What is a Tanto Knife?

I’m going to take a little departure from the discussion of the Gerber Knife to focus on the general topic of tanto knives.  Gerber of course makes a number of different tanto knives but this will focus on the style in general.

 A little history of the tanto knives first; whether it is true or not I don’t know but it sounds plausible. And it lends an atmosphere of history and lore to the blade. 

In the days of the Chinese dynasties, swords were sometimes broken in combat or during training. Because the swords required alot of work to produce, the warriors would take the broken parts and fashion them into knives. The first tanto knives were thus born. 

There are basically 3 different types of knife blade designs, the drop point, sheepsfoot (intriguing name isn’t it?) and the tanto. I’m going to discuss the tanto blade in this article and the other two in future articles. 

The tanto knives are designed to give ithem two important qualities: strength and a sharp point. The point is thin enough to puncture or stab but it has the thickness to withstand the toughest use. Because it is hollow ground the spine narrows down to a very thin cutting edge. 

Given its unusual shape, sharpening can be tricky and is best left to the experienced sharpener. The long straight cutting edge requires a different angle than the smaller part of the blade that curves up. The junction of the two angles is where it gets really tricky. If you use the straight cutting edge angle on the upward curve angle you will ruin the edge.And the opposite is true also.  So unless you are confident of your skills it would be best to let a professional sharpen you knife.