Copperskin Hand Forged Copper Damascus Skinner Knife with Resin Handle & Premium Leather Sheath and Built In Sharpener | Hunting Skinning Gift | RK-1066

Copper Damascus is one of the few things in a modern forge that would have looked like sorcery to a medieval smith, because the physics says it should not work. Steel is forge welded at somewhere around 1200 to 1300 degrees Celsius, and copper melts at 1085. Put copper into an ordinary billet at welding heat and it runs out on the floor. Getting the two to bond means working at a lower temperature, keeping oxygen away from the joint, and using pressure and time instead of the brute heat a steel billet is welded at. That is why copper Damascus is uncommon, why it costs more, and why it looks like nothing else once it is etched and the copper comes up pink gold against dark steel.

The Copperskin puts that into a working skinner. The blade is hand forged copper Damascus over carbon steel, 3.5 inches long on a knife that runs 7.5 inches overall, with a 4 inch dual resin handle carrying a turquoise accent. The cutting edge is carbon steel, which is the honest way to build a knife like this, and the copper does what copper does best, which is look extraordinary and stay put.

It is forged, ground and fitted by one pair of hands in the Czech Republic, and it ships with a premium leather sheath that has a sharpener built into it, protective packaging and an edge already set.

Specifications

What a skinner is ground to do

A skinner is not a small hunting knife. It is a specialist shape and everything about it serves one job, which is separating hide from carcass without cutting either the hide or the meat underneath. The profile has a long sweeping belly and very little straight edge, because on a curved edge the point of contact with the hide is always moving as you draw the knife, which means the blade slices continuously instead of stalling. A straight edge has to be pushed; a curved one pulls itself along.

The other half of the design is the point, or rather where the point is kept. On a skinner the tip is swept up and away from the working edge, so that when the belly is doing the cutting the point is riding clear of the membrane rather than digging into it. Every hole in a hide comes from a tip that went where it was not wanted. Three and a half inches is the classic size for deer and hogs, long enough to keep a rhythm and short enough to work around a joint. Sizes for different animals are covered in the deer skinning guide, and the difference between a skinner and a general purpose hunting knife is set out in hunting knife versus skinner.

Why copper Damascus and carbon steel rather than stainless

It is worth being precise about what copper Damascus is and is not. Copper is soft. It has no hardness worth measuring, it cannot be heat treated, and it will not hold a cutting edge for a second. So a copper Damascus blade is not a blade made of copper. It is carbon steel doing the cutting, with copper bonded into the laminate for the pattern and the colour. That is the same principle as mokume gane, the Japanese wood grain metal that laminates copper, brass and silver, and it is the ancestor of everything being done with copper in blade billets today.

What you get from it is a pattern nothing else produces. Etching darkens the steel and leaves the copper standing bright, so instead of the light and dark greys of conventional Damascus you get warm metal running through cold. The carbon steel underneath behaves like carbon steel: it takes a fine edge, holds it through a day of skinning and comes back on a stone quickly. Stainless would be less trouble to look after and would not hold an edge as well through hide and hair, which is exactly the wrong trade on a skinner. The full case is in Damascus versus stainless, and the general principles of forge welded steel are in what Damascus steel is.

The dual resin handle

The handle is resin, built in two tones with a turquoise accent set into it, and it was chosen for a specific reason: it grips when it is wet. Skinning is wet work, and a wooden handle with a hard finish on it becomes slippery the moment blood and fat get onto it. Resin does not. It is dimensionally stable, it is unaffected by humidity or cold, it shrugs off solvents and cleaning products, and it will not swell, split or lift at the pins.

It also needs nothing from you. There is no wood, bone or horn in this handle, so there is no annual oiling and no feeding. Wash it, dry it, and keep it away from sustained heat, and that is the whole of it. If you own wooden handled pieces from the forge, their routine is in wooden handle care, but none of it applies here.

