Finnish Chili

You never associate chili with the Nordic countries, do you?

I give you that with the influx of tourists, especially Americans, you can find chili but it’s not a common menu item.

Harri Merimaa Puukko Set

I love chili and after begging for a while I was informed, if I cut up the chuck roast, my wife would make chili.  As a bonus I could cut the meat in any size I wanted.  I have almost religious view about chili meat size and shape.

I grabbed my puukko and went to town.  That’s the Nordic connection.

Knife meet meat

I have a set of Harri Merimaa puukko knives.  The set has the curious name of Double Big Hunting (Knives).  Harri is from Bothnia, a providence of western Finland and is a third generation knife maker.  I think they are very nice knives and I'm very happy to have them.  

Of the two available I selected the larger 154 mm (6 inches) long blade.  Both knives are handled with dyed curly birch capped with elm wood.  The blades are high carbon steel.  I first washed the protective oil off the steel with hot water and soap followed by plenty of hot water rinses.  Someday I tell you about a camping trip that had a little detergent left on a fork.  I really need to get food grade protective oil.

"A knifeless man is a lifeless man.”  Nordic proverb.

First steps to chili

The Nordic countries have a rich knife history.  In that extreme climate environment, the inability to use a knife to make a bowl, a cup, build fire and prepare food once meant you would die.  Today’s social institutions have changed some of that, but move to the edges, to the small villages and hunting camps and you’ll find that rule still enforced.

You can still find that in America, in hunting camps, back in the woods and mountains where your survival depends on you and the tools you have on you.  A good fixed blade is one of the best and simplest tools the prepared mind could ask for.

Just as an aside, the puukko is the only civilian item which can be openly worn as a part of a soldier's combat gear without breaching the regulations of the Finnish Defense Forces.  This is because puukkos are traditionally considered to be very personal items and the military does not supply conscripts with them.  Most bring their own with them. 

Trim

The thin saber grind blade quickly reduced the semi-frozen meat to various sizes and shapes according to my internal chili recipe.  Since I prefer very lean meat in chili, I carved out as much of the fat as possible.  Despite the blade size and being an inch wide the puukko efficiently dissected and removed the fat from the meat.

It didn’t take too long. The handle fit my hand well.  The gloves were just to protect the meat from a number of cuts and scrapes I have recently acquired.  I didn’t develop any hot spots and I just loved the way the blade parted the meat.  If Moses would have been standing there with me, he would have wondered by God hadn’t give him a puukko at the Red Sea.

Chuck roast cured, shaved, sliced ready for the pot

I’d give a puukko a chance if I were you.  It’s not the glitz or the super steel everyone seems to be nuts about.  It’s a design shaped by hundreds of years living in harsh environments.  Perhaps there is a lesson in that.

Lunch is served.

Spy 27

 Spyderco likes to play with steels.  Companies like Crucible encourage that.  Each knife company will find what they think is the best edge geometry, hardness, heat treatment and machining for their knives.  So for Crucible it’s like having dozens of development labs.  Companies like it because the steel junky habit is hard to shake and every steel promises to be the ultimate knife steel, until the next. 

People like myself benefit.  While 440C stainless is a good steel, there are much better, newer steels dragging the market forward.  I’ll get a better knife out of it, so will you.

Spy27 was first introduced Jan 2020

Working with Crucible® Industries, Spyderco has produced a powered metal steel called CPM SPY27. Powder metals produce small grain size and more uniform distribution of alloying elements.  Both are important for quality steel.  Let’s peak inside the hood.

• Carbon 1.25%                    
• Chromium 14%         
• Niobium 1%          
• Molybdenum 2%             
• Vanadium 2%               
• Nitrogen 0.1%
• Cobalt 1.5%          

The rest of the story is iron.

Chromium, niobium and vanadium form small, hard, dense carbides that help stabilize iron grains against deformation.  But if too much chromium is used to form carbides, the corrosion resistance suffers.  Adding a little nitrogen allows for the formation of nitrides, which are also very small and very hard.  All of this is combined with a specific and I’m sure proprietary heat treatment. 

Para 3 Lightweight in Spy27

The Para 3 has been come a very popular knife.  The handle is a fiberglass reinforced nylon is stable and very resistant to solvent.  The bidirectional grip provides a solid locking grip in wet and slippery conditions knives often find themselves in.  The clip holds the knife in your pocket tip up, (my favorite), and is reversible for left or right carry.

That’s a feature I like!

Bi-directional grip grabs the hand

Look, the blade is just under 3 inches long and open the knife is almost 7.25 inches.  Why almost?  Face it America, the world uses metric so that’s what products are scaled to.

The knife weighs in at 2.4 ounces and it so trim you’ll forget it is in your pocket until you need it.

The Spy27 steel blade is a satin flat grind favorite by sharpeners everywhere.  The locking mechanism is Spyderco’s compression lock which I also like.  Liner locks are fine, but I prefer to keep my skin out of the path of closing knives blades.

There was a time when Spyderco made their new experimental production (I know – contradicting terms) models with a blue handle.  In any case this blue FRN handle Para 3 is made in Golden, Colorado. 

It's a good looking Spyderco!

Frankly the thumb hole is a generous one half inch in diameter but the knife doesn’t open quite as easy as I remember the early Delicas and Enduras.  There doesn’t appear to be lubricated bronze spacers to ease the blade opening, but still I like the knife.  I pick up the knife and the knife grips me back.  The jimping on the back of blade is aggressive and I like that too!  The Para 3 Lightweight has good looks, but it isn’t designed to live its life in a pocket.  It is meant to work in your hand.  It isn’t my knife to use and try, but you can find one at it’s minimum advertised price of $140 just about anywhere.

Spy27 could be the new base steel at Spyderco.  Just sayin’ you might want to get in on the ground floor.