Wilson Combat’s ‘Combat Classic’ Fighting Knives by Burt Foster

Wilson Combat teamed up with the man, the myth, the legend, master bladesmith Burt Foster on the all-new ‘Combat Classic’ fighter knife. This beauty comes with a hand-forged 7.5-inch blade, figured walnut handle and blued steel guard, ensuring that it’ll look great in your collection while also getting any tough chore done that you need it to.

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The inspiration for the design are the hand forged bowies and fighters produced by famed makers of Sheffield and later American hand makers like Scagel, Richtig, Randall and others. These storied makers equipped servicemen and adventurers of the past with high-performance knives that were not only attractive but lovingly crafted and so cherished by their owners that they were often handed down through successive generations.

As firearms developed and became more reliable, combat knives evolved from larger, heavy and unwieldy choppers into a more practical 6-8” blade lengths portable enough to be belt carried every single day along with a sidearm. These knives were used to make camp, cut rope, cook meals and often as last-ditch defensive tools.  This genre developed into what we now know as the “fighting knife”.

First, let’s talk about the blade. The Combat Classic’s traditional clip point Bowie blade is, as we stated above, hand-forged from Foster’s high performance laminated steel. The hardened steel core of the blade is sandwiches between two extremely tough, rust-resistant steel layers and further hand polished, giving it an awesome look. For more on this process, let’s go to the man himself.

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“My laminated steel blades are unique in that they have a single piece of carbon steel forge welded between two pieces of stainless steel,” Foster says. “This is also referred to in Japanese blades as ‘san-mai’ or literally ‘three layers.’ There are basically two main advantages to my laminated steel blades. The first is that at the temperatures used to harden the carbon steel core, the stainless sides remain soft and support the hard center. This makes the knife very sharp at the edge, but very tough overall.

“The second advantage is that because my laminated steel is made with stainless steel on the outside, the knife blade has the performance of carbon steel and the maintenance of a stainless steel. The carbon steel core is exposed only near the edge, so 90% of the blade surface remains very stain resistant. The exposed carbon steel will darken with age, but this darkening adds to the look of the knife, and gives you a knife which when used, improves with age instead of the other way around. This composite blade construction is probably the most practical high-performance blade you can have.”

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Meanwhile, the handle is individually shaped stabilized Turkish walnut. The grip can accommodate a number of different hand shapes and sizes, and is mated to a blued steel guard, Wilson Combat says.

The Combat Classic also comes with a sheath handmade by Foster.

The limited production Wilson Combat ‘Combat Classic’ from Burt Foster is available in two different sizes at a retail price of $974.95. Wilson Combat says backorders will be accepted.

For more information about Wilson Combat and their full range of products, please visit http://www.wilsoncombat.com Keep Reading