ignorant question???

J

jsmithknives

Joined
Dec 11, 2008
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I have been seeing an increasing amount of knives for sale lately, listed as bushcraft knives. My question to you is this, what defines a bushcraft knife? Is it the shape of the blade, the grind on the blade, or what. It seems that with all of the knives listed as such, I am not really seeing any major cominalities in the knives! Just curious and wanted to see your opinions...
Thanks Jason
 
Not ignorant at all. I'm sure the definition changes a little with every make/user. I always thought of them as ranging between 5-4" blade length, shallow blade depth ~ 1.25 or so and little to no gaurd on the bottom. A bare bones blade.
 
I think that is a darn good question. I would say its kinda subjective and unfortunately a sort of catch phrase like Bowie knife. Its a very abstact and mostly meaningless lable that may or may not increase sales. OR it is The knife that you would carry with you while in the bush. No offence to the folks who make bushcraft knives I was just staeing my opinion. Personally I am a huge fan of the Kephart style for a "bushcraft" knife.
 
The first I saw called that were Tai Goo's Bushcraft line. I still think of those first when I hear the term. His are some of the most disinctively shaped, too.
 
Webster defines ignorant as: "lacking knowledge or experience". With that explanation, I suppose most questions could be considered as ignorant.

I have no idea what a bushcrafter knife would be. I think we get carried away with style names. Bowie, skinner, hunter, and camp knife pretty well covers all styles for me but I'm pretty simple. I suppose "art" could be applied to some of the knives I see because they wouldn't be practical to use.
 
I once called a knife a frontier knife and got dumped on for it, well I did make the knife and where my house is use to be the frontier so go figure, as well as it did look like a frontier knife to me, course this begs the question of do you have to be from Norway to make a Scandi.
I think the above said it whats in a name if you want to make it a bush knife the so be it, if others don't look it so be it again. I am Ok with loose defined guidelines but hey this is not a international customs court where millions hinge on a word. Even if it is for sale and it does not look like the Bush knife you would buy then be happy and don't buy it.
I guess what I am saying without international standards the term is well whatever you think it is. :foot: Cheers Ron.
 
When I think of the term "bushcraft knife" , I see a 4" to 6" fixed blade (or not) overbuilt (thick blade) blade, overbuilt (over sized handle/grip, and a little over long), and what I think of as a simple edge grind. Maybe think of a over built Scandinavian.

Well FWIW thats what bushcraft knife means to me... IMO

Will be interesting to see the thoughts of others...

/ al
 
I think it is a British term. Mostly seems to mean a simple knife with a scandi grind.
 
I guess gator68 is right about "bushcraft" being a British term (the first time I heard the word bushcraft was on a British web site), meaning what I would have called (in my youth) survival skills. Meaning fire making, shelter making/finding, direction finding/fallowing, safe food finding/preparing, in an emergency. And all this with only wet matches and a broken condom...ie: a bushcraft knife = survival knife ...
 
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