Grass always greener...?

[jackknife]

I've been following the post by Fausto, on getting his first American traditional knife pattern, and I couldn't help but think back to all my encounters with European knife people and what they carried.

I was fortunate in my army career, before it got cut a bit short, to have served on four different continents and working with some very varied culture people. England, Germany, a short TDY stint in Libya at the Wheelus Air force base, Southeast Asia, although I'd like to forget that one, and here in the U.S.

While I was in the engineers, it was the kind of job that had us working closely with the civil engineers in different places. No matter if we were pouring cement for a runway extension, or buildings for a base renovation. Construction guys are the same all over, no matter if the guy over there in muddy work boots and coveralls is a German guy named Klaus, or a Arab guy named Mustaffa. And all working guys the world over pick similar stuff to see them through the day on the job.

Fausto is looking for his first multi blade American knife. The irony of it makes me think about the fact that I never saw a pocket knife as we would call it, in all my time over seas. In Europe, I saw a lot of old well used wood handled sodbusters like Herters, Kissing Krane, Eye-Brand. Lots of Opinels, Douk-Douks, Mercators, Laguiole's of a few different makes, Nontron, Linder's, and some other brands. All simple single blade folders of various sizes. The only multi-bladed knives I ever saw were the red handle sak's. Except for the German engineers we worked with, they had the alox Victorinox or Wenger soldier models.

I know that Sheffield made all kinds of multiblade pocket knives for the gentleman trade, and for export. But I wonder if the bulk of working men all over the world, use a plain old single blade knife like a soddie. Traveling on four continents gives one a perspective on things. I don't know where all those 4 plus bladed knives from Sheffield went, but I wonder how much was for the American trade and home grown gentry. I have to wonder what did the working stiffs in England do for a knife? Guys like a cab driver in London, a sailor on a merchant ship, or even a soldier shipping off to one of the colonies to keep peace in India or the America's?

I grew up in a country where the two blade jack was king. But in 1963, Buck introduced the 110 folding hunter, and knifedom was never the same since. It seems as if the two and three blade jacks and stockman of my boyhood have been like the buffalo, driven almost to extinction by the new age folders that can be produced much faster and easier. Buck with all their single blade lockblades, Spyderco, Benchmade, Gerber, Cold Steel, and the rest all seem to offer a wide range of single locking blade knives. Many people who see my knives are always a little shocked at how the blades don't lock open. The knife market is so inundated with the new age modern folders that some people don't even know the old ones are still being made. I had one person say to me "Boy, that must be a real oldie. They sure don't make them like that anymore!" It was my Case peanut. He was even surprised Case was still in business. Sure, there are the boutique knife companies like GEC, that turn out beautifully fitted knives with price tags that make you think twice before opening a bag of cement or stripping some wire with it. But in the overall numbers of production, they count for a small fraction of sales in the knife world. The single blade locker is king now, and we're but a minority. Except for sak's.

I guess in Europe things still remained simple, with knives like Opinels and Herters being the choice for the working man who just needs to cut something. I never saw a single stockman, canoe, trapper, or any other of what we call traditional here in the U.S. I can only wonder if it's a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the hill, or just a different culture where knives are looked at in a different way. I've seen few knives as elegant as some of the knives from Corsica or Sardinia, or Italy.Those flame shaped blades are artful and exotic to my eye. But I guess if that's what you're used to, maybe a copperhead or barlow is the exotic one.

I guess greener grass is in the eye of the beholder.

Carl.

 

[OzarkCreekWalker]

maybe american multi-blade pocket knife manufacturers like case made it difficult for european companies to sell multibladed knives, or they just figured more money could be made selling them mostly in america. either way, simple single bladed knifes like opinels are probably easier and cheaper to manufacture (i say probably because its only an assumption) thanks for the read

 

[LKJW]

Good food for thought, Carl.

 

[thesouthernguitarist]

Interesting thought. Unfortunately the mulit blade traditional slipjoint is pretty uncommon these days, except with older guys. I know very young people who carry a traditional knife. As far as knives from other countries go, I can't really speak on that, because I'm not to familiar with the designs and whatnot.

 

[jamesbeat]

Is it possible that, due to the construction type environments in which you made your observations, the knives you saw were selected by their owners because of their simple, rugged design, and thus not representative of what the general public may have been carrying?

I'd be very interested to learn what the average British guy would have had in his pocket when people used to routinely carry knives.

 

[littleknife]

I think OzarkCreekWalker’s assumption is valid regarding the situation in some European countries in the mid 20th century.
I grew up in Hungary, and the two types of pocketknives I’ve seen until the ‘90s were either single blade slipjoints or SAKs.

