so.
 
Von Gruff said:
Dont forget that it dosent all work with figurative proportions of handle to blade length. A capping knife, a skinner and a butcher knife all have different uses and very different blade proportions to each other and not all would come within the golden ratio and they can all look right without doing so.
Click to expand...

I absolutely agree! I had honestly never heard of it and thought it was interesting. The eye is the best tool KnifeMaker's have in my book.
 
Kevin Cashen is a super smart guy...I've been to multiple hammer ins and attended his classes. I've never really measured knives to exact golden ratio, but have always done it by eye. I'm sure if I went back a lot of them would be very close
 
Von Gruff said:
Dont forget that it dosent all work with figurative proportions of handle to blade length. A capping knife, a skinner and a butcher knife all have different uses and very different blade proportions to each other and not all would come within the golden ratio and they can all look right without doing so.
Click to expand...


100% agree.

When it matters seems to be those times when a design looks good, but “a little off” for no apparent reason.

A purpose-built knife is completely exempt in most ways since form follows function.

I don’t think ratios are the end-game. I think they are a good sanity-check when a maker isn’t satisfied and needs a reference to compare to.

Our eye normally gravitates to the golden mean. After all, that’s why it exists. Our brains are wired for symmetry.
 
Good video. Thanks for bringing it up. I’ve heard of the rule of thirds for proportionality and it seems this is the same but kinda not. This video explains it in better detail.
 
If I remember correctly, one of KC's dvd's talks a little about this, mostly relating to the ricasso area. I'll make a note of this video and check it out the next time I am at our local library (my internet video access is limited from home).
Thanks for posting this Daniel!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top