Thoughts on Sloyd Knife Handles
- traceycheuvront
- Feb 27
- 2 min read
Like many spoon carvers, I’ve used good old Mora sloyd knives for years. Moras are a great value, have excellent steel, and require little honing from the factory, so I continue to enthusiastically recommend them. The only thing about Moras that I’ve ever felt was worth trying to improve upon is the handles. Specifically, I find them to be too round, too short, too smooth, and too small in diameter. To be fair, people with smaller hands, or those who don’t carve tough, dense, dry wood like I do may not have these same complaints, or benefit as much from improved handle design. My sloyds have an octagonal cross section, bandsawn texture, and more girth than most others, all of which reduce the need for heavy grip pressure -- and therefore hand fatigue -- especially when applying a lot of torque to the blade as is done carving tight-radius concave areas like spoon necks. Kathrina and I make and sell hundreds of utensils annually, and while the majority of these are largely produced with power equipment, slimming and tidying the necks of spoons is a step I usually do on the shavehorse with a sloyd. Most of these power carved spoons are completely dry at this stage, and many of them are the toughest species around like ash, oak, sugar maple, pecan, and hickory. Spend a few hours trimming spoon necks like I do with a Mora vs one of my sloyds and your dominant hand will speak to you loud and clear as to the virtues of handle design based on ergonomics rather than aesthetics or ease of mass production! While I am certainly glad to sell my own sloyds, I also encourage folks to save money (and perhaps put it toward one of my sweet two-handed hook knives! 😜) simply by texturing factory handles or replacing them with custom ones tailored to your particular preferences.
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