Kitchen Knives....

Coldwood

Coldwood

Joined
Jun 5, 2006
Messages
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Over on the Bernard Levine collectors forum, I started a thread about a new Ka bar kitchen knife I just got, wooden handle, 8-inch blade. It goes well with two others I have, an 8-inch Ontario, and a 7-inch Russell.
You know the type, clipped point, stamped steel blade with funky stampings, full tang, wooden scales, brass cutler rivets. What my mother called a butcher knife.
BRL tells me that I am possibly the premier collector of these in the known Solar System. I've got three different American makers tang stamps: Kabar, Ontario and Russell.
My point is that I think these are pretty substantial blades. A lot like the old Green River knives, or Moras.
If I had to go out into the woods with only one blade, and if you gave me one of these, I would be happy.
(I'm introducing speculation here, not an argument, about what you or I need for a woods knife.)
Let's look at these: 11-12 inches about over all - 7 to 8 inch carbon steel blade, about 1/16 to 1/8 inch thick - full tang - solid wooden scales - 2-3 brass cutler rivets.
What can I do with this? Well, because of it's length and weight, it is like a small machete - so I can use it to clear branches and build a small campsite - because of the sweep of the blade, I can use it to skin or butcher a deer - I can use it to fillet fish - I can use it to whittle and scrape - I can use it for almost any cutting job one would want a knife for, including eating, shaving, hair cutting, cloth cutting, amputations, cutting of anything.

What can I not use it for? Because of the thin-ness of the blade, I can probably not baton it to split timber - I also can probably not use it to pry open the hatch of a C-130.

Does anybody else have any interest in these? How do you use them?

later, Don
 
Whenever I get around to stalking the local flea markets I plan to buy some of these. I actually found an old set in our basement I was considering taking out to the woods. Can't recall if they're carbon or stainless.

You can baton with thin blades (I baton with my SAKs and Moras frequently), it just means you have to hammer it most the way through and then pull apart the two pieces yourself until you get down to smaller sections. I did it this morning with a standard width Frosts Mora because it was pretty rainy and I felt like having a fire.

They would make good outdoors knives and if I recall correctly they were popular on the American frontier back in the day. Very capable knives.

My only concern is getting ahold of some scrap leather and learning how to make a decent sheath. I've never tried, but I want to, and most butchers knives I see don't come equipped with a nice hip rig. :)
 
When I was about 10 or 11 years old, there was this TV show, "The Count Of Monte Cristo". (1951 or so). There was this side kick charater to the main guy, named Jacobo. Jacobo was a knife man, watching his guys back. He could fight or throw the thing like nobodys buisness. I, being an impressionable kid, used to steal one of my mothers butcher kives and sneak out back in the woods to try throwing a knife like Jacobo. In those days all butcher knives were the 8 inch or so carbon blade with a couple of oak or hickory handles rivited on. Old Hickory, Russell, were some of the brands. I don't know how many times I threw that old butcher knife at a tree, but it took a hell of alot of punishment. I'd wipe it off carefully and sneak it back into the kitchen.

The old mountain men went pretty far with a Russells green river knife. I think if you had one in a sheath, and a hatchet in a pack, you could go pretty far in the boonies.

Funny, to this day I have a soft spot for old carbon steel butcher knives, and Alexander Dumas.

But these days I carry a 12 inch machete for my woods knife.

I do like thin blades.
 
I, too, have a healthy respect for Ontario's Old Hickory knives. On at least one occasion clamped one in a vise and tried to snap it, and just got tossed back by that tough (but thin) blade. And they're usually available on eBay for under ten bucks. They also lend themselves to easy modification--those cutler's rivets let you pop off the handle, maybe install a guard, re-shape the grip, etc., etc. A little cold blue will instantly blacken and render rust-resistant that 1095 steel, too.
 
Not at the same level as your knives but still pretty good are the original :Old Hickory : butcher knives . They are supposed to be very similar to what some frontiersman used .

I have one and what looks like a deboning knife I made a nice birch bark and leather sheath for .

If I can ever figure out how to configure a U:S:B: port for WIndows X:P: I,ll pose a pic .
 
Yeah, Vivi, I go digging around in bins at flea markets, through all the stainless steel crap (i'm up to date on my tetanus shots) looking for these old carbon steel blades. Absolutely!, buy them, so we can get them into the right hands.
So, I've got a Russell, and an Ontario Old Hickory, was really surprised when my wife picked up a Kabar. I also have a Dexter and a Remington, boning knives. I have an unmarked cheese knife, VF, with a 12.5 blade, looks like a small scimitar. It is professionally manufactured, very strong and stiff, very nice clean condition, but unmarked.
(to remind, all of these I'm talking about are carbon blades, full tang, wooden scales, brass cutler rivets - probably pre-1960 i'm guessing) I will continue to buy them because they are knives that were well used by tradesmen on a daily basis, not mall-ninja glamor knives.
I have several others I've picked up at farm/yard sales, shop-made kitchen knives made out of saw blades - kind of like WWII theatre knives (some wood handles, some antler or composite handles) - but very strong flexible carbon steel saw blades, take great edges, and I would take any one as a survival knife.
I'll say it again, they are flexible but stout and edge-holding carbon steel blades, with good wood handles, and I would take any one of them for a kitchen/woods/survival knife.
 
