patch blade history

C

cory

Joined
Dec 23, 2001
Messages
63
Can anyone tell me a little about the Russel Green River patch blade that was supposed to be a period piece from the 1800s? Was it actually an original design by the same company that was used by frontiersman or whats the history? Have had some reenactors inquire to me about this one. Cory
 
I think the patch knife is more a tool of the modern blackpowder shooter and buckskinner than a knife from the past. I don't think the men from that period had a knife especially for cutting patches.....I think they used what they had. There are photos of old bags with knives attached on the back or on the strap but most of these were larger than the patch knives of today. Some of these men probably only had one knife and it, more likely than not, came out of the kitchen. Another thing to think about is that knives of this period, especially knives made for trade with the settlers and indians, were mostly made of wrought iron. Thats not to say that good steel wasn't available. It was but it was hard to come by and quite expencive.

This is my openion and my openion only, I could be wrong.
 
many of the green river patterns are the same today as then. a patch knife could have been made from any small scrap of steel or even iron, easy to sharpen. go to a blackpowder or mountain man group at a shooting range near you. the will be able to tell you about some books. have fun!
 
Like they all said, they used
what ever they had.
They even use straight razors.
A little more history not about knives
but they did not used short starters
either
 
They were used to start
the ball & patch down
the barrel before using
the ram rod.
SS1.jpg
 
Can anyone show me or point me to some pics of patch knives? A blackpowder guy stopped by our table the other day and asked for a custom patch knife. He drew one out on a paper and then 2 of us makers got into a discussion about who should do it. Neither of us really wanted to....
 
Just make a straight backed neck knife style out of carbon steel and add antler or curly maple then antique,decorate as the perioed would suggest and make a rawhide and fringed sheath for it and you are set.Small files work great.I used to make allot of inexpensive ones from metal cutting bandsaw blades with a ferric chloride etch and antler habdles.Quick inexpensive and sells well.
I agre that a man on the frontier would probably use the easiest knife to cut patches which was on his belt and not in a pouch but they also could have made these fro broken blades and things like that as small utility knives which would have had a place in the camp also.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Try asking on the neo tribal forums as they do allot of things like these and can probably point yopu in the proper direction.
Bruce
 
i shot muzzel loaders for a while and one of the things i picked up was that during the fur trade era cloth was more valuble than leather. so the mountain men would just cut musket patches out of a scrap piece of leather. i tried it, and it works great. the leather patch ends up a few feet in front of you and is reuseable several times.
 
Some of the men didn't even use a patck at all. But they were shooting smooth bore guns. This was a common practice especially when in combat or shooting on the run. They would just dump some powder down the barrel and spit a ball down it, tamp the butt of the gun on the ground (with frizzen closed to load the pan) and it was ready to fire. Of course they carried their extra round balls in their mouth for easy loading. Lead posioning hadn't been invented yet.
 
Micky I guess gangrene from an arrow or bullet wound was more of a concern than lead poisoning, the problem with spit balls and no patches is your accuracy really falls off after about 25 yds. Pillow ticking was a favorite for patch material, and most shot smooth or real slow twist barrels, 1 in 66 or less, the problem would have been in a good fight after the 4 or 5 shot it would be hard to seat the ball, thats probably when they started shooting spit balls so that the spit would loosen and remove the burnt powder build up., I like shoot'in and hunt'in with black powder, but if I'm going to get shot at, I hope I'm carrying my 30-06 auto.

Bill
 
Micky,
No, I just do local shoots and don't do them much anymore, belonged to a small blackpowder club about 15 yrs ago, maybe 25 members, we would have 2 saturday shoots a month in the fall and winter. We had a lot of fun, I've seen several ram rods get shot out in the speed loading competition, was lucky and never seen anyone get hurt. Some of those guys could reload a patched ball in 20 seconds. Most of them carried a big honk'in bowie and would slice the patch and have it started down the barrel before the knife ever hit the bottom of their sheath. They took it a lot more serious than Me.:D

Bill
 
Yeah I know what you mean....some of those guys get very serious about their shooting.

I have a booth in the sheep shed at the NMLRA range where I sell my knives and I see a lot of these people. Our pasion is knives and theirs is shooting. Everybody has to have a pasion I guess. Thank God they like knives as well.
 
I was at the monutain man museum near the Wind Rivers last summer and found myself inexplicably drawn to the knives. All but a couple were thin bladed skinning/butcher knives. The others were not from the beaver trapping years. Not one bowie and nothing that would ever be called a camp or survival knife or a fighter or a patch knife. I don't know if this was a good sample but I found it interesting.

Camping, surviving and fighting with a kitchen knife most of us wouldn't want to be seen with.
 
from my studys of history the britsh crack shots were able to do this and were refered to as CHOSEN men. in the american revalution we called ours the minute men, load and shoot three shots in a minute, rods not inculed :D it sure sounds good?
 
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