The Manufacturer
Fällkniven AB is a Swedish family business founded in 1984. Their knives are manufactured in Japan.
The Knife
The WM1 was originally designed as a knife for female users or as Fällkniven puts it: “designed from scratch to suit the hands and requirements of WoMen“.
The knife features a drop point blade with a full/broad tang construction inside a thermorun handle. It’s manufactured in two different steels: 3G powder steel or laminated VG10.
Measurements:
Total lenght: 175mm
Blade lenght: 77mm
Blade width: 3,5mm
Weight: 77g
Fällkniven offers two different sheath options for the knife. A leather dangler -sheath and a Zytel-plastic sheath.
We ended up testing this knife after observing a member of an elite military unit use a WM1 on one of our courses. He had taken his WM1 on missions all over the world and during the course he used it exclusively. He spoke very highly of the knife and was extremely skilled with it. Naturally we were very impressed and wanted to try the knife out for ourselves.
Observations
Our previous experiences on the Fällkniven-knives are limited to the F1 and the S1 models.
The first thing you notice when you pick up the WM1 is the heft of the small knife for its size. At first the handle feels thin and kind of weird with the non-rounded edges of it. After using the knife for a while it really grows on you the grip shape is highly ergonomic for a multitude of tasks and grips. Even though the surface of the handle is smooth it never felt slippery.
The WM1 we tested had a laminated VG10 -blade and a Zytel-sheath. The Zytel-sheath features a strap and snap retention which we are not huge fans of. It felt as the zytel-sheath was not up to par with the rest of the knife so it had to go. We replaced it with a custom made Kydex-sheath from Vegvisir Creations.
The blade of the knife features a rounded out spine, which is a great thing for some users. We prefer a 90 degree spine for many reasons, so we used a sharpening stone to square the spine out. No big deal.
We have used the WM1 now for about four years on and off. It has opened boxes at the office, processed firewood, peeled fruit, chopped vegetables and processed game animals.
Another thing we noticed was that the convex ground edge had a tendency to dent/chip in hard use (abuse?) situations.
Out came the trusty Spyderco Sharpmaker and in no time there was a 40 degree secondary bevel on the blade. This worked out great since it reduced the denting and still retained the excellent slicing-ability of the WM1.
Conclusion
The WM1 is a great little general purpose knife. Don’t let the small size fool you. This thing can work big jobs for such a small knife. The limiting factor being the length of the blade, which limits for example the size of wood you can split.
On it’s own or coupled with a small camp saw the WM1 would make a great tool for someone looking to cut the weight of their hiking/hunting/etc. gear set up.
If you are planning on buying one of these knives, we highly recommend you support your small local knife/gear dealers in these hard times. Here are some suggestions:
