Muskrat Question

[El Lobo]

The Famous Synonymous Analogy of Genealogy, or.........

The CASE of the SCHRADE "Improved" Muskrat, and it's blades.......Whew!



For those of you that have Levine's Guide 4, on page 216, it's interesting to see the Remington Muskrat with two like blades, with no apparent "Clip" to them at all. Unless that is considered a "loooooong" clip? Described as lance shaped in the copy, it does not appear to me that the belly of the blade would fall below the handle when open. While the points may be good for close work, the shape looks ???? for skinning. Was the more pronounced clip a newer pattern addition?

This is all so very..........well......fun, and educational!

Bill

 

[GRMike]

We have a knife apparently designed for trappers. But it's not called a trapper, since there is already one of those, it's called a muskrat instead. And even though the muskrat is designed for the same task as the trapper, it's different. It has, in its current form at least, two identical elongated clip blades, not a clip and a spey, and they come from opposite ends of the handle, not the same end. This seems to offer certain advantages over trappers, but they're still making trappers anyway.

Furthermore it is an improved muskrat. But just what the improvement is is hard to say. It looks suspiciously like the word "improved" is a front-office ploy to sell a few knives, even if it had some basis in reality once upon a time--at least as far as some trappers were concerned, but not others, who continued to favor that altogether different design called the trapper.

Don't get me wrong, I've gotta say this stuff is interesting. There is cultural history in that steel, and in those words. Out of all the ways folders could be made--the virtually infinite number of permutations and combinations of blades and handles--only a few ways do get made and of those, fewer still survive the test of time.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that not a lot of muskrats, or trappers, get sold these days for their original purpose. You can extend that to stockmans, doctor's knives and probably some others. When my father-in-law bought the 834UH that I have in my pocket right now, he didn't have any idea of what a stockman is, in the sense of its original functions, at least, and he probably didn't know the term as a name for a particular knife pattern either. He certainly wasn't going to use it for things like castrating bull calves and repairing leather harnesses. I think many of these traditional designs have become cultural icons. They survive at least as much because they "look like knives" to modern knife buyers as because they continue to be useful for new tasks even as their original uses are fading from the scene. The stockman may not only be the most useful of all, but look the part of the knife best of all, and that may explain its enormous popularity.

At any rate, I doubt that I'll ever skin a muskrat with my 77OT, but I know it's not going to just sit in roll in my drawer either.

Any thoughts on knives as cultural icons?

 

[glennbad]

How about the Bowie knife?

Without the history behind it, it might have been known as the "big a$$ knife for chopping people into tiny bits".

Take that a step further, and you have the "Rambo" knife. Now there's a cultural icon for you.

Glenn

 

[lrv]

Dont forget about my favorite cultural icon the "Switch Blade".
Movies, books and teenage dreams are built around this wonderful tool with a great place in our history.
Lt can, I'm sure, fill a few pages here about them.

TTYL
Larry

 

[Grateful]

So the improvped muskrat is just a trapper with the blades on either end"clip and spey"? If I understand this right what is the advantage of the improved muskrat over a two bladed trapper? Also I have heard the one bladed trapper"clip only"refered to as a farmers knife. Was this how it was marketed or just a nick-name that stuck.
I have been using trappers some lately,I like them.I had a 77ot when I was younger but don't have it anymore.....I think I am starting to miss it.

 

[El Lobo]

Grateful,
No spey blade, of course, on the Muskrat.....But the two bladed Trapper with no spey blade would seem similar, for sure, to the Muskrat. I guess the only advantage for the Muskrat would be.......you can't grab the knife at the "wrong" end.

Bill