OT - Ragnar's trade pattern knives

T

TomFetter

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Dec 6, 2004
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Anybody got one (or two, or ...)? Sweet looking knives, patterned after the types that were bartered in fur-trade times. On Ragnar's website, it says that the knives are thin (about 1/16") "like the originals," with a springy temper.

I'm finding myself sorely tempted, especially as the smallest of them looks about the right size for a karda. The next size up might fit my son's hand. But how useful are they in "real life," being that thin and all? They sound about as thick as your average paring knife - so good for slicing, but maybe not so good perhaps for even moderate usage away from the kitchen? In times when steel was expensive as hell, I can see why the miserly French and English fur traders wouldn't have had thicker knives as their stock-in-trade items, but how big a cost in the knife's performance d'you think it made, compared to something in the same pattern, but twice as thick?
 
I've not seen them. Satori has some of the mora knives that he uses in place of the kardas. They're listed under the frost knives. They're of a good size. Biggest problem is that they stick up quite a bit out of the sheath.

mike
 
I've got a couple of Moras too - good knives alright, take a great edge, and cheap as dirt. Moras have been my standard small knife for a long time.

Stiff blades though - and I find myself wondering how a spring tempered knive might be for outdoors work. I've got a couple of really nice Sabatier kitchen knives with that kind of temper, that take a great edge - but wouldn't think that they'd stand up to much hard labour out of the kitchen. Cutting carrots and steaks is one thing ... pine and maple is quite another.
 
I'm not really sure, although Dave does have them with most of his kuks. (at least the ones he uses all the time). He said the same thing, that they take a "REALLY MEAN" edge, and hold it well. Maybe he'll fill in the gaps for us.

mike
 
I've got a #TR-SW; "The Southwestern"with bird-beak style handle and slightly trailing point skinner blade. The blade length is just over 5". $34 from Ragweed Forge, but I got mine at "The Fort" in Morrison in the foothills southwest of Denver. The Fort is a restaurant that is built as a partial replica of Bent's Old Fort, a trading post along the Santa Fe Trail in the 1830's. I picked mine up when we went there for my birthday. It's a place where you can get a nice elk steak.

The handle is very nice to look at and feel. The design is very practical. It has a saber grind blade which is not what I prefer, but it adds some strength to the blade. You are not going to split any wood with this thin blade, but it works well for hunting and general utility purposes. The blade finish is a little bit artificially rough. All in all it is a nice addition to a collection.
 
Thanks Jeff - pretty much what I thought.

The design of that knife you got is really nice - I'd like either that one or one of the larger pattern French drop tip knives. But optimally, I'd want it with a blade 2-3X as thick where the spine meets the handle ... and with enough distal taper to bring it down to a little over 1/16 a bit shy of the tip.

While I'm sure Ragnar's right that the thin knife stock is "authentic," that just says to me that there's nothing new in ripping people off ... (not Ragnar or the current manufacturer, I mean ... the original traders!).

t.
 
The national park service built a replica of Bent's Old Fort down in Southern Colorado back in the 60's or there abouts. They have a replica of the old trading store in the building. The old knives were basically butcher knives since that is basically what the trappers were doing, butchering wild game. Frankly the thin knives work better than thick knives. They also sold trade hatchets and tomahawks for chopping wood.

Outside the fort they have a souvenir shop where they sell some trade knives that are made by the same Brittish Company to the same design as back in the 1830's. These are also thin blades, but they are fully ground from spine to edge. The steel is something like 1075 or 1085 and gets really sharp. The model that I bought there was called a scalping knife, but I would see it as more of a carving/butcher knife. They had at least 2 or three designs.

I think that you may want one of the heavier Green River knives. These are closer to 1/8-inch thick. The buffalo skinner or sheep skinner designs are good for skinning game. Here are some examples, but I haven't checked the blade thickness.
http://www.crazycrow.com/Merchant2/...001&Category_Code=841-400-000&Product_Count=7
 
Ragnars won,t ship to Canada . Apparently a lot of his packages got lost in transit or "are in storage" at the border . Its too bad . I,m trying to build my own forge and make my own Seax . I don,t think I,ll ever attempt a Kyukuuri though .
 
The equivalent would be an Ontario or Hickory or Green River carbon steel butcher knife. I have seen those for sale in Canada as recently as this May.

The hawk or axe was for wood chopping/splitting. The knife was for flesh, leather -- or carving wood.

Dull was easily solved with the right piece of rock. Broken was a problem. So spring-tempered.
 
cndrm said:
I'm not really sure, although Dave does have them with most of his kuks. (at least the ones he uses all the time). He said the same thing, that they take a "REALLY MEAN" edge, and hold it well. Maybe he'll fill in the gaps for us.
Click to expand...

I believe that TF is referring to a different style of knife, Mike. Ragnar sells an assortment of knives, some of which are on the soft side.

Soft isn't bad, really. Like Tom Linton said, they're real easy to sharpen and a bent blade is easier to fix in the woods than a broken one. I've got one of the "softer" ones from Ragnar, the double sided sticker. It works well enough. The price is hard to beat.

The Moras are quite hard (around 60 Rc IIRC on the carbon steel models) and take (IMO) a better edge that lasts longer. I would expect that sharpening one of these without a proper hone would be a PITA.

As far as whether or not thin is good for a knife made strictly for cutting, I'll sum that up in one word: Opinel. :)
 
Speaking of thin...