Engraving, runes and your own design

Use the rune converter on this page to turn a name, a date or a short phrase into Elder Futhark and we will cut it into the steel or the handle. If you would rather have a Viking pattern than a rune line, choose your own design in the engraving option above the add to cart button and tell us whether it goes on the blade or the handle. Where a piece already carries an engraved design, your chosen engraving replaces it rather than sitting alongside it. On this knife we would normally cut into the steel rather than the resin, and we will place the line so it does not run through the copper, since a cut across copper reads differently to one in steel. Everything is done here before the knife is packed. See the engraving page.

Care and sharpening

The steel is high carbon, so it will rust if you leave it wet. Dry it after use and give it a wipe of mineral or camellia oil before it goes away for the season. The copper is different: it does not rust, but it will oxidise, going from bright pink gold to a warmer brown and eventually toward a dark patina. Some owners like that and leave it. If you want it bright, a metal polish on a cloth brings the copper back in seconds, and you should avoid harsh acidic cleaners, since the ferric chloride used to etch the pattern in the first place attacks copper faster than it attacks steel. Steel notes are in steel care.

The sheath has a sharpener set into it, which is there for touch ups in the field rather than for real sharpening. Use it to straighten an edge that has started to drag halfway through a job. When the edge is genuinely dull, take it to a stone: medium grit until a burr rises along the length, flip and match, then a fine stone or a strop. On a curved skinner belly, work in short sections and rotate the knife as you go so the contact point travels round the sweep. The method is in sharpening with a whetstone.

Made in the Czech Republic

The work behind this piece happens in a Czech Republic workshop that has kept to the old methods. Steel is forged and heat treated by hand, the grind is taken down by eye rather than by machine, and the handle, fittings and sheath are cut and finished one at a time. Because of that, every piece carries small marks of the hand that made it.

Ransack Viking is a United States company. We import direct, check each piece when it reaches us, and ship from our Memphis, Tennessee warehouse. Engraving is added here in the United States after arrival, so the piece you receive is finished to your order.

A note on handmade variation

This skinner is hand forged, not machine made and not bulk produced, so what arrives will not be a pixel for pixel copy of the photograph on this page. Copper moves unpredictably in a billet, which is exactly why it is worth doing: the width of the copper lines, where they surface on the grind, and how much of the pattern the bevel exposes are different on every single blade. The resin is poured and cut, so the turquoise falls where it falls. The dimensions, the steel and the build are the same every time. The character is not.

Frequently asked questions

Does the copper form part of the cutting edge?

No, and it should not. Copper is far too soft to take or hold an edge. The cutting edge on this knife is carbon steel. The copper is bonded into the laminate for the pattern and the colour.

Will the copper tarnish?

Yes, and that is normal. Copper oxidises rather than rusting, so it warms toward brown and eventually darkens. A metal polish brings it back to bright pink gold whenever you want it, or you can leave it and let the patina build.

How useful is the sharpener built into the sheath?

It is a field touch up, not a replacement for a stone. It will straighten a rolled edge partway through a job. For a proper edge, use a whetstone at home.

Is it full tang?

Yes. The tang runs the length of the handle with the resin scales fixed to it, which is what you want on a knife that gets levered slightly at every joint.

Does the resin handle need any maintenance?

None at all. Wash it, dry it, keep it out of sustained heat. There is no wood in it, so there is nothing to oil.

Will my blade look like the photograph?

It will be copper Damascus over carbon steel in the same size and shape, but the copper lines will sit differently. Copper is the least predictable material in a billet, which is why no two of these are alike.

What is in the box

• One Copperskin copper Damascus skinner knife
• Premium leather sheath with a built in sharpener
• Protective packaging for storage or gifting
• Forged and finished in the Czech Republic

Explore the range

Related collections are Damascus Skinner Knives, Hunting Knives, Damascus Tracker Knives and New Arrivals. The how and why behind the steel is covered in the guides.