WARRIOR REVIEW: AJF Gahum Knife

I HAVE BEEN A LONELY VOICE in the outdoors, propagating a strange interest here in Cebu, the Philippines, called BUSHCRAFT. In the middle of 2009, only two people, apart from me, could comprehend its idea and how it is done or enjoyed of as a leisure activity. I was then in the process of distancing myself from mainstream outdoors. I love camping with a real fire and using a knife. Uh. Sorry. Knives.

Backpacking, sometimes mistaken here as mountaineering, is very popular. Urbanites regularly trekked to the mountains carrying heavy loads to spend overnight or a few days on those barren and exposed places. They looked cool carrying branded bags with matching shoes and brightly-colored clothes. If you look closer on their activities, you would notice the absence of a respectable knife.

I could not comprehend why people replaced a real knife with ceramic or plastic ones, and sometimes by nail files? Is it because of weight? Regulations? Fear? Whatever it was, the lack of that was influenced by no other than by ignorance. Then it became an advocacy for me to re-introduce the knife back to camping life, the knife-carry rights, and to educate more people about knife law, ethics, care and safety.

When I organized the first Philippine Independence Bushcraft Camp in 2011, the topic about the knife was given paramount importance. It was here that the participants began to understand the knife and it was also here that the knife culture began to slowly reclaim its spot in Philippine outdoors, thanks to my new converts (to include the next PIBC batches), which became the tiny sparks that started the organization of the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild.

Recreational bushcraft activities every weekend fascinated the outdoors community in social media. My activities always placed the knives at stellar attraction with the introduction of the first (and succeeding) “blade porn”, a traditional bushcraft showcase. An online prepping community began to appear and their members start to feature knives regularly. So were an online survivalist community and another online group that specialized more on blades.

One of those who participated in PIBC 2013 is a collector of expensive knives. He had been searching in the internet for any bushcraft activity in the Philippines so he could use his blades and it surprised him that his search brought him back to Cebu, of all places, his home province. He is Aljew Frasco, a gentleman from Liloan and a baker by profession. After the PIBC, he toyed on the idea of making knives from his DIY shop.

He just wanted to develop that skill as a hobby. That is all. Profiting from that was out of his thoughts. He had been searching long and wide for a perfect knife – a knife that could do all things. He found out later that he had been looking for the wrong places and it was with him all the time and they were a combination of threes or twos. What he lacked was time in the outdoors. The best place to test a knife. The PIBC gave him a different perspective this time.

One day after PIBC 2013, I got a call from him. He wanted me to test a knife. He made it himself. His first. A set of three letters were etched near the spine – AJF. His initials. With a sheepish smile, he named the knife as the AJF Gahum. Gahum is the literal Cebuano for “power”. Well, I thought to myself, I really need all the power in my arm to wield this steel blade. It was heavy but it suits me anyway and my outdoors lifestyle. I am used to hard work.

A few months later, he asked me of my opinion of the AJF Gahum. I gave him my honest observations; and the knife back to him. A few weeks passed and I got a call from him again. This time, the AJF Gahum sported a new set of wooden scales made of Philippine rosewood (Local name: narra) and Leichardt pine (hambabalod). Heavy mechanical work on the blade surface and the tapered distal made it lighter. It now has a convex grind and, likewise, thinner by a few micrometers. It is now sleek, vicious and hungry. There is only one thing to do: TEST IT OUTDOORS!

The AJF Gahum is a straight-backed knife. A very simple one. Of a very basic design, it is 235 millimeters long from tip to hilt. The full tang that held the scales is 130 mm from ricasso to end.  It is 47 mm from its widest measure and 6 mm at its thickest. It weighed 610 grams. With its new scales, it looked very handsome and caused a stir of interest, desires and more stares. It had lived up to its name. But appearances are different from performances. It had to be worn out and break something or be broken.

And so it became a regular customer on my side during dirt times and it made my work on the fields much easy, easing out my beloved tomahawk. The longer edge made cutting seamless and it never missed wood or bamboo. The extra, yet very manageable, weight made chopping effortless. I only have to raise it up and let gravity do its work. The weight assures me that it is there inside its sheath all the time and it erased my fear of it getting lost.