SAKs were expensive, because they were foreign imports.
The single blades were mostly traditional Hungarian patterns made by a few cutlers still in business under the communism.
These were small, family run cutlery shops with one or few apprentices (if at all) working with the master. Think guild type manufacturing rather than factory production.
The internal demand for pocketknives was not high enough to warrant large scale factory production, neither could have eventual newly established communist cutlery factories compete with the quality and price of well established Western firms on the international market.
The market niche was efficiently served by the few tiny family businesses in existence.

As an interesting fact, most of these knives were made with about 150 years old technology from Solingen, involving the use few mechanized steps (mainly for grinding, sharpening and polishing) and a lot of manual labor. Even so, the fit and finish was variable, mostly acceptable only and not infrequently poor. These pocketknives were quite sturdy (typically nailbrakers), and also quite expensive. Building a multiblade would have further increased the price and reduced the chance to sell the product, since the people who bought them did not have much disposable income.

Finally, an interesting observation. Most people I have seen using a pocketknife back then used them primarily as eating utensils: to cut or slice one’s breakfast or lunch ingredients: bread, salami, cheese, bacon (there is even a traditional Hungarian pattern called "szalonnázó bicska” - “pocket knife for bacon-eating&#8221, vegetables, fruit. Eating cold lunch was common among workers and farmers even under the communism. In this era the wrapping materials were brown paper or canvas cloth, so people did not pack sandwiches prepared in advance, but the ingredients in their store containers. A pocketknife came in handy to prepare and eat the meal, and would not be so bulky as a fixed blade paring or table knife.

 

[quattromori]

Well, before I throw my 2 cents in, I have to thank Jackknife for quoting me twice in his OP...never thought I would be granted such honor here
My short and limited experience is pretty much on the same line. I don't know much about northern European knife users, but down here (on my island, but all over Italy, and France, etc) a single blade is all u see around. American styled multiblades (from what I've seen so far) remain a standard only on the other side of the Atlantic, and only for traditionals, since modern folders are single bladed too. Sure for me a Stockman looks kind of exotic.
I have never used or even owned a multibladed knife (I consider SAK a cathegory of its own), so I'm not able to tell which works best for me. As a pure intellectual fact, I can agree that a secondary blade might have a reason to be (not that much a third or fourth blade I guess). As a user, I never felt the need of it. Nor did my ancestors, as far as I know, and they did use their knives alot more than I do.
I think that knife factories may have had a role in this. Here in Sardinia, knives have always been hand made by single knifemakers who made each knife for a single user. So probably, it would have been more complicated and expensive to build multibladed knives, and at the same time, nobody asked for them.
Probably in the US (and in England for export) factory production started before, so it became easier (and cheaper) to build and sell multibladed knives, creating an offer to which the users quickly got used to. I admit this is just my own idea, and I know nothing about the history of those knives. But it's the only thing that makes some sense to me, that it must have been a "factory induced" style, because users' needs, on both sides of the ocean, must have been (and still must be) pretty much the same.
Fausto

 

[Rsmith_77]

I guess in Europe things still remained simple, with knives like Opinels and Herters being the choice for the working man who just needs to cut something. I never saw a single stockman, canoe, trapper, or any other of what we call traditional here in the U.S. I can only wonder if it's a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the hill, or just a different culture where knives are looked at in a different way. I've seen few knives as elegant as some of the knives from Corsica or Sardinia, or Italy.Those flame shaped blades are artful and exotic to my eye. But I guess if that's what you're used to, maybe a copperhead or barlow is the exotic one.

Carl.

anyone have any thoughts as to WHY the US took to multi-bladed knives over the more european single blade knives?
Did americans have different needs in the last couple hundred years than farmers/cattlemen etc etc of europe

see, i didnt even realize until recently that there was much of a difference between americans and european knife customs and i wonder why that came about

 

[jackknife]

anyone have any thoughts as to WHY the US took to multi-bladed knives over the more european single blade knives?
Did americans have different needs in the last couple hundred years than farmers/cattlemen etc etc of europe

see, i didnt even realize until recently that there was much of a difference between americans and european knife customs and i wonder why that came about

I haven't the foggiest why. But I think the change came later in the 1800's. Living in the east, I have the great chance to tour many old battle fields from both the Civil war, and the Revolutionary war. In museums at both types of battle fields, there are examples of rusty pocket knives carried by the soldiers of both sides. In the 1770's it was medium to large single blade knives with somewhat sodbusterish type of construction. In the civil war, there are a great many single blade pocket knives found that look a bit barlowish in profile. Only once did I see a relic knife found at Gettysburg, that was a two blader. The big change seemed to come about the 1880's and on. At the Custer battlefield museum, I saw a two blade jackknife in the same case as two single bladed knives, one of which had a broken blade.

I have a feeling that the regular guy carried a cheap single blade knife, just like today's non knife knuts do, and the multiblades were the relm of the well to do rancher or farmer, or general rich guy.

Carl.

