Different types of bushcraft knives

H

Hesparus

Joined
Oct 31, 2004
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There are lots of different bushcraft knives out there (or knives that people use as bushcraft knives) and I suspect that they can all be divided into a few categories. I'm talking about primary bushcraft knives that people might carry as an only knife.
The categories I can think of so far are:

Puukko type: 3-4+", relatively narrow blade, scandi grind. Represented by the moras, woodlore, etc.
Kephart style: blade 1" wide or a little wider, full flat-grind, broad tip. Represented by the blind horse bushcrafter and everything marketed as a 'kephart knife'.
Military type: 5-7" blade, flat, saber or hollow grind, usually clip point. Represented by the kabar, cold steel SRK, many fallknivens.
Heavy: 4-6" broad blade, usually scandi grind, usually 1/6"+ thick. Represented by the Tom Brown tracker, habilis bushtool, pathfinder PSLK1.

Any more categories you can think of?

- Chris
 
I favor the Nessmuk type. It was a bit of a craze a couple of years ago, but I have more or less stuck with mine. The broad blade and belly make it great for slicing and working with food, the in-line point and humped blade make it good for detail work.

The shape pleases me aesthetically too.
 
How about a 4 MOL inch drop point with flat or hollow grind? Probably used more in the outdoors than any other fixed blade.
 
What about the Argentine criollo? Think kitchen knife, but more sturdily built. Carried by the gauchos (i.e., Argentine cowboys) they were do-it-all knives for men who spent months in the field.

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gauchowithcriollo.jpg


gauchoeatingwithcriollo.jpg


Here's a recent interpretation by Ray Laconico. Per my request he made it shorter than most examples of the type.

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Also heavier 8 to 11 American bowie style that mountain men carried like the Hudson Bay, and Leuku although I guess thats in your heavy category.
 
machete/golok/parang type - that is the bushcraft blade for most of south america and asia...my esee lite machete was my most used for 2011 actually (this year it's shaping up to be my spyderco bushcraft though).
 
kamagong said:
What about the Argentine criollo? Think kitchen knife, but more sturdily built. Carried by the gauchos (i.e., Argentine cowboys) they were do-it-all knives for men who spent months in the field.
Click to expand...
I've been interested in those, although I guess they are more cattle oriented activities like butchering.
 
Ravaillac said:
I've been interested in those, although I guess they are more cattle oriented activities like butchering.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. Here is a quote regarding the use of the "gaucho" knife.

The common contemporary vision suggests that gauchos passed half of their lives riding horses, hunting wild cattle just to take their hides and eat their tongues and a little of the meat, and the other half fighting duels. This is due to the old tales and descriptions written by foreign and local travelers visiting the pampas during the XIX century and giving details of the duels they have witnessed and the horrible scars on the faces of the gauchos they have met. The truth is that some gauchos had dueled sometimes, but not so often as we usually think. Knives were indeed used heavily, but mostly as tools, throughout the gaucho's long days in the prairie, in hundreds of small and large tasks. The knife was an essential extension of their hands: the single utensil required for eating, both as cutting implement and fork; necessary in the task of cutting small wood for making the cooking fire; necessary in cutting strands of tobacco; necessary for slaughter and skinning of cattle and cutting their meat as well as in cutting hay to make the roofs of their poor houses and making adobe bricks for the walls; necessary in cutting hides to make or repair their saddles, headstalls, reins, and lariats - leather was used in hundreds of things. I feel and always try to put emphasis in the fact that knives were tools, often the only tool gauchos had, and that they used them as such and just on occasion in a fight with another gaucho. This in spite of the popular image of dueling gauchos, driven by literature and the common conception of present-day people.

From A Short Essay About Gaucho Knives: Facón, Daga, Cuchilla and Puñal, by Abel A. Domenech
Click to expand...
 
kamagong said:
Not necessarily. Here is a quote regarding the use of the "gaucho" knife.
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Ho, I don't question that but I guess it's the cattle butchering part that was the deciding part in form factor.
Nonetheless a very interesting design that sees real dirtime.
 
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kamagong said:
What about the Argentine criollo? Think kitchen knife, but more sturdily built. Carried by the gauchos (i.e., Argentine cowboys) they were do-it-all knives for men who spent months in the field.
Click to expand...

And they bear a strong resemblance to the belt knives of medieval Europe as well. Like you said, they resemble a more robust version of a slim chef's knife, and were pressed into work for just about everything.
 
I could survive in the woods for a week with a paring knife, live to tell the tale, and the paring knife would become a new popular bushcraft knife style.

My point is that bushcraft knives are what they do, not what they are called, what they look like, or what they're made of. Every culture has a rendition of one and there are upsides and downsides to each one based on the hunting/foraging and shelter, tool, and fire building methods of the climate in which each style originates.

And besides that, there are people everywhere who use whatever knives they have for bushcrafting purposes and in the process "convert" a slicing, dicing, chopping, paring, coring, skinning, gutting, drilling, batoning, shaving, hacking or whacking knife into a bushcrafter. Then we get to redefine what a bushcrafting knife "is" and start all over again!
 
