Historic Knives

The Magician

Illusionist
Joined
Jan 19, 2000
Messages
1,580
I am always interested in learning new things and I pretty much got tired of going from one super steel to the next trying to find a perfect knife. I was thinking how many choices we have with the super steels and all. What kind of knives did people carry in the old days?
Mountain men? Cowboys? Indians? Trappers? Farmers? Caveman? You get the idea. Did they have a choice in what they got? What would they think of a modern hunting or combat knife? Tactical folders? Surely other people think about stuff like that too.
 
Back in the old days (no I'm not that old) iron and steel were valuable commodities. There was a lot of 'recycling' going on. Knives were commonly made from worn out files, broken saw blades etc. What ever was broken and handy.
The early colonists, when they moved would burn down their houses so that they could collect the nails!
In the 70's, the battle field at Hastings was excavated. The archeologists expected to find weapons & armor...but they didn't. All of that stuff was too valuable to be left there, so the dead were stripped and anything usable was carted off.
Bruce Evans made me a damascus bowie. He calls it "Frontier Damascus" because he does it like in the old days...my blade has a ballpeen hammer head, some socket wrench, I think a barn door hinge, and some other steel goodies in it! And...it cuts like the proverbial Dickens :)
Is it as good as the new wonder steels?
I don't know, most likely not...
Does it have lots of character and a story behind it?
You betcha!
If you saw the Brutal Bowies thread from a week or two ago, you saw the knife.
Hope that helps,
Ebbtide
 
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