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- Dec 1, 2016
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For many, many years, hunters and outdoorsmen have referenced Nessmuk's rather notable work, Woodcraft - Horace Kephart himself even dedicated his own rather famous work to the memory of Mr. Sears. Simply, yet delightfully written in 1884, it is a pleasure to read and dive into outdoors life as experienced by George W. Sears, otherwise known as Nessmuk. One of the things that I find interesting about reading Nessmuk's accounts is that it demonstrates how we do an excellent job at overthinking just about everything these days and likely suffer from having far too many choices and even more opinions to go along with them.
I am venturing out to the woods tomorrow and will be out for a number of days - it will be my first significant trip since the pandemic enveloped us and I am very much looking forward to the reprieve. Though I won't exactly be "roughing it" and will be surrounded by other knife and outdoors enthusiasts, I thought it would be fun to explore Nessmuk's rather notable trio - namely the knives, for the purposes of this forum.
In this post, I will show the tools that I will be looking to put to significant use and I will reserve a couple of the following posts to catalog some of my adventures this week. Though there will not be any hunting, there will be plenty of food and meat carving, as well as wood processing, and other outdoors activities - I hope to get a good feel for the tools that Mr. Sears had a great fondness for.
Pictured below, you will see the eponymous three - an axe, a fixed blade, and a slip joint.
The axe is written more about by Nessmuk than the knives are. Calling it a "double-barreled pocket-axe", it was a tool that George had custom made and paid a great deal of money for. My version is represented by Council Tool, a company that still makes axes here in the US - this one is called a double bit saddle axe and features different grinds on each blade, something that Nessmuk mentions when describing his axe in the book.
He wrote that his fixed blade was thin in blade and suitable for eating, skinning, and cutting meat. Mine is an excellent knife made by Robert Erickson, featuring AEB-L steel and vintage micarta covers. Very, very thin behind the edge - I think this one would have suited Nessmuk's needs nicely.
The folder is simply mentioned as being strong and the best that he had found. The featured illustration shows what we call a moose configuration - two full blades, one a clip and the other a spear. He writes that this knife, used with the belt knife, are all that is needed. Mine is a GEC #81 Bull Moose in 1095 steel and Osage Orange covers - it was very kindly made available to me by
Nature Boy
(thanks again, Mike).
Over the course of this exercise, I will write about the knives, their merits, and include lots of pictures of these tools at work. While I go out and get a little dirt on these fine tools, I'd love to read about your own "Nessmuk Trios".
I am venturing out to the woods tomorrow and will be out for a number of days - it will be my first significant trip since the pandemic enveloped us and I am very much looking forward to the reprieve. Though I won't exactly be "roughing it" and will be surrounded by other knife and outdoors enthusiasts, I thought it would be fun to explore Nessmuk's rather notable trio - namely the knives, for the purposes of this forum.
In this post, I will show the tools that I will be looking to put to significant use and I will reserve a couple of the following posts to catalog some of my adventures this week. Though there will not be any hunting, there will be plenty of food and meat carving, as well as wood processing, and other outdoors activities - I hope to get a good feel for the tools that Mr. Sears had a great fondness for.
Pictured below, you will see the eponymous three - an axe, a fixed blade, and a slip joint.
The axe is written more about by Nessmuk than the knives are. Calling it a "double-barreled pocket-axe", it was a tool that George had custom made and paid a great deal of money for. My version is represented by Council Tool, a company that still makes axes here in the US - this one is called a double bit saddle axe and features different grinds on each blade, something that Nessmuk mentions when describing his axe in the book.
He wrote that his fixed blade was thin in blade and suitable for eating, skinning, and cutting meat. Mine is an excellent knife made by Robert Erickson, featuring AEB-L steel and vintage micarta covers. Very, very thin behind the edge - I think this one would have suited Nessmuk's needs nicely.
The folder is simply mentioned as being strong and the best that he had found. The featured illustration shows what we call a moose configuration - two full blades, one a clip and the other a spear. He writes that this knife, used with the belt knife, are all that is needed. Mine is a GEC #81 Bull Moose in 1095 steel and Osage Orange covers - it was very kindly made available to me by
Nature Boy
(thanks again, Mike).Over the course of this exercise, I will write about the knives, their merits, and include lots of pictures of these tools at work. While I go out and get a little dirt on these fine tools, I'd love to read about your own "Nessmuk Trios".
