Mark Hill Eagle Knife

Mark Hill is a custom knife-maker based in West Yorkshire making and designing in both modern and classic styles and materials.

When ordering your knife you can select from numerous blade styles grouped into “Bushcraft”, “Hunting” and “Classic” categories, from 01 carbon tool steel, various stainless steels or even Damascus steel and from a vast range of natural wood, bone, Micarta or G10 handle materials.  Mark also supplies each knife with a quality vegetable tanned leather sheath – and once again you have a choice of styles.

Carbon Steel and Blackwood

I have had the opportunity to test one of his Eagle knives, a design that Mark has developed himself from long experience as a knife user as well as a knife maker, in the 01 carbon tool steel with a beautiful African Blackwood handle, brass pins and lanyard tube, with black liners and coming with a brown leather hanging style sheath.

The knife itself is made from 3mm thick steel stock and has a 9.5cm blade with a 5mm ricasso. The ‘continuous curve’ swept edge (which comes more than razor sharp!) has a deep ‘scandi’ grind with a 20 degree bevel and a micro bevel edge.  The steel is hardened to Rockwell 59 with Mark’s own heat treatment.

The back of the blade has a stylish and unusual sweep from the drop point to a slight hump where it meets the handle.

The palm-filling handle is some 11cm long and is comfortably contoured and forms a slight finger guard on one side.  Overall the fit and finish on the knife is to a very high standard and it looks very good indeed.

Hard Working

Over the course of the testing I used the knife for a wide range of tasks – cutting ropes, hide, wood, meat, vegetables, brambles etc., battoning it through tough knotted hardwoods, both with and across the grain, delicate carving, feather-sticking etc in the course of rebuilding my woodland base camp with field built chairs, table, bed etc.  Every task from preparing fires to preparing food was accomplished with the Eagle knife and it proved more than excellent at nearly everything I put it to. The point is fine enough for easy hole cutting in timber – as in making traps.

I did find that the edge rolled slightly when battoning through knotted seasoned hardwood logs, but the task was extreme and the edge easy to repair in the field and when I hit an old fencing staple buried deep in a log I managed to force a chip in the knife’s edge.  The staple would have damaged any knife, axe, maul or other tool that hit it, but the chip was small and soon polished out.

Other than these two incidents, the Mark Hill Eagle knife took vast amounts of work in its stride, holding its edge very well and needing little more than a stropping to return it to a sharpness that could slice the ink off newsprint!

The handle on the knife is more hand-filling than I would normally select, but over all the work I did with the knife, using a variety of grips and cuts, I found it comfortable and versatile and I suffered no hand fatigue or even the most minor of “hot spots” or blisters.  The blade shape allows you to index finger the blade for control in long slices.

The Eagle is an unusual looking knife, but is an extremely effective and efficient tool for a wide range of cutting tasks and is proving to be one of my current favourites.

Hanger

The sheath that came with the knife is as handsome a piece of leathercraft as you could want and is of a deep welted friction fit design.  Instead of a standard belt loop, the hanger model has brass D-ring in a riveted loop at the top of the back of the sheath and a 2mm thick, double press stud closed loop of leather is fitted through the D-ring giving you easy fitting or removal of the knife to and from your belt as well as a conveniently low carry.

With prices for the Eagle Knife starting at £150.00 with some more exotic steel and wood options costing a little extra, you can get a totally unique, very handsome and very effective knife for a very reasonable price.

Mark Hill’s work is well known and respected across the bushcraft world and is gaining a growing reputation wherever quality custom knives are used. For more information contact Mark on 07712 189059 or visit www.markhillknives.com