Ricasso?? What’s the big deal?

K

Kev

Well-Known Member
Goofy title I know. But seriously, does the ricasso serve an actual function? Besides a convenient place to put a makers mark. I’ve seen some very nice knives, by talented and well respected makers, that have what I think is a giant ricasso, and to me it throws the whole thing off. My personal style leans toward smaller knives and maybe that’s the key to my aversions.
I’m not being cynical or judgmental, I am truly curious if the ricasso serves any kind of functional purpose.
Looking forward to the discussion.
 
I'm sure the more lernered will correct me. But the the way I understand it it is the Ricaso is the transition from blade/cutting edge portion of the knife to the handle/Tang. I've done some of my knives with larger Ricasos and some with smaller. I dont think there is a set standard or design parameter. So you can make them as large or small as your design dictates. Many makers also use this area as the thickest part of the knife and both taper to the point of the knife as well as the butt of it.
 
You really want a fairly wide ricasso to allow plenty of room to even up the plunge lines - just keep moving plunge back until they line up {g}
 
I think the answer will change depending on who you ask and what their tastes are. As far as a function goes I use the ricasso as an anchor for everything else, especially when I am forging a blade. It serves as a flat reference point to straighten the rest of the blade to if that makes sense. It lets me know when my edge is centered with the spine, it also serves to isolate the steel I am using for the blade from the steel I use for a tang. It is the endpoint for my edge and the beginning of my tang. It also lets me know where to put my choil if I am adding one. Like I said though, I am sure there will be multiple answers here.
 
The simple response is that the ricasso is the middle of the knife in almost every knife build. The sharpened edge (blade), the ricasso, the handle. It is the transition point between the two most important parts of the knife (blade and handle). You can have a great blade shape and a great handle shape. If the ricasso does not bring them together, you may end up with an odd looking knife without any flow from back to front or front to back.

Great knives have a great flow. We have all seen knives and thought to ourselves, I really like that knife. Sometime it is the materials, sometimes it is the shape, sometimes it is the colors, sometimes it is the whole package.

That flow provides the eye appeal to the end user. Unfortunately, every end user is a bit different. What one likes, others may not. Getting it all put together is difficult to do on every knife. Almost always, someone will not like the flow of the knife. Others will think it is awesome. Taste is an individual thing.

As knife makers, we do our best to appeal to the masses, usually. Try to make the largest segment happy so that they like and buy your wares. The ricasso is an important factor that goes into that equation.
 
I am firmly in the camp of "it depends on the knife" which sounds like weasel words, but it's not. A design to me needs to live and die on its own two feet. If some element of the knife doesn't belong, it needs to go away.

I don't like bolsters on kitchen knives. (a blade bolster on the heel edge, not referring to the handle) Since I don't like bolsters I also don't like plunges on kitchen knives. While I love Japanese blade designs, I prefer double bevel blades and western handles. So that's the knife I make- a plungless, bolsterless double bevel blade with a western handle. From a purist standpoint my blades are bastard children, but apparently lots of people agree with me because by and large bolsters are going away, and single bevel kitchen knives are primarily a Japanese tradition and rarely seen elsewhere.

As to the ricasso specifically, I think the original purpose was to have square shoulders to fit the guard or handle to. (Full tang knives being a recent development in human history.) And having a guard meant you couldn't sharpen the edge all the way to the guard anyway, so you had to have some clearance from the guard to the stone. The clearance became what we call the ricasso. Compare to traditional Scandi knives which are sharpened all the way up to the handle because there is no guard.

Styles and tastes change. Part of me believes that guards and metal handle bolsters are the necktie and vest of the knife world. They look extremely classy but are a bit "buttoned up formal" in appearance and losing favor to simpler, more utilitarian tastes. The humble 3-piece knife is no longer looked down upon by many people, especially from a practical standpoint. The flip side to this is that as 90% of makers are going for basic and tactical, you can easily stand out by making heirloom knives with all the classy bells and whistles.
 
Historically, the ricasso is a relative newcomer as a blade feature. There are some exceptions, there are always exceptions, but we begin to see widespread use of the ricasso during the renaissance when fighting styles began to favor more accurate thrusting, and fingers started coming around to the front of a guard. When choking up on the blade like this, you want a friendly area that is free of sharp edges. This could have also happened earlier in history but was facilitated by the greater availability of steel to devote to the blade features. I am certain that another advantage was also quickly realized for narrower blades designed more for thrust, a much more stable base to firmly seat the guard against. In wider bladed swords, that were heavy cutters, the shoulders alone provided plenty of real estate to seat the guard against. Also, on a narrower blade, the ricasso provides a strengthening increase in cross section mass at what is potentially the weakest part of the blade where the transition to the narrow tang occurs. There are several other things going on with the dynamics, but the rest is essentially history.

Eventually it became a standard and today the ricasso is an integral design feature in the majority of blades. Today, and in older cultures, where very clean fits are valued, the ricasso provides a way to make an easy gap free fit to the guard. The Japanese, who had very exacting esthetics for their time, did not have an integral ricasso in the blade style but instead created a component ricasso in the habaki.

When teaching, I refer to the ricasso as the “foundation of the blade”, in that everything on a precisely designed blade is based off from the ricasso as the starting reference point. When we judge knives for the ABS JS and MS stamps, the very first place we look is the ricasso area, as almost 75% of all glitches occur there. We then move out from there with the “foundation of the blade” as our reference point to judge other features. I find that people who struggle with plunge shoulders and straight lines hate ricassos, but once they reverse their approach, and get the hang of using them, they fall in love with it. The very first thing that I true up and level, when grinding a blade, is the ricasso, because I will then layout all other straight lines, tapers and planes using this reference point.

There are some basic aesthetic guidelines to ricasso shape and size but I will not get into them at this time, when I teach my blade design classes I spend a good deal of time on the ricasso, and how it all ties in. Oh, and it also does indeed make a great place to put your makers mark!
 
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Thanks Kevin. I was hoping you'd see this and comment on the historical aspects.

My thoughts and reasons for it echo the second half of Kevin's posts.
 
Well, to many of the very well established makers that I know, it is a big deal. The ABS teaches about it to a great extent. As some have already said, it's the foundation of a knife, it is the straight, parallel platform from witch the whole rest of the knife is gauged and built.

That being said, done well, the ricasso can look nice and if not done well, it can look awkward and, well, quite stupid. Quite a bit of thought is given to the size and shape of the ricasso. Generally, think the "Golden mean" or rule of two thirds. A long time ago the human eye decided what a pleasing shape for a rectangle to be. That's why we have post cards that are 4"X 6", that's why credit cards and your drivers license are the shape they are, that's why we have 8 1/2 X 11 paper. It's the "Golden Mean". The excepted shape of the ricasso, to many of us who care, is a rectangular shape, perpendicular to the spine of the knife, that is roughly 2/3rds as wide as it is high.

Kudos to Kevin for his willingness and ability to explain things as he does.
 
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