Levison Wood is an explorer, writer and photographer, and a serious collector of knives from the far corners of the world. We spent the better part of a year developing this one with him.
The handle is yew, cut from a fallen branch in his father’s garden. Yew is a good choice for a knife meant to live outdoors. It needs little care, shrugs off the weather and stays grippy in the wet.
The detail people remember is the pin. The first fifty knives carry an iron pin made from one of the trains that T. E. Lawrence blew up in 1917, fighting alongside Arab tribes against the Turkish army. The metal made its way out of Egypt and to us, a local blacksmith roughed it into shape, and we turned it down into precise little pins. A piece of history you can hold.
The knife itself is built to work. The spine is thick enough to split kindling and throw a spark off a fire steel, while our concave blade keeps an edge fine enough for skinning and gralloching. A gentle drop point and a reverse grip help with the latter. The sheath is ours, made for a quick draw with extra leather where the blade sits.
Plenty of knives carry a story. Very few carry one you can hold in your hand and trace back to 1917.
In collaboration with Levison Wood.