This morning, I headed west into the city to spend a few hours at the Columbus Gun Show.Bringing a knife to a gunfight may be a bad thing, but I see nothing wrong with bringing a knife home from a gun show, so today I bought a "Small Work Horse" crafted by the folks at southeastern Ohio's Blind Horse Knives.
I happened to swing by the BHK table early in my tour of the show, and I quickly connected with Dan Coppins, a guy from Cambridge who was more than willing to talk sharps with me. A few minutes later, partner L.T. Wright of Steubenville joined the conversation and, between the two of them, I learned a few things -- both about BHK's designs and about knives in general.
The BHK Small Work Horse will occupy a niche I've been looking to fill for some time now -- a compact, straightforward fixed-blade knife that's as able on a casual hike as it would be in a survival situation. Candidly, I'd been leaning toward either the Bark River Mini Canadian or Mikro Canadian, but the BHK Small Work Horse struck me as the perfect "tweener."
Like all BHKs, the Small Work Horse is a basic, no-nonsense design. It's well finished and feels good in my hand. The green canvas Micarta scales, which are easily interchangeable with other colors and materials, offer a good grip, and I like the clever "blind" lanyard hole at the end of the full tang. The 1/8" D2 steel should make this knife a real worker.
That's the next step, then -- to put this knife to work, that is -- and I'm looking forward to it.
