Jungle Fighter Knife
By Legion-14 Blade-Designs (LEG.XIIII)
A Quick Preview! Initial thoughts
Legion-14 Blade-Designs are absolutely great looking knives from an emerging but experienced young knife designer and maker in Germany. They are fully manufactured by hand in Germany from a true craftsman. This model called the Jungle Fighter has been made from Uddeholms AB Sleipner tool steel. Legion-14 Blade-Designs, or LEG. XIIII as he is also known, performs the heat treating himself. He says of this knife that his heat treatment regime "gives the blade flexibility along the spine but a HRC of approx 62 at the edge". The Jungle Fighter was also cryogenically treated. It came deadly razor sharp.
LEG. XIIII also makes his own micarta handle material. The micarta scales are fixed on with Carbon fibre pins and glued together "so they will never come off" he tells me.
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| The Jungle Fighter is no small knife at 8 inches for blade length at home in the wilds! |
The Jungle Fighter is NOT a small knife, with the following dimensions.
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| Blade length as measured by my trusty Mitutoyo vernier! |
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| Handle length, the scales are permanently fixed to the full tang with Carbon fibre pins. |
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| The Spine is just over 6mm thick. |
Despite it's rather Combat style name, the Jungle fighter is really more suited to serious outdoor adventures, as it is really too heavy (IMHO) to be a knife considered for rapid deployment and movement, these latter two items most associated with knives intended for combat.
It also weighs 17Oz and has an overall length when in the kydex scabbard of 370 mm/14.6 inches from the top of the belt dangler to the bottom of the scabbard.
IN THE MOUNTAINS ON A DAY TRIP
I carried the LEG. XIIII Jungle Fighter into the mountains on a day trip,
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| In the Autumn forest a quick 14km trip. |
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| Swinging cuts with the Jungle fighter were a breeze. The balance and ergonomics were very nice and at no time did I feel I needed to attach lanyards, wear gloves or make the handle "grippy" etc. The design was great for the handle. This is what I would expect from a good knife maker's products ie some serious thought into handle design. This latter point so much more important when designing large knives. |
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| The joys of walking in a pristine region, is that if you are paying attention, ie not making lots of noise and looking where you you are walking, then you can see stuff like this Fire Salamander (Salamandra salamandra) in fact we came across others. |
with a relatively light pack weight of only 10kg/20 odd pounds as I was hoping to bring the pack back full of good wild stuff.
Just a note here unless one wants to get pulled up by the cops, A note about travelling and carrying large knives-COMMON SENSE: as I travelled by public transport to the vicinity of the trailhead, this knife WAS NOT carried visibly, which meant inside my pack. Now the biggest problem with this, was the "skull crusher" type butt end. Perfect for ripping holes into the sides of my pack and or any other object inside the pack such as dry bags, clothing etc! Personally, I don't like butt ends featuring acute angles, as I feel, whilst they look really cool, they have limited use with the exception of "Rescue Knives" and or "Persuaders" as might be found on a much lighter knife intended for such roles. So, to avoid damaging my pack I needed to put the knife into a sturdy cardboard box, which was a bit of a pain but not totally inconvenient.
Ok, so I know a knife name means nothing, you can call it the "cosmic blaster" and it of course doesn't have to be a "cosmic blaster" (whatever the heck that may be LOL).
Legion-14's workmanship is excellent in every detail, for this large 8" fixed blade featuring two different cutting edges, slightly reminiscent of the FKMD Trapper and FKMD Tracker Sniper knife, both excellent knife designs too IMHO (see my reviews).
Starting with 6mm ie 1/4 inch billets from Uddeholms AB, he fashions everything by hand without the use of lasers or CNC equipment. Just look at some of this eye candy below!
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| His Logo LEG. XIIII and aggressive but comfortable finger/thumb gimping. |
THE Blade Geometry
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The Blade profile features a tanto style tip, a generous belly and a recurve section which is actually hollow ground, whereas the remaining blade geometry is flat ground.
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| Overall knife- almost camouflaged against the forest background here. Careful not to loose it in this boulder strewn terrain! personally I Like unobtrusive knives. |
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| The Legion14 Jungle Fighter and a huge collection of Oyster Mushrooms on a fallen Oak trunk, later to disappear into our belly's! |
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| Legion 14 Jungle Fighter in the Montane forest. Note Uddeholms AB Sleipner IS NOT a stainless steel, although it does contain Chromium. |
Note Sleipner IS NOT a stainless steel alloy. It has only 8% Chromium content, much less than D2. However, it does have some great characteristics for a knife steel, of retaining an edge but can still be made very tough through the right heat treatment. See my reviews on the LionSteel M7, also made from Uddeholms AB Sleipner.
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| Upper Blade surfaces are finished almost raw, whilst the lower blade surface was chemically blackened. |
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| Spine and tang were finished with highly polished surfaces |
I tried some basic tasks such as chopping, cutting food items, cutting plant material and prying wood. It performed very well. The balance is perfect with the fulcrum being at the base of the handle.
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| The perfect balance with the fulcrum at the base of the handle. |
Chopping/swinging ergonomics was great too and the knife despite is weight of 490 gm/17 Oz. never felt like it was going to leave my hands during some chopping of seasoned birch timber.
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| Chopping into a fallen well seasoned birch trunk, no problems! |
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| I put the Jungle Fighter to use in the kitchen preparing food and despite it weight it was easy to use. Cutting onto knife-edge abusing bamboo chopping boards is a good test of edge holding abilities. |
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| Crushing Garlic! |
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| Bashing Garlic with the broad Spine, you MUST be able to use a knife to prepare food with. |
ABOUT SLEIPNER ALLOY TOOL STEEL
As time will tell how the surface of the Sleipner on the Jungle Fighter holds up, as Uddeholm technical department told me (see text in blue print) that for the best corrosion resistance, the surface finish (if not PVDed) should be made as smooth as possible. Now this is of course based on data for tool making, not knife making. Certainly this was the case for my LionSteel M7. My experience with Sleipner as a knife steel is to treat the blade as if it were made of carbon steel, ie wipe it down carefully when possible, don't holster it wet. Remember Sleipner was NOT developed for the sole purpose of making knives for outdoor use, it was developed for cold work tooling applications. That being said, when properly prepared Sleipner alloy performs very well in an abrasive environment.
WHAT'S NEXT?????
I plan to really test the Legion-14 Blade-Designs Jungle Fighter in the Australian bush and coastal regions later this year on some very serious adventures so stay tuned and I'll let you all know what I think of it after a really long proper workout. So far so good. I like what I see. Those of you who have seen my review on the FKMD Trapper know that I really like this blade that sports two significantly different geometries. Keep watching!
