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This feature originally appeared in the January 2003 edition of BLADE. For more classics, check out this 10-year collection of BLADE magazine.

What’s the proper ratio between the blade and handle of a knife? A key here is what is meant by ratio. Is it the ratio between blade and handle
length, width, thickness, weight or what exactly?

Other questions factor in as well: How will the knife be used? How big is the knife? What are the materials used? What are the hand and overall body sizes of the person who will be using it? And what about the knife’s overall look, feel and balance?

Longer knives—such as bowies, camp knives, machetes, etc.—obviously will have blades that are much lengthier than their handles. The focus herein will be more on the “in-between” knives—small utility fixed blades, hunters, combat/utility, etc.— because the differences in blade-to-handle ratios are usually much less pronounced in such pieces.

Of course, in the case of a custom knife you can dictate exactly what the proportion of blade to handle will be. However, not all handmade knives are custom orders. In fact, many, if not most, aren’t.

What do knifemakers do to ensure the blade-to-handle ratio will fit most of their customers? In the case of his smaller utility fixed blades, knifemaker Ed Chavar goes for a 50/50 length ratio between blade and handle.



“Proportionately, it looks better that way [on a smaller fixed blade],” he noted. “I try to keep the handles smaller on a small knife for balance and proportion.”

As for width and thickness on his smaller knives, especially for those where concealment is at a premium, Chavar designs the handle wide
yet thin.

“Because of the sheath system I use, the knife must lay flat and not protrude so it’s not obvious you’re carrying it,” he explained. “I try to keep the handle thin but, if I increase the width, the handle still fills the hand without being too bulky or heavy. You also have to consider weight. If the knife is too bulky and uncomfortable to carry, a person will leave it in the drawer.”

With a hunting knife, he goes for a handle that is about 55-60 percent of the knife’s overall length.

“If the handle and blade are the same length [on a larger piece], the knife looks and feels unbalanced,” he said.

In the case of custom orders, both Chavar and bladesmith Loyd Thomsen encourage their customers to use clay or plumber’s putty, wrap it around a knife blank or kitchen-knife handle, grip it, let it harden and then send the resulting mold to the maker for a guide on which to base the handle shape.

“[The handle] has a more natural feel that way,” Chavar observed.

Knifemaker Jeff Diotte prefers that the handle—especially on his small knives—is never wider than the blade.

“In fact, almost all my knives are that way,” he began. “I feel the knife is more functional that way [and] it gives the blade more of a dropped
position, which is more of a natural cutting position. If the handle is the same width as the blade, then [the handle] is too big. It’s kind of like the hand makes up the extra space [left by the narrower handle]. That way, the knife turns into an extension of your own grip.”



As for length, on his standard hunter with a 4-inch blade, Diotte said he won’t make the handle any longer than 4 1/8 inches.

“As soon as the handle fills the hand, that’s all you need,” he stressed, “especially in a tight spot in the body cavity of a game animal.”

Knifemaker Harvey King specializes in hunting knives and goes for a length ratio of 55 percent handle to 45 percent blade on most of his non-custom-ordered pieces. As for his custom-ordered pieces, of course,  there is no set ratio. His Personal model sports eighth-inch blade stock and a thickness of 3/4 inch from the center of the palm swell on the handle.

As for the thinnest part of the handle, it’s just under a half-inch thick, though the thickness will vary depending on the material used.

“Some materials I get are thinner and I can’t put as thick a palm swell on the handles,” he pointed out.

As for the width ratio—though he prefers the word depth to width—between the blade and handle, King said it’s pretty close. For instance, on
the Personal model, the widths are 1.2 inches for the blade and 1 inch for the handle.

Like King a hunting knife specialist, Thomsen said the blade-to-handle ratio depends on the type of hunting knife. As for the lengths of his handles, he said he makes them about 4 1/2 inches long because most hands are about 4 inches wide.

Besides, he added, most blocks of such handle materials as wood and stag are cut in 4-to-5-inch-lengths.

“That tells you what the makers are asking for because the [knifemaking supply houses] don’t supply it in sizes much larger than that,” he
opined.

Though some of them have general length and thickness ratios between the blades and handles of their knives, most of the makers interviewed seemed to think that there are no hard and fast rules. In other words, different people will require different blade-to-handle ratios depending on hand and body size and to what uses they willput the knife.

However, Mike Fuller of TOPS does have a set formula, though it’s more a man-to-knife ratio than a blade-to-handle ratio.

Of course, the fact that the combat/utility knives in question are also used for chopping probably helps explain why a formula works better for them than say, capers, because chopping requires more coordination of the hands, arms, upper torso and legs than the fine detailed cutting required in caping. Nonetheless, it is a formula and Fuller says it works well for him.

The idea of a physics teacher, the formula is based on body size. Five-footnine and 175-to-180 pounds is the breakeven point, along with the size of hand—small, medium or large. Fuller assembled about 25 members of the Mountain State Tactical Association and let them try various-sized TOPS knives in assorted cutting and chopping tests.



In the 2x4 chopping test, for instance, each man, regardless of size, made 100 strokes each with TOPS knives that varied in the lengths and thicknesses of both the handles and blades. Almost without exception, each man felt the knife performed better when it was adapted to his body and hand size.

Generally speaking, the men 5’-9” and 175-180 pounds and smaller preferred TOPS knives with 3/16-inch blade stock, 3/16-inch handle slabs and blades 5 to 6 1/2 inches long. The handles on such knives may be anywhere from 5-to-5 3/4 inches long.

By the same token, larger men generally preferred knives 1/4 inch in blade stock and slab thicknesses and blades 7 inches and longer. The handles on such pieces may range from 5-to-6 inches long.

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