Anyone remember the old Imperial Bowie Hunting Knives? They used too sell for about a buck fifty.
They had about a 4-1/2"-5" blade the best I recall and were stiff. The blade was maybe 0.080" thick or so.
I have one in my workroom I am going to put new scales on someday.
They were great little knives for the money, hell better than great really as they were decently hard and would take and hold an edge.
I'll see if I can find it later today and put a mic on it too see just how thick they really are.
They weren't prybars but they were nice little knives, even though I had to grow up to realize it.:rolleyes: :o ;) :D
 
Dave, I have one of those double-sided blades from Ragnar. That thing scares me. It takes a razor edge, and I really have to concentrate on NOT putting my hand on the 'back' of the blade when I'm chopping.

If you guys want to do a little extra work, both JantzSupply and TexaxKnife sell the Green River blades-only, and whatever pins/rivets you need. Pretty easy to make your own knife after you scrounge some handle wood. Or, I have some nice fruitwood I could send you.
 
Yvsa said:
Speaking of thin...

Anyone remember the old Imperial Bowie Hunting Knives? They used too sell for about a buck fifty.
They weren't prybars but they were nice little knives, even though I had to grow up to realize it.:rolleyes: :o ;) :D
Click to expand...

REPLY :
I,m not going to get into age here as I am well past the fryer stage of my life and slowly descending into boiler status ! L:O:L

I seem to remember seeing a bowie with a pretty thin handle/tang/ blade . Unfortunately I too was at the stage that if a knife wasn,t sharp it was because I took the wrong one out of the drawer . now i search fleamarkets and garage sales rescuing half decent kitchen knives and turning them into small game arrowheads . I also try to modify them into hunting camping knives . I guess the less time you have left the sweeter it becomes and the more you can do with it .
 
Aardvark said:
If you guys want to do a little extra work, both JantzSupply and TexaxKnife sell the Green River blades-only, and whatever pins/rivets you need. Pretty easy to make your own knife after you scrounge some handle wood. Or, I have some nice fruitwood I could send you.
Click to expand...

Oddly enough, or perhaps not so oddly so, the Green River knife blades are also quite thin, ranging between 1/16 and 1/8 inch thick. Good steel though, hold an edge just fine, and cut like blue blazes.

Sarge
 
I think Jeff and Thomas have it right.

I was thinking that the trade knives were designed for pretty much what I'd want a knife for in the outdoors. A bit of this, a bit of that - more focus on carving up wood than carving up animals.

Some more googling has shown me that I was wrong. And if these knives were essentially butcher knives - either preparing animals for the table or their skins for varied uses - then it makes sense that the design was optimized for that. Big surprise - their blades have similar characteristics to my most useful utility kitchen knife.

Says more about my lack of research, and the changed way that we now approach the outdoors, than about the designers/sellers of the original knives.

t.
 
Here's the knife I am talking about. IIRC when I was a wee young lad they came with real wood handles, the composites came later but it's been so long ago I could be mistaken. I do know that I had one with wood slabs, from the factory, though.;)

I went to my workroom and got down the old Imperial I have and measured the thickness. It is ground from 0.095" stock. Where the flat grind is cut in it is 0.080" thick which is 18 thousands over 1/16 inch. Where the clip starts the blade is 0.070" thick and 1/4" from the point it is 0.030" thick which is 2 thousands less than 1/32 inch.
Pretty thin knife no matter how you look at it.:eek:
A file skates across the edge meaning that it's around 60 Rc hard which also means that at that thickness it is going to be pretty brittle meaning absolutely no prying allowed!!!!
In 1953 when we lived in Orofino Idaho these were the knives that most people took deer hunting with them. They were dirt cheap even then and no great loss if you lost one or broke it.
I'd almost bet that these little knives have skinned damned near as many deer as has been killed by a 30-30 or .22 over the early years.;) :D
Mine was in better shape than this one before I cleaned it up, just the handles were cracked. At this going price maybe the old Imperial deserves some Ironwood or other exotic scales, who would have ever guessed that a $1.50 knife would be for sale for $120.00? :eek:

Edit:
Oh yeah, mine is a full flat grind instead of the saber grind this one has. I had never noticed that before and now I'm wondering if they were made at different times in Imperial's history.:confused:

bq417-1.jpg



#BQ417 - American Bowie Knife,ca. 1920s, by Imperial - $120.00



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American Bowie Knife, ca. 1920s, marked "IMPERIAL PROV. RI USA." Composite or early celluloid grip. Blade stained, with light rust marking. Grips fine. Without sheath. Overall 8 ¾", blade 4 7/8".

http://www.antiqueswords.com/bq417.htm
 
I got one of the Imperial short bowie knives when I was about 14 (must have been 1963) to use while bow hunting. Mine had a stainless steel blade that was relatively hard. It was my first encounter with a hard stainless and it was quite different from sharpening carbon steel. I was going hunting with my cousin and uncle who were long time bow hunters. I remember the satisfaction I got when my cousin tested the edge and asked, "what do you do with this thing, sharpen it every day?" Well actually I had sharpened it every day for the preceding week, but it was good to have it appreciated.
 
Yvsa, they go for lot's less than that on eBay. My stepdad had one in his fishing tackle box with that same black handle. Every onece in a while, he'd take sand paper to it. Took a nice edge.
 
Yvsa,
I always wanted one of those when I was a kid. Found one on ebay a couple of years ago for about $25-30. Black plastic handles probably from the '60s. It has the folding "camper" knife with can opener and awl in a pouch on the front of the sheath. I can die a happy man now. ;)

Steve
 
To me, that $120 knife demonstrates the innate silliness of something becoming a "collectable" like little else could, Yvsa.

I had a very similar crummy bowie as a kid as my first fixed blade, right down to the plastic handle. It was a pretty awful knife, and even then I knew I'd have been much better off packing a decent kitchen knife into the woods. So today ... well, it might be kinda cool to handle something like it again ... but purchase it? Not when that same $120 could buy a Sarge, a JKM-1, and a 12" Sirupati here at the Cantina.

Sometimes, nostalgia is just too danged expensive!

t.
 
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