? for the Folksy woodsmen out there.

RescueRiley

RescueRiley

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I posted a similar question over in W&SS and the amount of trad knives listed was interesting given the tastes of many over there so I figured I'd tailor the question to this audience and see the responses.

So for all your woodsmen out there... Your mentors.. or the guys you knew in your youth who spent more time in the woods than in town.. The men you knew who;s idea of a perfect weekend involved a fly rod, a .22 rifle and a plug of pipe tobacco by a camp fire..
What kind of knives did these men use?
What where the things they did with them that wowed you, and made you say I want to emulate that?

My dad cleaned allot of fish in his day with a pairing knife from the kitchen,
But most of his camp work (Though most of it was car camping) was done either with a sheet rock knife with a retractable replacable blade, or with one of my knives..
My older brother I guess was the closest thing I had to a woods mentor. and he carried a buck 112 for most of my child hood


Looking forward to your responses...
 
came off the river with a guy that i met fishing for white bass. i dropped tailgate on pickup & got my fillet knifeout. he took a cheap german bowie hunting knife & filleted fish better & faster than i could dream. he was a master with that cheap chunk of metal.
dennis
 
My Grandfather used an old Case Whittler with stag scales for most tasks. He was an avid fisherman & I *believe* he mostly used an older Rapala filet knife.
 
Most men in my family always used a 5" Russell-Harrington boning knife for about everything that required a fixed blade and a pocketknife for everything else
 
My grandfathers fit the bill pretty well and they generally used whatever knife they got free from the local 'fill in the blank'. That or a small old timer or buck...nothing fancy, and they would scoff if they could see how full many of my blades are and the care I take of my knives. And how many I have. Not that they abused them, but they did not revere them. They sharpened them until no blade was left and kept them clean and oiled. Of course the free knives were usually decent...like a cheap Imperial. They used knives, but there was always a hatchet around for any harder work, too. My Grandpa got me started collecting knives, but he didn't have a ton himself. He liked to give them to his grandkids, though. My Dad carried a small SAK. There was always a knife in the tackle box or tool box, though. They carried small knives and had bigger ones designated for specific tasks.

And they would probably all think I am an idiot for always carrying two. ;)
 
My grandpa alway's carried a stockman, either a Schrade or a Case. Grandpa cleaned lots of fish with his stockman knives. My dad was alway's a Buck man. So, my first hunting knife was a Buck 110. For filleting fish my dad alway's used a Rapala fillet knife. I still got the first one he gave me.
 
I grew up in a logging family. My grampa and his brothers started in 1934, and were in the business until the mid 70's..
As a young boy, I would go up in the woods with him. He taught me a lot about being in the woods, as well as the business.

As far back as I can remember, we went hunting and fishing a lot. Now I am passing those lessons I learned, on to my 13 year old son. We don't hunt like a lot of people do, we actually go way back into the woods and in Wilderness areas.

The men back when I was younger were more self sustaining. They made do with what they had.
Thats one thing that always stuck in my mind. When my Grampa passed away 5 years ago, I got the few knives that he had. They had been used, but taken care of, and they were very sharp. I also got a new Schrade 34OT that I had given him for Christmas when I was very young. When I asked my Grandma why he never used it, she said because I had given it to him, and he was afraid to lose it or break it.

He could have well afforded new knives, but he couldn't justify spending money on them, when he had some that were perfectly good. I haven't been real good about things in that aspect :D A lot of us have way more than we need, but we still enjoy getting new ones. Grampa never understood why I would keep buying guns and knives when I already had a lot. However, he never lectured me about it.

So for me, it was more about the person, than the knives... Thats really carries over here as well. The knives are great, and its the common bond that brings us here, but the friendships made, are far more valuable than any of the knives...

YMMV
 
Growing up just after WW2, most of the men I knew all carried the standard pocket knife of the day; a 3 to 3 1/2 two blade jackknife of some type. Serpintine, dogleg, barlow, cigar...

But...

The men who really were out there in nature, working watermen, semi legal trappers, out and out poachers, and hunters, all carried THE sheath knife of that period; the stacked leather washer handle little finn type of sheath knife. Case, Kabar, Western, PAL, all were around. Blades were about 3 inches and a bit in length. One family in particular down on the Choptank, made their living poaching deer and other game, and a .22 rifle and a leather handle little finn was the tool that got it done.

Our scout master, carried a Remington scout knife, and was capable of doing anything he needed to do in the outdoors with it. He also carried the serpintine jack about 3 inches in length.

My dad always just used his everyday pocket knife for everything. He used a Case peanut for all his cutting, but kept a cut down English machete onb hand for what he called bushwacking. He used the short machete for kindling, but if something just needed to be cut, he'd pull out his peanut, cut, and brush it closed against his leg and slip it back in his pocket in one very smooth move.

