Calculator › Knives › Drop point hunter
The drop point hunter is the knife most people make first and most people make most, and it is forgiving about stock. A 4 in blade around 1 1/8 in tall at the ricasso forges cleanly from 1 in or 1 1/4 in flat bar in 5/32 or 3/16 in. If you forge to shape and then grind the spine flat, start at 1/4 in and grind down: a 1/4 in bar typically ends up 0.21–0.24 in at the ricasso after forging; if you forge close to finished, 3/16 in saves a lot of belt.
Full tang is the usual choice and it barely draws out, so budget close to the full handle length in bar. The blade grows by about 40% from forging the bevels and the point, which is why a 6 in billet becomes an 8 1/2 in knife.
Stock removal: the bar is cut to blade + tang + clean-up, so the tang section and forged thickness below only change the finished-weight estimate. Switch to Forged and they change the stock length too.
Tang dimensions are estimated from the tang style until you change them. Measuring yours is worth doing — a forged blank's length depends on the tang's cross-section, not on what the tang is called.
Stock removal: fill factors only change the finished-weight estimate here. They set the stock length when the method is Forged. Grinding loss has no effect at all in stock removal — the bar is cut straight to the profile, nothing is drawn out.
The fraction of the blade's and tang's bounding box that is actually steel once the bevels are ground. Distal taper is factored in separately now (see "Distal taper" below, under What this assumed) and isn't editable here yet — these two fill factors are the ones worth replacing with your own measurements: weigh a finished blade, then adjust until the finished weight below matches the scale.
Steel is only part of the cost. Add abrasives, handle, heat treat and your time, and see the price that actually pays you.
Copy link to this calculationA hunting knife does three different jobs and the drop point is the shape that compromises best across all of them. The opening cut has to part hide and body wall without going through into the paunch, because a punctured gut contaminates the meat. That is why the spine curves down toward the point, leaving the tip low and on the blade's centreline, where you can feel where it is and it will not run away from you. Skinning is done on the belly, not the point, in long sweeping strokes that peel hide rather than cut it. Quartering and jointing are where the tip earns its thickness.
The alternatives trade away that control. A clip point penetrates better and is more prone to snapping under lateral pressure. A trailing point gives the most belly of the common patterns and is the better pure skinner, though the raised tip is harder to place by feel. Drop point wins on control, not on any single task.
Bob Loveless did not invent the dropped point (A.G. Russell's line is that he "didn't invent the drop point but he sure made it popular") but from the early 1960s onward he made it the default American hunting knife. His Delaware Maid years, 1954 to 1960, were largely Randall-derived; the innovations come after that. The fully tapered tang and screw-together scales usually credited to him he developed after studying 19th-century work rather than inventing from nothing. Worth knowing if you are copying him: his own hunters were ground extremely thin and usually hollow. The modern instinct to build a hunter thick is not from Loveless.
Most classes teach it from 1 × 1/4 in bar so students have material to spare (a Master Smith in the ABS forum forges most of his knives from 1/4 in; a Journeyman in the same thread starts 4 in blades at 3/16). Once you have a few under your belt, 1 × 3/16 in is plenty and grinds faster.
| Small hunter, 3 1/2 in blade | 1 × 5/32 in |
|---|---|
| Standard, 4 in blade | 1 1/4 × 3/16 in |
| Large hunter, 5 in blade | 1 1/4 × 1/4 in |
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.
Between 1/8 and 3/16 in at the spine. Thicker than 3/16 in makes a 4 in hunter feel like a pry bar and slices poorly; a distal taper toward the tip helps either way.
About 6 in of 1 × 3/16 in bar for a forged 4 in full-tang hunter, or the full profile length plus a little for stock removal, roughly 9 in. That is around 5 oz of steel forged, 7 oz for stock removal. The calculator prices it against whatever your supplier is charging today.
Bar sizes for ten common knife patterns, weight per inch for every standard flat bar, and quick heat-treat numbers for the usual carbon steels. Print it, tape it to the grinder.