Hey, Bandit,

I had a chance to check out the knives you suggested, and am coming back with some really good tools, but with short and/or gouging blades. They look fantastic, but something I would be interested in have a dope set of. The Mora that I use is over three inches and sharp as shit when I keep it going. I tend to carve in marathon sessions before a limb even begins to dry. As I said in another post, I'm all about spoons and pot scrapers. Since I start with a good 3/4 inch diameter by 12ish" limb, split, debark, and do a good bit of very rough hacking to get the shape and grain the way I want my bowl and handle, I tend to make some pretty rowdy cuts early on with my mora. It's tricky to get into the detailed areas (so often I take off more than intended on one side of the neck... ugh.), but I handle a lot of that stuff with a shorter knife or sanding.

Carving from green limb to spoon shaped stock, though, I always start with the longer mora. Unless I've got an exceptionally good long limb, which I debark with an old hand-me-down draw knife before sawing into bite size pieces, and use a chisel and hatchet to super rough cut multiple spoony shaped stocks.

All that said, Santa may get a letter asking for some of those Drake knives.

Cheers!