LOL, jackknife, been there, done it, as a teenager stole one of my mother's old stainless blades and re-filed it for my own woods EDC.
After talking about all this, I should post some pictures. I have a digital camera, I can spend all day tweaking pix on Adobe PhotoShop, but I don't know how to post pictures here, on KF.
 
Thats it . From Fort Turner . It was supposed to lead you to the site I don,t know why not . I enjoy looking at flea markets . I usually don,t get that many good finds .
 
Coldwood, if you go to www.tinypic.com all you have to do is click browse, double click on the photo, then upload. Once it does that there will be a box containing a string of text similar to {img}www.tinypic.com/lhfsw{/img} using normal brackets. Just copy and paste that into your post on here.
 
I scored a Kabar and PAL butcher knife from one of my Grandma's a few years back , both would make excellent camp/bush blades.
The PAL is a little shorter and very sharp , like Return of the J.D. mentioned , I took some cold blue to it and refinished the oak scales and it looks as good as new , even better I think.

One cannot go wrong with these wonderful old knives.
 
Thanks Vivi, I'll give it a try, might take a couple of days.
Rebeltf, I like PAL blades because they were made in Plattsburgh, NY, about 17 miles from where I live. I've got a jack knife, a scout pattern and a USN Mark 1. They show up on eBay all the time. The factory is closed and demolished now. 30 years ago I could walk behind the old building and find rusty piles of old blades, the ones on top were reduced to raw dirty iron oxide from the weather. I should have taken a shovel and done some mining.
 
<a href="http://tinypic.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i10.tinypic.com/42mklkh.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

Okay, Vivi, we'll see if these are the pictures of my knives and not my girlfriend.
Soo, these are the pictures of the knives I've been getting exercised about. The top one is the Ka bar, stamped that way on the blade, no stamps on the handle which looks like maple. You can see, I hope the long diamond dimples on the blade (my apologies for the pictures, I'm shooting with a 2 pixel Casio - don't make me go spend $1000 on a high end camera, please don't, okay guys?) The Kabar has a nicely defined hollow grind.
The second is the Ontario "Old Hickory, which is (let me take a wild guess) made of hickory. Very nice stamps on blade and "Old (R) Hickory" stamped on handle. The dimpling is very straight and linear.
The third is stamped 0331 Russell on the handle. No blade stamps. It has the bizarre chicken-foot dimpling.
If you sent me into the woods with any one of these, I would be happy. Of the three, my first choice would be the Russell, it has the thickest and stiffest blade at almost 1/8 inch, also shorter and handier with a 7 inch blade. My last choice would be the Ontario, kind of thin.
 
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Okay, now I got it. Sorry for wasting everybody's time. Hey, I'm an old guy. Please refer to my previous comments ;))

"Soo, these are the pictures of the knives I've been getting exercised about. The top one is the Ka bar, stamped that way on the blade, no stamps on the handle which looks like maple. You can see, I hope the long diamond dimples on the blade (my apologies for the pictures, I'm shooting with a 2 pixel Casio - don't make me go spend $1000 on a high end camera, please don't, okay guys?) The Kabar has a nicely defined hollow grind.
The second is the Ontario "Old Hickory, which is (let me take a wild guess) made of hickory. Very nice stamps on blade and "Old (R) Hickory" stamped on handle. The dimpling is very straight and linear.
The third is stamped 0331 Russell on the handle. No blade stamps. It has the bizarre chicken-foot dimpling.
If you sent me into the woods with any one of these, I would be happy. Of the three, my first choice would be the Russell, it has the thickest and stiffest blade at almost 1/8 inch, also shorter and handier with a 7 inch blade. My last choice would be the Ontario, kind of thin."

Don
 
They are all pretty nice in their own way . Darn it now I have something new to collect . L:O:L

Thing is most of the old kitchen knives found in Canada would be of British origin .
They are nice just more formal/refined looking . I have a carver that has a guard that flips/pivots up on guard or down out of the way with a flick of the thumb .

Lots of nice sheffield carbon steel .
 
Thanks, Kevin, we all have to collect something ;) The American colonies were built on Sheffield steel.
 
Coldwood said:
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In one of Ken Warners's Knives anuals, I think it was early 90's, he had an article about the "great knife". The knife carried by the frontiersmen in the mid to late 1700's. They all looked like a big butcher knife. I'm sure that many a deer felled by a Kentucky long rifle, or a hog dropped by a homesteader was butchered by knives just like these 200 years ago.

Knives like these carried by exploreers, trappers, canoe voyagers, helped open up the country.

George Sears in his woods ramblings talked about his holy trinity, consisting of a pocket knife, a thin bladed butcher knife, and his special little hatchet. I think these knives of coldwood's would work very well out in the boonies.

Great knives man!
 
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