New Bark River Gaucho knife

Who wants to see bark river gaucho blade become a reality ?

  • Total voters
    20
If you factor in the "historical significance", then the dirt cheap version is the true historical gaucho knife. The original gaucho knives (punal, caronero and later verijero) were mostly recycled sabres and bayonets or butcher blanks imported from Solingen (very much like the trade blades in North America). I like these knives and I like them even more when they are flat and thin ground. Don't see that coming from BRK, though.
 
Does anyone know where I can buy a nice traditional gaucho knife,carbon or stainless with stag or wood handle thats in range up to 200$?
 
If you plan to invest as much as 200 $, I can only advise you to buy from a knifemaker. For getting a taste of the pattern, google "gaucho knife" and you will find dozens of sites, mainly focused on tourist stuff admittedly, but hey they're cheap, it's steel and it cuts. Some even look good. Look closely at the sheath. A crappy sheath is a bad sign for a knife worn in the waistband.
 
herisson said:
If you factor in the "historical significance", then the dirt cheap version is the true historical gaucho knife. The original gaucho knives (punal, caronero and later verijero) were mostly recycled sabres and bayonets or butcher blanks imported from Solingen (very much like the trade blades in North America). I like these knives and I like them even more when they are flat and thin ground. Don't see that coming from BRK, though.
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I bought a number of them in Uruguay and Argentina ( Uruguayan ones where better ) . A few from kinda mini Home Depot stores which is where you find the working mans facón still German steel still high quality and 2 from custom makers ( one with armadillo handle that’s beautiful) all of them very extremely hard to sharpen like wow . But the issue really I found was the blade geometry is pretty thick and behind the edge in particular. The only thing holding it back to me is that the tendency to over engineer the robustness ( practical for a hard use knife sure ). I really feel that my bark river knives have the robustness needed but are thin enough behind the edge even with the convex grind to perform. I don’t have any super beefy bark rivers has to be said ( puukko, fox river and aurora models ) . The only thin facón I saw where cheap and where really bbq set knives with the paired fork combo in the sheath.
 
skyhorse said:
You can buy the real deal dirt cheap, why pay extra ?
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Is that carbon steel?
 
ibshaun said:
But the issue really I found was the blade geometry is pretty thick and behind the edge in particular. The only thin facón I saw where cheap and where really bbq set knives with the paired fork combo in the sheath.
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I will add this : the original facons (one edge) and dagas (double edged) were quite thick and narrow because they were primarily weapons (blade around 10" to 12" or more). The caronero was even longer, almost a sword. The punal was more of a "do it all" knife. Still in the 8" to 10" range (thick stock is desirable because delicate to rough everyday tasks). What you see most in today's offering are blades in the 5" to 7" range. These would be actually "verijeros" (small knives intended for bull castrating or cutting up your Tbone steak, AKA : light everyday tasks). They should be thinner stock and as they are traditionally full flat ground, they shouldn't be too thick behind the edge. The BBQ knife set as sold by Böker is pretty cool. The knife exists without fork, too. It's certainly thin but if you're not into wood splitting it will do everything you want. The problem with tourist stuff oriented sites (and, I hate to say it, Spanish distributors) is they are very scarce with precise information like thickness at the spine or even nature of the steel... A direct mail could be a solution to this matter (hey, today (almost) everybody is on the net).
 
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lonestar1979 said:
Does anyone know where I can buy a nice traditional gaucho knife,carbon or stainless with stag or wood handle thats in range up to 200$?
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Google "KDS Knives Argentina" - it's a little family-run cuchilleria outside Mendoza, Argentina. Their work was high-quality, and given the location, it'd be a pretty authentic gaucho knife. IIRC they use O1 for carbon blades and American 440C for stainless.
 
Their Criollos with 3 to 4 mm blades look really nice. I could consider the Criollo 5. If you're not into stabbing wild cows, you don't need a blade thicker than 4 mm. Even 3 mm, and it will slice better. I think promoting a non-BF knife maker should be avoided. Too late...
 
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