This Warhawk is my second knife from Trace Rinaldi. The first one was the Talonite Warhawk. I liked the design and execution a lot. Fit and finish were just excellent. As for the use Warhawk is a very good general use medium sized blade. Except the blade material. Talonite has its place and areas of use, but it's not a steel, hence doesn't behave like one. Since Warhawk #1 was an experiment with Talonite, I've decided to get another Warhawk, now in more conventional material. I still use Talonite blade, mostly for food prep and other soft material cutting, but it the job implies cutting something harder I refrain from using Talonite blade. Considering that a general utility purpose knife should handle different sorts of materials it was obvious to choose a high-end steel. Trace offers variety of steels for his blades, and this time I choose BG-42 steel. There was no experimenting at this time. I already had couple BG-42 blades and was satisfied with their performance. Basicaly I intend to use BG-42 Warhawk mainly for light/medium cutting. BG-42 heat treated by P. Boss gave impressive results with Strider Buck Spearpoint Folder, thus I expect no less, actually better results from the BG-42 Warhawk. Thinking back, may be it would've been better to choose D2 for my purposes, i.e. better edge holding, but the difference is rather marginal, although it is there ;)
General
- Trace Rinaldi has well deserved reputation amongst knife folks. Second Warhawk prooved it one more time. Well done blade, with a good steel. No complaints regarding fit and finish. Everything is well done. This is first time when I got 2 practically identical blades for the same maker, so I can make comparisons. Overall I still like Talonite Warhawk better. Somehow it's better done. Like I said I have no complaints with BG-42 Warhawk, but somehow Talonite one looks more gracious. Probably the bead blasted finish plays a role too. Anyway, overall I think Warhawk is a very good design and Trace makes it very good. For the curious, here's a picture of both knives together.
Warhawk is a full tang, fixed blade. Medium size, 11.5" overall, 6 inch blade, ¾" thick. Handle slabs are made of G-10. Tang is exposed. Overall, makes a very good utility/camp knife. By the way it is a pretty decent chopper for its weight and size. You can do things with it ;) Of course, it won't outchop Busse Steel Heart, but on the other hand, it's not intended to. It serves it's purpose well. All of the blades from Trace are heat treated by Paul Boss and cryogenically stress relieved. In short this should be as good as it gets for the given steel.
Blade
- Flat ground, clip point, recurved 3/16 thick blade measures 6 inches total and 5.5 from the choil. Warhawk #2 has slightly shorter blade compared to Warhawk #1, 0.25" or so. Blade geometry is very efficient. It has strong point, with good penetration, lots of belly and a recurve, which improves cutting ability. For fine cutting tasks Warhawk features a choil too. Personally I like the choil on a larger blade, in case you need to cut something small, a well executed choil does help a lot. As for the cutting Warhawk does do a good job. I havent' conducted any serious cutting yet, but for the few things I did just to get the feel of the knife it did perform very well. ¾" for the knife of that size isn't too thick to affect cutting ability too much, I mean the taper isn't too stiff. Obviously for cardboard it wasn't a better cutter than the Nimravus which is almost twice as thin, however for the rouger materials it did held its own. Overall, Warhawk is a workhorse. It'll do fine with all sorts of the cutting tasks and chopping too. I'll update this page as usual, once more data becomes available, that is I actually use that knife for cutting. Although, fraknly this becomes more and more difficult considering the ammount of knives I have. Not that I complain though ;)Handle
- I've said a fwe things regarding the Warhawk handle in the Talonite Warhawk review. Considering that this one has the same handle I do not have anything new to say at this point of time. Except because of the blade material I'll be using Warhawk #2 for harsher works, thus more loads on my hads as well. That means I'll have to re-evaluate the knife from that perspective. However having enough experience with Warhawk #1 I dont' expect many surprises. The handle is really comfy and I dont' see for now how it'll become a problem. May be for prolonged chopping the finger grooves will pose a problem, but then again, this is not what I need Warhawk #2 for.Specifications:
- Blade - 152.40mm(6")
- Thickness - 4.76mm
- OAL - 279.40mm(11")
- Steel - BG-42 steel at 60HRC
- Handle - G-10
- Acquired - 07/2004 Price - 400.00$
Last updated - 05/19/19