What size steel for a spey point?

On a spey point the ricasso height sets the bar width. Here the blade is 3 1/2 in long and 0.95 in tall at the ricasso. The spine is 5/32 in (0.156 in) and the full tang 4 1/2 in. The calculator adds 1/8 in for clean-up, so the bar has to be at least 1.075 in wide. Rounded up to the next listed width, that makes it 1 1/4 × 5/32 in flat bar, ground or forged. BladeStock's Wharncliffe preset has the same blade length, height, spine and tang, so the two take the same bar and the same length of it. Past 1 1/8 in of ricasso height, you would need 1 1/2 in bar.

The matching KraftyDesign blank (the "Draw this blank" link) keeps the spine straight until about the front quarter of the blade. From there it drops in a short, nearly straight line to a point that sits low, close to the edge. The edge runs straight and turns up a little at the front to meet it, and the handle is contoured. Behind the drop the blade is full height all the way back to the ricasso, so the drop doesn't change the bar width.

Pocketknife spey blades can be a lot thinner than this. One retailer lists a two-blade 1095 trapper, with a drop point and a spey blade, at 0.11 in blade thickness. This preset starts thicker, so there is room to grind it down if you want a thinner blade. The default steel here is 1084. Switch to 1095 or W2 and the bar stays at 1 1/4 × 5/32 in, with no warning that the size is hard to find. Ask your supplier what sizes they carry.

The calculator opens on stock removal. Every bit of the 8 in profile comes out of the bar, which works out to 8 1/4 in per blade once clean-up is added. That much bar weighs about 7 oz, and grinding takes the finished blade down to around 4 1/4 oz. One blade fits in a 12 in bar. The 18 and 24 in bars hold two each, 36 in holds four and 48 in holds five. Per blade, the 18 and 36 in bars tie as the cheapest.

Forging stretches the steel, so you need less bar. The calculator calls it a 1.31:1 draw and asks for about 6 1/4 in per blade with clean-up, around 6 oz of steel. The blade finishes near 3 3/4 oz. Bars of 12, 18, 24, 36 and 48 in give one, two, three, five and seven, and the 48 in bar is cheapest per blade. If you would rather forge down from thicker stock, choose "One size up" under "Forged thickness" (forged mode only) for 1 1/4 × 3/16 in bar. 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 spey point is for

A spey point is a straight-edged blade with a blunt front end. In Wikipedia's article on blades, the spey has a single sharp, straight edge that curves strongly upward at the end to meet a short, dull, straight point coming down from the back. With no real point, it says, the blade is unlikely to pierce. Gary Zinn, writing on chuckhawks.com, has the spine and edge running parallel for most of their length, with the tip steeply clipped to meet the sharply curved edge. He treats the skinner blade on folding knives as a variation, with an unclipped spine and a larger curve to the edge. (BladeStock's skinning knife page covers the fixed-blade skinner.) The spey is mostly a pocketknife blade. A.G. Russell's knife encyclopedia says it is most often found on stock knives and cattleman's knives, and that the second blade of a stockman is usually a spey. Wikipedia gives the trapper a clip and a spey. Zinn grew up in rural West Virginia in the mid-20th century and cleaned squirrels and rabbits with his father's trapper. The clip blade gutted and the spey skinned. The trick, he says, was to keep the spey sharp enough to strip the hide neatly but not so sharp that it would constantly cut into the meat. In a BladeForums thread on the spey blade of a trapper, one poster says the tipless blade is for skinning, where a sharp tip may puncture the hide and ruin its commercial value.

Some cattle raisers on BladeForums describe using the spey for castrating calves. One poster recalls the years when the poster's family ran a fair number of cattle. The poster's dad favored a trapper for cutting the bull calves, using its spey blade to castrate them and notch their ears, and the clip blade to slice barbecue at lunch. In a thread on castration knives, another poster has used the spey blade of a large stainless stockman, and also a disposable scalpel. In the same thread, one poster says a trapper is the usual knife where the poster lives, but people seldom use its spey blade and mostly use the pointed one. Seeing a young man use the spey was a first for that poster. In a thread on what people use their spey blades for, posters peel and slice fruit, spread condiments, scoop out holes much like cleaning a pipe bowl, and in one lab, trim silicone rubber flush with the edge of Mylar sheets. One there calls it the most worthless blade design ever. One maker on BladeForums built a small spey neck knife in W2, 5 1/2 in overall with a 2 1/4 in edge and a kydex sheath, for everyday small tasks.

None of the sources below proves where the blade or its name came from, so treat this paragraph as unconfirmed. A.G. Russell's encyclopedia says the spey blade was intended for castrating livestock, but cites nothing. The name sounds like spay. Merriam-Webster defines spay as removing the ovaries and uterus of a female animal, and traces it back through Middle English to an Anglo-French word meaning to pierce or castrate. Wikipedia says it was once used for neutering livestock, and its source is a 1990 Blade Magazine article. In a BladeForums thread on the word, a poster who signs as Bernard Levine says the spelling splits by sex: spey for male animals, spay for female ones. Another poster there could find no reference for that split other than Levine. Elsewhere on BladeForums, one poster says the blade was called a castrator in Sheffield, and that Australian knife and tool catalogues of the early to mid 20th century used the same name. That poster suspects "spey" started as a polite American name around 1900. In a BladeForums thread on the trapper's history, one poster says the 1875 Wostenholm catalogue lists knives with a single spey blade, and two-blade knives with spear and spey blades of equal length, under the name speying knives.

Stock for a spey point

If your spey point will do a lot of skinning, you could start from thinner stock. In a KnifeDogs thread on skinning knife thickness, one poster says a 3/32 in blade slices with less resistance than a 1/8 or 3/16 in blade but is not as strong. Another says a skinner doesn't need that strength, and that 1/16 in will make a great one.

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

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