Gut hook

My question is why you would want to do it. They usually don't work all the well; they tend to clog up with hair. They were originally a notch in the spine to hook the bail of a coffee pot to pull it off the fire. If you want something to open up the belly of large game there is a device that takes and injectable razor blade with a much bigger hook.

Doug
 
Doug Lester said:
My question is why you would want to do it. They usually don't work all the well; they tend to clog up with hair. They were originally a notch in the spine to hook the bail of a coffee pot to pull it off the fire. If you want something to open up the belly of large game there is a device that takes and injectable razor blade with a much bigger hook.

Doug
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Me I don't, but for some reason my step MnL thinks they need to be on every skinning knife and so I figured if I want to make her one I kinda need to know how to do it.
 
I agree with Doug on Gut Hooks......... In my experience they will be a major annoyance for the knifemaker. Why? As Doug said, they simply don't work well, or at best work well the FIRST time a person uses them, and are nothing but a headache there after. Personally, I learned the hard way.... way back in my JS days, gut hooks where all the rage with clients. I spent a great deal of time and effort designing and testing all kinds of gut hooks..... and none ever worked well, beyond the very first use. Even knowing their limitations, I let myself get talked into producing a number of blades with them, and suffered the consequences. I saw every one of those blades again and again, mainly because clients either could not re-sharpen the gut hook, or totally wrecked it when attempting to re-sharpen. I finally had enough, and started offering clients a replacement knife without a gut hook, just to stop the revolving door. Lesson learned. From that point on, I simply refused to produce a blade with a gut hook, even if it means loosing the order.
 
I don't care too much for them myself. after the cool factor of opening up a critter like a zipper I think they tend to get hung up on things once in a while. and they are kind of a pain to sharpen.

I think their kind of akin to skinning a deer with a tennis ball and rope....it's got a cool factor when it's used.
but really, using a drop point upside down will do the same thing.

If one were to argue it's a time saver, think about what it took to get the animal in the position it's in where your ready to cut it open.
 
I sold 3 gut hook skinning knives to a co worker in 2006 he gave 2 away as gift and the 3rd one he kept for himself. He has used it ever since gutting and skinning over 30 deer and he said he has never sharpened the gut hook and it works great.
 

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GeneK's KITH post pretty well covered it. Just think of it as a single serration, angled back towards the handle. Any small diamater "round" will work, whether it's a small wheel on your 2x72, a dremel, or even a round file, followed by a dowel with some finer grits of abrasive paper wrapped around it.

The nice thing about a properly designed gut hook, is that it can be ground off, making the knife into regular drop point, when it stops working after 2 or 3 uses.
 
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