 

[Thalestin]

I feel blade number is a representation of what your used to. For myself I have only used knives witha single blade. As such, you learn to use the knives that are common to you. For example, many people these days are used to using dull knives and have a hard time using a sharp blade safely. For me, multibladed knives just seem redundant, and I would prefer other tools muck like te good ol sak. To me its about liking the grass that you walk daily

 

[db]

My guess is here in America we have a more is better attitude. Yes even in the good old days this was the attitude of most. We also have been a country with alot of welth. Even our poor are way better off than most in other countries and have more disposable income than people in other countries. Therefore more multy bladed knives were sold here and became traditional working knives. I could be way off but that is my thought.

 

[jacknife]

I can't say I saw many people regularly carrying pocket knives here in the UK in the sixties/seventies. I'm sure farmers did, but nobody in my family carried one except me. I do know that if you were looking for a quality knife you'd most likely go to a hardware store and there you'd find typically Sheffield made Lambsfoot type knives, or a Barlow type knife sometimes called a 'Bunny Knife' over here. I always think the Lambsfoot knife was typical for the UK but it's only my opinion based on what few knives I saw on sale at that time.

 

[littleknife]

Abraham Lincoln had a congress knife on him when he was assassinated. If I recall it correctly it was an English made ivory handled knife. It is possible that multiblades might have been common among the wealthier Americans around the Civil War (1860s). I guess the large scale industrial pocketknife production in the newly established American cutlery factories in the 1880s-1890s might have reduced the price of even the more expensive multiblade pocketknives so that they became affordable to many working class people too. Also, fancier pocketknives, especially the multiblades could have been status symbols for many Americans, including immigrants. I remember reading in one of Carl’s tales that his Grandfather replaced at one point his single blade sailor’s knife with a stag handled stockman.

 

[neeman]

I can't say I saw many people regularly carrying pocket knives here in the UK in the sixties/seventies. I'm sure farmers did, but nobody in my family carried one except me. I do know that if you were looking for a quality knife you'd most likely go to a hardware store and there you'd find typically Sheffield made Lambsfoot type knives, or a Barlow type knife sometimes called a 'Bunny Knife' over here. I always think the Lambsfoot knife was typical for the UK but it's only my opinion based on what few knives I saw on sale at that time.

I mainly saw them in Rosewood

There was also the Camper knife (scout) with the faux MOP thin cover instead of scale

 

[neeman]

With the very strict knife laws in England and Europe against any type of locking knife
It will be interesting to see if there is a move back to slipjoints

 

[jacknife]

There was also the Camper knife (scout) with the faux MOP thin cover instead of scale

I've a few of them kicking around somewhere here. They were among the types of knife that used to be sold
on display cards. cheap and cheerful. I was a fool, all the ones I have I ground of the fish scaler and turned it in
to kind of a safety blade as I wasn't into fishing. Should have kept some as original.

 

[Modoc ED]

I was stationed in Edzell, Scotland from Oct 1966 through Oct 1968 and married my first wife there. Her Mom and Dad owned a small farm not far from the base and her Dad (Jock) carried a single blade knife that looked much like todays Case 3 5/8" Sodbuster. The slabs were dark stag. He used that knife for everything (even performed a cesarean birth on a stressed cow one night). Whenever I went to the local livestock auctions with him, most of the other men also had the same style knife. I gotta say he kept that knife very sharp. He carried a 3" to 4" stone with him in a cardboard sleeve and would touch up the blade of his knife whenerver it needed it.

 

[quattromori]

Reading this thred, I am thinking that the grass is greener on one's side...
I wish there was some sort of 'new wave' of traditionals here, but I doubt it. Here in my homeland, most people already carry traditionals and they're fine with that. The laws here are foggy and it's very unlikely to be checked by the police. The majority of 'new users' will go on using single bladed locking folders in modern style, and my guess is that this is not going to chane for the moment...it will take some time (it's a process most experience) to change tastes and shift to traditionals.
It's kinda funny how hard it is to find a reason for the multiblades in the US. Thinking about it more these days, I have come to the conclusion that needs and use were and are basically the same on both sides of the ocean, and that casualty may have had a bigger role than we expect, especially considering the 'import' factor (blades were imported in the US way before factories started there...more food for thought.
Fausto

 

[Cisco Kid]

This Summer in Europe, I encountered a very hostile environment for pocket knives. I carried a small Spyderco (2 1/2'' blade) and every time I used it in public I got comments about the "weapon" I was carrying with me. Like if it's not a SAK, it's a weapon.

 

[spydutch]

This Summer in Europe, I encountered a very hostile environment for pocket knives. I carried a small Spyderco (2 1/2'' blade) and every time I used it in public I got comments about the "weapon" I was carrying with me. Like if it's not a SAK, it's a weapon.

Yup....... it's very sad over here:grumpy: