questions about nessmuks

[Hesparus]

Hi Everyone,

I've been thinking about hunting and skinning knives a lot lately. While studying nessmuk knives, I've noticed that some of them (including the original) have the point in line with the handle, and others have a much more swept point. This is true of other hunting and skinning knives, too. How does this difference affect function?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Hammer67]

Chris -

The first requirement for a good skinner is a fair bit of belly. With this in mind;

The original Nessmuk design (of which we only have a drawing) is generally believed to be a descendent of the Sheep Skinner, a common knife design found on the frontier, and ranches/farms of the time. If you compare these two designs (the originals, not necessarily the various interpretations, which differ to varying degrees), you'll notice that the traditional Nessmuk has a lower point - more along the midline of the knife - than most historic 'skinner' designs, which are usually more upswept. This "tweak" that Sears had put into the design allowed the knife to still be a quite capable skinner/game knife, but also be more versatile for other camp tasks as well.

So the Sheep Skinner would be a more dedicated, true 'skinner' and the Nessmuk that most likely evolved from it is more of an 'all around' camp knife (as it would have been defined in Nessmuk's time and for his uses, not necessarily the same as how many define a "camp knife" today). There may be more versatile designs for more modern, bushcraft-specific uses, but these often have much narrower blade profiles with little useful belly (as there is more of a focus on woodcraft and less on game with many bushcrafters today), and thus they often don't make for good skinning/game knives in addition to their intended uses, as the Nessmuk does. Keep in mind also that true skinners tend to have thinner blades than many modern interpretations of the Nessmuk do. Nessmuk's knife likely was thinner as well (though we don't know for sure), since he was a fan of carrying an axe as the primary tool for chopping/wood tasks.

Here are a couple modern examples of the Nessmuk, both of which I would highly recommend as well-made versions capable of serious work (there are certainly others as well);

Bark River Nessmuk:

Blind Horse "MUK":

If you can't tell, I really like 'muks. Hope that helps!

 

[Hesparus]

It was my understanding that Nessmuk only used his nessmuk for skinning, butchering and eating. His axe and folder were for camp chores and woodwork. Is this wrong?
How much better is a swept point for skinning than an in-line point? (If you haven't guessed, I've never skinned anything bigger than a squirrel.)
As a big fan of nessmuks myself, I'm familiar with all of the ones you posted. I even made one earlier this year:

Looking ahead, I'd like to get into hunting, and I'll need to make some knives for that. Even if that never happens, I still want to understand hunting and skinning knives better.

- Chris

 

[Hammer67]

Chris -

This is just my .02, but I think that the amount of belly is more critical than an inline tip vs. an upswept tip, since belly is what you are really using when skinning. It's possible to have a design with an inline tip, that still has all the belly you would need for effective skinning. Though of course, the more upswept the tip is, the more belly the knife is likely to have, and it moves the tip even further out of the way of accidentally puncturing organs, which is something you need to pay particular attention to when skinning. Most truly dedicated skinners, whether they be a 'sheep skinner' design, or something like a Sharpfinger, have upswept tips for this reason. But it also makes them more task-specific and less generally versatile, imo.

Nice job on that 'muk, btw!

 

[Hesparus]

I think I understand, now. Thanks for helping me out!

- Chris

 

[neeman]

..........
The original Nessmuk design (of which we only have a drawing) is generally believed to be a descendent of the Sheep Skinner, a common knife design found on the frontier, and ranches/farms of the time.
...................

There is an excellent image floating around the web of a Sheep Skinner with a dotted line showing where to cut off the front part of the blade to come exactly to the Sear's drawing
A total understanding of his knife

 

[Bo T]

If you like Nessmuks you should look at the Canadian Belt Knife. To me the Nessmuk seems to be a little more heavy duty while the Canadian is more medium duty.

 

[mtangent]

The BRK&T canadian is heavy duty. Very thick blade, like a Bushcrafter.

 

[Hammer67]

If you like Nessmuks you should look at the Canadian Belt Knife. To me the Nessmuk seems to be a little more heavy duty while the Canadian is more medium duty.

You know, I never really thought about it that way, but as a big fan of both designs, that makes sense. Both tend to have inline points, yet plenty of belly for skinning/game processing, and are good at lots of other tasks as well.

And MT - I would agree with you about the BRKT version. It has a heftier spine than others I've seen, as does their Nessmuk. I believe Mike Stewart stated a while back that this was intentional, as people are tending to use these knives differently (particularly the 'muk) than they were used historically - more batoning with them, etc, so they have 'beefed them up' a bit.

On that note, I recently made some jerky from a hunk of brisket using my BRKT Nessmuk, and was really impressed, for a knife with a .195" spine, how thinly I was still able to slice with the business end of it. A testament to great geometry.

 

[Mack]

When looking at Nessmuks and Canadian Belt knives don't forget to check out the makers we have here. I personally like the ones made by JK knives for working knives and if you haven't seen Ariel Salaverria's knives you really owe it to yourself to take a look. They are works of art.
A couple of borrowed photos.