| Articles | Documents | Equipment | Events | Links | Membership | Miscellaneous | Scrapbook | Targets | What's New |
|
Bladeology Moras |
September 2015 | |||||
| Dan Martinez | ||||||
|
From the Morakniv website:
Mora of Sweden was formed in 2005 through the merger of Frosts Knivfabrik and
KJ Eriksson. The name reflects the important link between our products, the town
of Mora and its Swedish origin. A Mora knife is always a knife from Mora of Sweden.
The company is still family-owned and develops and manufactures knives which are
delivered to all parts of the world.
If you are not familiar with Mora knives, they produce a line of very high quality,
fixed blade knives at incredibly affordable prices. In basic shape and format, they
mirror the classic Scandinavian working knife designs such as the Finnish Puukko.
But Moras are made on modern high speed production machinery. Instead of birch burl
handles and leather sheaths as you would find on a classic Scandinavian knife, Moras
are made with injection-molded plastic handles and sheaths. The plastic handles are
further overmolded with rubber for better grip.
I purchased my first Mora about a year ago, a basic Mora Companion in military green
with a carbon steel blade. Moras are available with either carbon steel or stainless
steel blades. Moras come to you with a nice sharp edge, and the sharp edge is easy
to maintain. The cost was under $15, delivered.
I had my Companion with me when I had to quarter my elk last year. Up to that time
I had always used a folder to process my game. Folders have lots of nooks and
crannies that need to be scrubbed out when the job is done. This time I pulled out
the Mora and was thoroughly impressed with how easy it made the job of taking apart
a big elk which was laying on the ground.
A Mora’s plastic sheath clips perfectly to MOLLE webbing on a pack. The top of the
sheath has an open-bottom belt loop with a hook in the inside bottom. I clip the
belt loop over one MOLLE loop on top, then tuck the bottom of the sheath into a
lower MOLLE loop. This is my usual preferred way to carry the knife in the woods.
Another Swedish company named Light My Fire collaborated with Mora to create the
Swedish FireKnife. The FireKnife incorporates a small ferrocerium fire striker
into the butt end of the knife. A little twist of the butt releases the fire
steel. The back edge of the FireKnife blade is specially ground to give a sharp
90° angle for striking the fire rod. The best way to throw sparks is to hold the
knife stationary over your tinder, then pull the striker back to scrape off the
iron-magnesium-cerium alloy. The sparks are supposed to be at a temperature of
5400° F.
The FireKnives are available in a number of colors. I have an orange & grey one
and a black & grey one. It was easier to get two to outfit two different packs.
The orange sheath was too obnoxiously ORANGE, so I wrapped it with camo duct tape.
Generally I like orange knives because camo ones are too easy to lose when you lay
them down on the ground, but I have my limits!
To baton wood, you place the knife on the end grain of a branch and hit the back of
the knife with another stout branch. Once the knife is embedded in the wood, you
continue driving the blade through the wood by smacking the point of the blade that
sticks out. While a Mora can handle this for small branches, that’s not really what
it was meant to do.
For most other camp and outdoor needs such as game processing, cleaning fish, cutting
cordage, and food preparation, the Mora is plenty of knife. The FireKnife will even
get your campfire started.
© Honeywell Sportsman Club. All rights reserved. | ||||||
|
The Honeywell Sportsman Club is a small group of shooting and outdoor enthusiasts in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Our website is ad-free and completely free to use for everyone. But we do have expenses that we need to cover, such as the web hosting fee and our liability insurance. If you enjoyed visiting our website, found it useful in some way, or if you enjoyed reading this story, please consider tipping us through our PayPal donation jar below. Thanks for visiting, and come back soon. |
|
|