Back in those days, you didn't see any fancy cutlery around.

Carl.
 
My Dad has always carried, and still does a Buck Woodsman for hunting. For all other purposes, it was whatever happened to be in his pocket or within reach. And that is the part that I remember most. He always had a blade or two within reach. It was every bit as essential as his wallet. The other thing I remember is that he never carried any type of locking knife. He didn't trust the locks and when used properly he figured a slippie will never close on your fingers.
 
The men of influence of my childhood carried the Stockman -most I remember were German made or Case. I also have an uncle that carried a SAK in the very early '70s, in addition to his German built Stockman.
 
My father didn't like fishing very much, but for hunting he and my grandfather too carried German made Friedrich Herder knives. Those were also their EDC knives.
 
My grandad spent most of his life hunting on the outskirts of the Everglades and fishing in the Florida Keys or on Lake Okeechobee. He'd use his EDC pocketknife (carbon, of course, two blades), and take along a few kitchen knives to clean game. I'm lucky enough to have one of his old kitchen knives ...

Dexter.jpg


BTW, weren't "The Folksy Woodsmen" a folk trio in the early '60s? ;-)

-- Mark
 
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My uncle Bobby was the woodsman of my relatives that I have known. He has surely killed his share of dear and caught his share of bass and crappy! He is now retired from work and the field mostly due to blandness from being around asbestos! He always carried and still carries an Old Timer locking Folding Hunter. Too big for my taste but I still think it is one of the all time handsomest knives!
 
Hi,

My Grandfathers carried small two blade slip-joints. One carried Camillus Peanuts, and the other, a classic Penknife of unknown lineage. Where a larger knife was needed, they used what ever Old Hickory floated to the top of the drawer.

My Father wasn't much of a hunter, but he did like to fish. He carried Imperial KampKing Scout knives. And he was tough on them. For fishing he had an old Rapala fillet knife he always had in his tackle box. I always had to sharpen it for him when I got older.

For myself, since I'm a Grandpa, I've never been much on toting a fixed blade when afield. I've probably down more with a medium Stockman, like a 34OT, over my years than any other knife I've ever had. Though I have taken to carrying a Case Gunboat and SAK Hiker this year.

Dale
 
My dad used an old buck 110 with a broken tip. I asked him how he broke it but he didnt remember. It was well used and actually fairly dull, but it did what my dad wanted of it. For my dad knives were simply tools to get some job done. My dad is the type of guy that makes a tool work for the job rather than getting the right tool for the job. He has built several houses and knows how to get work done well even with a limited tool set. He is a special guy for sure. I think a lot of the older generation guys were much less materialistic than a lot of folks today and it is something we can all learn from I think.

-Mark
 
I don't know if I can add a whole lot more than has already been said. I just can't remember knives being all that nice when I was younger. I am 62 now and if I remember correctly knives we just ordinary tools, we had nothing fancy to use, and they took quite a bit of abuse. My Dad carried a Camillus from WW2, and his dad carried a Western in a jack knife. I guess if I had to compare from then to now ---- things just were not fancy back then, and maybe there were some knife makers but I sure can't recall any. We carried ordinary knives and worked them hard.
 
When I grew up there was still a bunch of old men living in the small villages in the big forests of middle Sweden. I
t was for instance my grandfather that was a farmer, did construktion and also worked in the forest with timber in the old fassioned way with horse and axe. The saw was a chainsaw though. And Sakarias, an old moosehunter that had earned his living working hard in the forest and doing daywork among farmers. He was tall, with mussels strong as a bull and hands like frying pans. I knew Olof and Johan, they vere friends as kids and stayed that way until they passed being around 85-90 years old. They worked in the forest and loved fishing together, and there was Teodor, that mainly was known to be good at doing houses of logtimber and for being extremly economic. He was actually a very good carpentar doing furniture and used the knife very much as he didnt by special equipment as it meant costs.
I could talk about 10 more men but these is a bunch I seen the knifes of a lot. They had different needs in knifes as farmduties, hoosehunting, fishing and carving fine details.
and you know what....
They all used a birch handled traditional mora. They wouldnt dream of travelling to a city to by a knife and the store in the forest village wouldnt dream of taking home other knifes than the standard moras as that was what they sold best of, Kind of a moment 22 there all was pleased in their own way.
And even though I saw these rugged men use their knifes hard and in some cases it was men with treamendous body strengt I never saw a broken knife.

Bosse
 
I use in forrest these days puukko or bark river full tang kephart, which is around aslong as my puukko. Around 4". I'll have paired it with axe and multitool with saw and there's not much I can't do in forrest.
 
NirreBosse said:
And even though I saw these rugged men use their knifes hard and in some cases it was men with treamendous body strengt I never saw a broken knife.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there's definitely something to be said for knowing the right way to use a knife. :thumbup: Cool story, NB.

-- Mark
 
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