@Capitalizedliving: Your point is well-taken. My purpose for asking this question was not to define what is or is not a bushcraft knife. I am just getting into bushcrafting and I'm in the process of trying to find a design for a primary bushcraft knife that I like. Rather than trying out every single knife that exists, it would speed up my process to look first at representatives of the major types of bushcraft knives, see how I like those and then refine my search from there. Every time I go into the woods, I bring a few different knives with me to see how I like them. This is an especially fun process for me because I am a knifemaker.

- Chris
 
Chris,

May I suggest that you change you enquiry method
You are looking "at representatives of the major types of bushcraft knives"

If you look at the tasks you want to perform in the field, then 'form will follow function'

As an example
In the field I do not need my knife to neither skin nor chop, as I do not hunt and I carry a hatchet
So I now know I do not need a long heavy blade and an upturned point.

So make priorities on Capital's functions of slicing, dicing, chopping, paring, coring, skinning, gutting, drilling, batoning, shaving, hacking or whacking knife
See what steel, blade shape, length and thickness will perform these functions best
And you will define what you want for your bushcrafter knife

What ever it is, it will be an educated compromise
 
@Neeman: the approach that you describe is what I intend to do after some hands-on research. Since I am very new to this, I don't yet have a handle on everything I will be using a knife for and how well a given knife feature accomplishes the various tasks. I've used a lot of knives for a lot of things, and I consider myself to have a passing understanding of the relationship between form and function, but I don't want to presume to know more than I do since, again, this is a new area for me. My search is therefore going to focus first on exposing myself to a broad range of designs so that I will have a lot of features to choose from when I start zeroing in on my own design. I could imagine that a puukko style knife is what I want, and I could use one and be happy with it, but if I've never used something very different from that, how will I know that I won't like something else better?

- Chris
 
Hesparus - thank you for your follow-up and explanations regarding what you're trying to accomplish here. I think if experimentation is your first priority, go with a representative example from your initial list. You've obviously done your homework, so pick a name and model from your list and go with it. Then throw in a Nessmuk (very unique blade shape and thus will give you a lot of feedback regarding its differences relative to the other types you get), maybe a barong or a machete if you want something big, and start testing. Do your fire prep with a machete, your game prep with a military/survival knife, your shelter-building with a puukko, and so on. The feedback is instant - you'll learn that a Tom Brown Tracker does nothing but look stupid and a thick drop point knife with powder coating and a v-ground edge can't even skin a pine branch. You will instantly understand what qualities work best for each task and can then start weighing things like whether you like the thinness of a Mora but the length of a Fallkniven S1 but the wide drop point of a Kephart. This will eliminate a lot of noise from your experiment and allow you to hone in on what it is you like, and then continue experimenting by buying new variant knives and running new tests.

I did this for years - I had no clue what I wanted but just bought stuff and tried it. I found that I hated recurves, I hated upswept tips, I preferred layered phenolics to wooden handles, I like full exposed tangs and prefer if they are hidden but don't trust stick tangs with no pins. Spearpoints are great for some stuff and drop points work better for others, rounded handles feel better than flat ones, convex grinds are easier to maintain than flat ones, and hollow grinds are awful in any circumstance. then there are sheath preferences, carry positions, lanyard pins and flagging, blade length, handle length, ratios and balance points, and much more that is difficult to articulate. All are my personal opinions and all are based on buying, using, breaking, losing, and selling many knives. I know now what I look for and still experiment but with tighter constraints.

I like to peruse the Knifemakers' For Sale subforum as I can find all kinds of really neat knives in designs I'd never thought of that don't even have names, and would get in a lot of trouble if I didn't already have some sense for what qualities I really like and therefore would make a design "testable" versus qualities I know I'll hate before I even say "I'll take it."

I hope that helps a bit more than my previous response.
 
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@CapitalizedLiving: That's pretty much exactly my plan. I've already got around a dozen knives of different shapes and sizes, half of which I've tested in the bush, which cover three out of four of my categories (I'll try to post a picture later). Lots more testing and learning to go.
A word on the Nessmuk: I intentionally didn't include the Nessmuk design in my original list because, although a lot of people do, it was not originally intended to be a bushcraft knife, per se. But as luck would have it, I have one on my bench right now. I didn't temper it to be a bushcraft knife, but I may give it a shot down the line.

- Chris
 
every knife in the world can be used for Bushcraft tasks. That makes for a lot of 'categories', eh?
 
"Can be used for" and "designed for" are two very different things, though. I can use a rock as a hammer but it's not going to work like a 20 oz. framing hammer will. :D And using pieces designed around bushcrafting tasks would give one a more informed opinion of what design elements provide what benefits for those tasks. I think the OP's premise is a good one--we all get our education in knives over time, and while we learn a lot through discussion it's no replacement for trying it yourself. :)
 
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