Weekends are my favorite days with the AJF Gahum. I test it on hardy bamboos, whose denseness in grain and skin could undo the superiority of branded knives into so-so ones. The Gahum, could cut it all seamlessly whether it be on the woody part or on wiry types whose thin tubes crack to splinters with a wrong swing. It does not matter if it is green or matured. This big knife is native born and is made to cut bamboo and wood, cane grass and shrubs.

The spine is friendly to batoning sticks which guide the strong-willed Gahum to a finer cutting tool. The same spine flaked off quartzites and iron pyrites from its mother stones, creating sparks from the clash of 5160 carbon steel and raw, but harder, material. As it is subjected to heavy usage, one of the rosewood scales went missing. The other half splintered into two pieces during a knife-throwing session. But the Leichardt wood scales remained.

For want of a hammer, a heavy stick, or a stone, the AJF Gahum drove sharpened sticks into the ground when I set up fly sheets for shelters. Some grounds are soft and some need power to penetrate. It happens all the time when I carried a hammock and where anchoring needed wooden pegs. I usually hit the top of the pegs right on the face of the blade. The same spot over and over again and the blade had not warped nor bent a slight angle. It is straight as ever.

I carried openly the Gahum at my belt during the exploration phase of the Cebu Highlands Trail, starting January 2015. The project is divided into eight segments, north to south, and this knife had been brought and toured on the six segments. I expected heavy knife work but I was glad it did not come to that. The opportunity to show off the AJF Gahum in open carry was just to familiarize locals, instead, about knife-carry rights for outdoorsmen.

The AJF Gahum, with its bulk and appearance, travelled with me, along with six to nine of my other knives, to Luzon, Visayas and, later, Mindanao. I did part-time classes in bushcraft and survival when I had a day job. When I pursued full time this journeyman occupation in 2016, I already knew how to bring my entire sharp tools through security, legally, for just as long as you follow regulations and protocols. Just do not carry the wrong item. Nor give a joke about bombs.

I let my students handle the Gahum during knife dexterity sessions. After each activity, I always examine the edge if it had dents and cracks. You would never know how people do to other people’s knives. Especially the “uneducated” ones who see knife as nothing but pry bars or digging tools. As a knife-carry rights advocate and teacher, your satisfaction goes ten-fold when you see no such marks. It is not a question of how perfect the temper of your knife is but of how your students fully absorbed the lectures well.

If you are skilled with a knife, you can use an AJF Gahum with a deficiency to its handle. I did that for more than a year. The missing rosewood scales allowed me to move back an inch to grip on the remaining scales. I used the baton stick instead to do the work for me. I cannot tolerate an absent AJF Gahum in my activity so the missing scales could be replaced. Despite the insistence of the maker to do that task for free.

However, I did acquiesce to the wishes of the maker at last. He asked me what material would I want to replace the scales. I provided him industrial micarta, a hardy material which were shaped to hold superheated shaft bearings of mining machinery that I found in an abandoned mine in Misamis Oriental in 2012. The mere fact that it is for industrial use and bear the Hitachi logo, makes it indestructible and would stay for keeps.

Just in time before the start of the PIBC 2017, I held the AJF Gahum once again. This time, it sported a different look and character: dark, brooding, unpredictable and incorruptible. From a blade with flamboyant two-toned scales, it now sports gloomy black scales. More like the Dark Knight. I like it that way. Very proletarian. Knives are just tools and should be used according to what it was intended for when early man invented it.

The AJF Gahum, however, is not a perfect knife. It has to be paired with a smaller one so I could accomplish my tasks outdoors. The built, temper and design are perfect in tropical settings. The edge has dulled just a bit and I liked it that way for my classes. I could not remember the time I sharpened it myself. It never came to that. I am a satisfied recipient of an excellent knife and it is a privilege to own the first of just a few blades made by AJF.

Document done in LibreOffice 5.3 Writer