What size steel for a clip point knife?

A clip point hunter is a mid-size knife, and its height at the ricasso is what sets the bar. The preset is a 4 1/2 in blade, 1.1 in tall at the ricasso, with a 5/32 in (0.156 in) spine and a 4 1/2 in full tang. Add 1/8 in for clean-up and you need 1.23 in, which rounds up to 1 1/4 in. The 5/32 in spine is already a stock thickness, so that makes it 1 1/4 × 5/32 in flat bar. It is the same bar forged or by stock removal. The matching KraftyDesign blank (the "Draw this blank" link) has a straight spine that drops into a concave scoop near the tip. That scoop is the clip. It is cut into the spine well forward of the ricasso, so it doesn't change the bar width. The calculator starts this one on 1084.

The preset starts on forged. Forging the bevels and the point stretches the blade, so about 8 in of bar per blade is enough, clean-up included. That is about 7 oz of bar for a blade that finishes around 5 oz. A 12 in bar gives one blade, 18 in gives two and 36 in gives four. The 24 and 48 in bars give three and six, both at the lowest cost per blade.

Stock removal takes the whole 9 in profile plus clean-up: 9 1/4 in of bar per blade. That is about 8 oz of bar for a blade that finishes around 5 1/2 oz. The 12 and 18 in bars give one each, 24 in gives two and 36 in gives three. A 48 in bar gives five at the lowest cost per blade.

Forged, you can cut the point first or forge it in. On the American Bladesmith Society forum, one poster prefers to forge the tip down instead of cutting it first. That pushes steel into the tip and leaves a thicker section, which he finds useful on clipped points because there is enough steel left to bevel the clip. A Journeyman Bladesmith in the same thread says cutting the point first makes no real difference in mono steel (one steel, not damascus), and forging it in takes at most two heats. If you want more steel to move, set "Forged thickness" to "One size up". That starts you one thickness up, and it only applies in forged mode. The calculator won't forge AEB-L, CPM-154, 14C28N, MagnaCut or A2. Pick any of them and it works out the bar as stock removal, even with Forged selected.

What a clip point knife is for

A clip point knife is named for the shape of its spine. Gary Zinn, in a guide to hunting knife blade patterns on chuckhawks.com, describes the spine as mostly straight until it is abruptly "clipped" some way toward the tip. The clipped part can be straight or slightly concave, and the tip usually sits a little lower than the back of the spine. Buck Knives describes the front of the blade as "concavely clipped to make it thinner and sharper". That finer point is meant for fine, detailed work. Buck says it handles piercing and cutting in tight spaces, and that the lowered point helps control. It lists hunting, the outdoors and everyday carry as its uses. BladeStock has separate pages for a drop point hunter and a Bowie. Zinn says a drop point's spine drops to the tip in a convex curve instead, which leaves a little more steel above the point. Wikipedia says that in common use the name covers any large sheath knife with a crossguard and a clip point, and that most later Bowies had blades of at least 8 in, usually 3/16 to 1/4 in thick. This page is the mid-size version: a 4 1/2 in clip point for hunting and general utility.

The clip can be thinned with a bevel ground along the spine, called a swedge. A.G. Russell's page of knife terms describes a swedge as a grind on top of the blade, usually to give a finer tip for better penetration. Wikipedia calls this thinned part the false edge of the clip, and notes it can be sharpened into a true second edge, which helps the knife pierce. In a BladeForums thread on false edges, one poster says a false edge gives the buyer the choice of sharpening it or not. Another doesn't like false edges because they give up tip strength. Makers differ on when to grind the clip. On KnifeDogs, a maker asking about clip point hunters bevels the spine at about 45 degrees for a short way back from the point and leaves it unsharpened. Three who answered do the clip after the main bevels, and one says he usually grinds it after heat treat. In a BladeForums thread on clip geometry, three posters grind it first. One says that way the blade still lies flat on the work rest, which he tilts 50 to 75 degrees. For curved clips like the preset's scoop, one poster names a 72 in platen for big knives and a 36 in one for small ones. Another suggests doing about two thirds of the clip on the grinder and finishing it by hand with files, for more control.

The shape has a long history on American knives. Wikipedia says the earliest Bowie knife, made by a blacksmith at Rezin Bowie's request, was straight-backed with no clip point. Sheffield cutlers were soon selling Bowies in the pattern most people now picture, often with a longer false edge and a more oblique clip. After the Civil War, Field & Stream says, hunting knives mostly followed three patterns: heavy folders, Bowies and small butcher-type blades. Then in 1899 Marble's brought out the Ideal, in blade lengths from 4 to 8 in. All had clip point blades with a deep fuller, and most had handles of stacked leather washers. The English cutler Wade and Butcher began selling close copies in 1918, and companies in the US, England, Germany and Sweden made their own versions.

Nobody has backed the next few claims with a firm source, so treat them as lore. Wikipedia dates the clip point to at least Macedonian times and mentions Copper Age flint knives with clipped points found at the mouth of the Drim. It cites a single archaeology news item for this. In a BladeForums thread on clip point history, one poster passed on a claim, made in a video by a former arms and armor consultant for an auction house, that the name comes from the bows of clipper ships. Other posters doubted it, since clipped blades are far older than clipper ships. One pointed to Simon Moore's book Cutlery for the Table, which by that poster's account shows knives we would now call clip points back to the Bronze Age. Field & Stream says the Ideal was probably imitated more than any other knife design of the 20th century, but it gives nothing to back that up.

Stock for a clip point knife

In a KnifeDogs thread on stock for a 3 3/4 in drop point hunter, three posters say they like 5/32 in. One who makes his own 4 in hunters from 1/8 in stock says 1/8 in is fine up to about 4 1/2 in of blade, and past that he would go up to 5/32 in. That thread is about drop points, but the blades are close in size to this preset, which sits right at his line.

Widths assume blade height + 1/8 in rounded up to stock; thickness is the finished spine rounded up. Change the inputs above for your own pattern.

Steels that suit it

Questions