The "Gaucho" Knife

I may have to pick your brain when I get this going Bruce. I like everything about that knife in particular, the angled butt, matching bolster, peened tang, the taper of the handle, and the overall simplicity of it. It looks like it probably balances well also. Would love to hear any more info you have on that or Gauchos in general.

I've gotta get the forge fired up soon and start tackling the integral bolster. That and the sheath are going to be a good challenge for me.
 
Redmeadow Knives said:
I may have to pick your brain when I get this going Bruce.
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Happy to help if I can, John.

Redmeadow Knives said:
I like everything about that knife in particular, the angled butt, matching bolster, peened tang, the taper of the handle, and the overall simplicity of it. It looks like it probably balances well also. Would love to hear any more info you have on that or Gauchos in general.
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Exactly. One of the things that has really endeared me to this knife over the years (in addition to its sheer usefulness) are the subtle details you mention. At first glance, it seems like a very simple, basic knife, and it is. But it also has some very cool touches and smooth integration of the various materials.

Redmeadow Knives said:
I've gotta get the forge fired up soon and start tackling the integral bolster. That and the sheath are going to be a good challenge for me.
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:thumbsup:
 
Redmeadow Knives said:
The next paragraph definitely tells a different story:oops:
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Sounds like the build up of an adventure……what will happen to our hero? Will he have a new haircut or be part of a Chilean BBQ meal? Join us next week on “the Patagonia Rolling Hills!” Well, maybe not the Cartwrights on the Ponderosa, but a tale to tell!! I wonder if some of the details of life on a ranch or on the hills and plains would be similar to what Dave has to do or experienced?
 
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The Gauchos do have some similarities in their work and their horse gear too. One of the cultural similarities particularly to the Californio style of western horsemanship and the Gauchos is finely braided rawhide items of horse gear. There is an organization called the Traditional Cowboy Arts Association (TCAA). Master saddlemakers, bit and spurmakers, rawhide braiders and silversmiths. Think ABS Mastersmiths but much more exclusive and harder to get into. Pablo Lozano is one of the few of the master braiders in this outfit and he is a Gaucho from Argentina. Here is a bosal that I was using as a prop for this pic of this martingale/breastcollar I'd made. The bosal is a noseband that goes around the horses nose and is used in the training stages of a finished horse instead of a bit in the horse's mouth. This is braided rawhide.

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And a four strand rawhide reata or rope:

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A close up pic of my reins when I was conditioning them:

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Taken attendance on what cattle we've got in and who were missing.

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You can see my rawhide braided reins and also Ol Spud is wearing a bosalita (small bosal) under his bridle. The bosalita is a mark of his education as a finished horse. It too is rawhide and both items were braided by my friend Vince Donelly.

Funny gaucho story. We had a customer years ago. He was a German guy that was gauchoing in Paraguay. He'd call and place orders over the phone. We eventually met him in person too. There use to be a show called The Californios and we would have a booth there every year. One year he and a bunch of cohorts flew up for the show. Not unusual as this was THE show and there'd be folks from all over the world there. We did some trading in fact with him and got a latigo braided bosal from him for a knife. Anyhoo, he had called and ordered many times, usually wildrags such as I'm wearing here. We call them wildrags not scarves and my wife made a lot of them, thousands over the years, as she was famous for a special kind of silk we use to get to make them from:

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So he calls and he's talking to my wife and ordering some wildrags. His English was decent but not great and a strong accent. Back in the day we had a paper catalog we'd send out and he'd tell Nichole which colors he wanted while looking at the catalog. The conversation kinda went like this. "OK Nichole, and now I wants a fu..s ya." "Excuse me?" was Nichole's reply. "Ya know I wants a fu..s ya, right there in the catalog by the blue." "Oh, Ok, ya want a fuschia one, got it, ok I can send ya a fuschia one." Fuschia sounded an awful lot like f...s ya the way he said it!
 
Those are incredible, braiding like that fascinates me.

The fuschia story is too funny. You want what?
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Going back further.......I wouldn't be a bit surprised if gaucho knives were variations on Mediterranean dirks.....and those certainly derivatives of Persian kards.

I've made a few kards and they are among my very favorite knives.....which surprised me greatly.
 
Mack said:
So, is what you're calling a gaucho knife similar to my David Stifle rifleman's bowie?
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Some similar elements, yes. The blanket term, 'gaucho knife' includes several different knife types, used for everything from fighting to multipurpose tool. A facon or daga, for example, is a larger fighting knife, that would usually have a full guard like the knife pictured in the middle, although the guard is often curved and a little more stylized. A cuchillo, or pucòn, or puñal would be a smaller (though often still good sized), everyday fixed blade and would not usually have any guard at all. But these definitions are also somewhat fluid, and can vary depending on where in the region you are, sometimes from one valley to the next.

Both the knives in use by gauchos in S. America, and the the original Bowie knife built by James Clift (which looked more like that middle example than many "Bowie knife" depictions we see today), had their origins in common Spanish/French butcher knives of the 1800s, and show that design's influence to varying degrees.
 
Horsewright said:
....So he calls and he's talking to my wife and ordering some wildrags. His English was decent but not great and a strong accent. Back in the day we had a paper catalog we'd send out and he'd tell Nichole which colors he wanted while looking at the catalog. The conversation kinda went like this. "OK Nichole, and now I wants a fu..s ya." "Excuse me?" was Nichole's reply. "Ya know I wants a fu..s ya, right there in the catalog by the blue." "Oh, Ok, ya want a fuschia one, got it, ok I can send ya a fuschia one." Fuschia sounded an awful lot like f...s ya the way he said it!
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That story made me laugh out loud this morning, Dave. The Chileans and Argentinians I worked with would often have a hard time saying the word "focus" in English, and it usually sounded something more like, "Ok, we need to f___us." which raised more than a few eyebrows. 😂
 
I had read somewhere that they were derived from French chef knives but I have no source material just dim rememberings.

Here in California the early Californios carried a similar knife called a punal. Punal is basically dagger in Spanish. The renderings I have seen in art work etc of the Californio punal is much less daggerish as we would know it and much more gaucho knife-ish. It was normally kept in the right boot or bota. Cattle were raised here by the hundreds of thousands and not for meat but for their hides and tallow. A dried untanned cowhide was known as a Californian Dollar. The cattle were gathered in an area and the Vaqueros would ride quietly through the herd. They would stab the cattle right between the head and neck in the poll killing them instantly as they rode by with their punals. After the slaughter, workers would come, skin the cattle, render the fat into tallow and load everything into cartas and then get the heck out of dodge cause the meat was left and the huge California grizzlies were coming to the killing fields. Trading ships waited off shore and the Rancheros were ferried out to the ships to do their shopping with their California dollars.
 
Smithhammer said:
That story made me laugh out loud this morning, Dave. The Chileans and Argentinians I worked with would often have a hard time saying the word "focus" in English, and it usually sounded something more like, "Ok, we need to f___us." which raised more than a few eyebrows. 😂
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Yep! Its a funny one. And as you know it really does come out sounding that way.
 
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