Henri Tikkanen maasepän puukko

Henri Tikkanen

is a young blacksmith working in Pieksämäki, 60 km north of Mikkeli, in south east Finland.

Henri main job is currently at his father’s company of canning and smoking game meat.
He studied forging techniques at Mikkeli’s Art and Crafts school and has been pupil of master bladesmith Mikko Inkeroinen.


blade
length - 86 mm
wideness -20,5 mm
thickness – 3,5 mm at the spine, 6 mm at bevels junction
steel - 1085
grind - flat
edge angle - 23°, tiny microbevel
edge hardness - ~ 59 HRC

handle
length - 100 mm
wideness - 25 mm max.
thickness - 19 mm max.

weight
knife - 80 g
with sheath - 120 g


The blade was forged with hand held hammer recycling the steel of an old horse driven plow, probably a 1085. It has a rhombic section, lightly tapered in height and just a hair in thickness. After annealing and normalization it was heated in the gas forge, quenched in oil and tempered in oven. While the bevels were dipped in oil the spine was tilted out so to be left softer. The bevels are grinded to 23°, with just a hint of microbevel.

The handle is crafted from a piece of birch burl. The tang is glued with epoxy and has two little wedges at its sides to make everything the tightest possible. It’s sanded to a fine grit, giving the handle a very smooth and soft feel. It’s slightly tapered in height and thickness towards both ends. The section is a marked teardrop and fills well the hand.

The hand stitched sheath is crafted from 2,5 mm thick bark tanned leather. Inside there is a one sided alder liner, carved and than sanded. The belt loop is a simple leather strip. The retention is excellent.

In use

This puukko has contrasting characteristic: quite petite proportions with a very thick blade, light on the scale and on the belt, but feeling heavier in the hand and almost blade heavy.

Before testing I stropped it with Bark River black (#3000) and green (#6000) compound.

As always with my Nordiskaknivar reviews I'll start with spikkentrollet, but here I will carve two, instead of one, from six months seasoned plane spikkentrolls.

The puukko had an excellent bite working both down grain and against it. The 6 mm if thickness were felt only when I did the first 45° cuts to carve the faces and the very first cuts to plane the bases. Despite its diminutive proportions the handle was fully and throughout exploitable. Generally speaking the puukko was nimble, precise and quite fast.
As done with the previous knives I planed down to knots while carving the hats.
At the end I detected near the handle a 3-4 mm long microroll, felt by nail but not reflecting the light. The shaving bite was gone only in this portion of the blade, the rest was pristine and hair popping.
Six passes per side with black compound, then six with green.

I then continued carving a three months seasoned poplar wood wizard. I added the details of the beard and mustache later with Hans Karlsson's chip carving knife and V gounge.

 Again the puukko has been consistently efficient, comfortable and fast. I didn’t feel resistance while roughing out the two facets and the hat and, despite the thickness and lack of taper, the tip was surprisingly easy to work with to engrave the sides of the nose and and carve the lower lip.
I felt resistance, against the grain,only while making the first two rounds of notches to cut free the wizard from the branch.
At the end the edge was pristine and the bite untouched.

I then concluded carving a one year old silver fir spatula.

Rhombic section blades are made to glide into the fibers and this was no exception. I felt the 6 mm of thickness only at the very beginning, when carving tangentially the front of the spatula. Moreover this, together with another time during the first roughing cuts of the belly, were the only times I felt the effective acuteness of the handle belly, a bit too acute for a forehand grip. Shifting to a chest lever grip I also stopped feeling the thickness of the blade. The hardest part of all the session was carving away the knot that passes all the way through the plank. Alternating the forehand and the chest lever grips I planed it down first from the sides, then in the center until it popped out. Not having noticed a loss of bite after this I checked the edge, feeling a microroll with the nail, but unable to see it with the naked eye. The puukko was comfortable, agile and very clean in movement for all the remaining of the roughing session of the spatula, its shaft and their junction. No problems also during all the refining cuts, with the handle never feeling too acute anymore whenever I was working down grain or against it. The thickness too was nevermore a problem, also when thinning down material from the sides of the spatula using the thumb as fulcrum and rotating the blade.
At the end I detected the already present microroll, the puukko was still shaving without pressure with all its edge.

Conclusions

A rightful praise goes to the heat treatment and its perfect pairing with the geometry: I wasn’t honestly sure that it would have come out so well from the knot carving. The handle, even though small compared to what I’m used to, doesn’t actually feel small in the hand. Its small dimensions could even advantage it in quickness some times, anyway those with big hands will most likely find it tiny.
As I said earlier this is a “misleading” puukko. Petite, but considerably more powerful than what its proportions would give away. Comfortable, quick, precise and quite light.