Thick & Thin, or is Bigger always Better.

A

Amos Iron Wolf

Joined
Mar 7, 2006
Messages
2,171
As we've become much less rural and most folks don't spend a lot of time working and playing in the outdoors, folks in general have become gear heads and armchair commandos and survivalist. It shows in the forums, magazines, and nearly anyplace you look. You can't catch fish without all the gadgets, the big dollar/big name gear and special lures and spray on attractants. You can't hunt successfully without the latest gizmos, scents, and hyper-rifles. Naturally, it follows you can't camp, or worse yet, survive without a super strong, thick, tree-whackin, combat capable, knife.

Now this isn't a slam on tactical and modern knives. They're cool in their own right. What it is are some comments on my experiences lately.

One of the things we hear over and over again is you need a big, tough knife that can pry and dig under rough conditions, especially in a combat environment. I always kind of figured the bayonet filled that bill if you managed to loose your etool. In a woods scenario I think a light ax or even better, a decent tomahawk would do the heavy whacking. For other cutting, a real cutting tool would be the ticket.

Recently, I've been messing with some different fixed blades and some folders. I have a handful of thick, heavy, rugged knives. Recently added through some trading were two USAF Pilot's knives (Ontario, not Camillus) and a Marine Combat type. Also an Ontario issue piece. One of the Pilot knives and the Marine type were issued to my boss when he was in the sandbox, prior to retiring from the AF SPs. I traded him my used, Kershaw, Ken Onion 1550 Blackout, assisted opener for them. I gave him the knife as I usually kept it, shaving sharp. I also have an older Cold Steel SRK from when they came with the Cordura sheath and in Carbon V steel.

I also have a variety of trimmer, lighter fixed blades. There are the handful of Sportsman types I've gathered over the last year or so. Two of which, an Imperial H7 and a Utica Sportsman I've brought the edges back up on. There is are several others including two Frost Moras in stainless and two Mora Clippers in carbon.

I've been trying to get really sharp edges on the thick bladed knives. First off, it isn't easy to do. They take a lot of time bringing them from various levels of dull. Most of these, if now all are carbon steel. No exotics in the mix. Now the aforementioned Kershaw I traded off was easy to get shaving sharp.

That all said, what happens when I try to cut things with them? Besides making confetti out of paper I see who easily and how well I can cut thick pieces of leather strap, 1/2 inch manila rope, and various cardboards. I figure if a knife is really going to be worth anything as a knife instead of cool toy, it has to cut - easily, quickly, and without a lot of hard effort on my part.

Tonight I had to work at getting a large pecan limb down from where it was still partially attached to the tree. I didn't have a ladder or a trimming saw. I also wasn't going to climb the darn thing! Time for some thoughtful work. I also figured it would be a chance to see just how my little "Sportsman" hatchet would cut, especially given it's light weight.

I hauled out the manila rope I use for cutting test as I had most of a coil. I had one of the stainless Mora's in my front pocket along with my SAK Tinker. I pulled the frog type part that has the belt loop on it off the sheath and just stuck the sheath in my jeans pocket. This makes a very nice carry and the Mora (plastic handled) is so light you forget about it. When you need to pull it out, the tab on the sheath catches the pocket and the knife pops out neat as can be, leaving the sheath in your pocket. Doesn't drag my pants down either.

I picked the Mora because it cuts through that rope like nothing. Fact is, it cuts through most anything you would cut with a knife like crazy.

What this comes down to is in cutting and comparing my thick blades and my thin blades and what they are meant to do, I've come to some ideas of my own on what constitutes knives I would depend on.

The thick blades can cut small stuff like para cord and such. The thick blades can chop. The thick blades can't cut thin strips from leather, slice neatly through thick leather straps, especially if you are trying to be any kind of neat, and they suck at cutting 1/2 manila rope. They also make a mess trying to slice up food. I can beat em through logs and gouge wood with them. I'm not sure that's enough for the trade off of heavy weight.

Now the thin blades. The Sportsman knives that were carried by numbers of folks in the outdoors when people spent a lot of time outdoors. The Moras that have been used by working people fishing and hunting as a part of their life for generations. An old Cattaraugus with a black, hard rubber handle about the size of a Finn. These knives take a wicked edge without a lot of trouble. These light weight, easy to carry knives cut like crazy, cut quickly, and without a lot of pushing and sawing. A fast swipe and you are slipping right through thick cardboard. Need to cut thick or thin leather neatly? No problem, the blades slip through near effortlessly where thick blades bind up. The Manila rope? Where the thick blades take a bit of pushing and sawing, the thin blades race through. But, would you dare defend yourself with one? :eek: I don't know about anyone else, but a fast thrust and a slice from a Mora seems to me a very bad thing to be on the receiving end of.

For me, either working or out in the woods, I want a knife I can carry easily, that will sharpen easily out there and be versatile. Sure, I can lop off small branches with a big knife. I can also make a couple of slices with my light, cutting tool and do the same. From meal prep to making tools to making traps, shelter, fire, and any number of tasks, the thin bladed knives do so much without a lot of hard effort and without the weight. Speaking of weight. Given the lightness of many of the capable knives, you can toss an extra or two in your pack and have backups. A lot of wood can simply be broken or logs can be fed into a fire as they burn. Rocks can do a lot of pounding.

Other than for the having of them, I just can't seem to justify a big, thick knife as my serious woods/work knife. As we've seen from many memories posted on here, and especially from those old woodsmen in Jackknife's stories, fellows who really used their knives everyday in the outdoors, and heavily, didn't carry more than what they found they needed. For me at least, their wise choices make the most sense to me.

Oh, and that thin little belt ax with it's blade thinner than a lot of "serious" knives today? That thin edge lopped those branches off like nothing. I wouldn't try knocking down a tree with it, but it would have been just the thing for gathering material for a lean to or making a bough bed. Coupled with that Sportsman knife piggybacked, you were pretty well kitted out with a really useful, light, easy to carry kit.

Okay, it was a long ramble. I hope it made sense to somebody. Just another old fart rambling on.
 
It certainly doesn't have to be an either or. I've not heard that you need a big knife for digging and prying. That might be useful, but I prefer a big knife to take the place of a small hatchet. I have several with custom thinned out edges (by me) that work great. Paired with a smaller cutter, they can be just the ticket. It takes me just as long to thin out a knife as a hatchet, pretty much both of them come way too thick for me.

While a lot of people like the Mora's, I haven't found that they cut all that well, a nice high flat grind works better for me, personally, I like the Nessmuk style fixed blades. Oh, and a stockman helps too!
 
As I get older (I'm 34, so some of you will say I'm not that old yet), I'm starting to appreciate the smaller, thinner blades. I don't carry fix blades, but as for the folders I carry, I have basically and exclusively become a SAK guy. Other then my Leatherman, which I don't really carry for it's knves, but for the other tools, my SAK Super Tinker has become my EDC. I LOVE the SAKs' thin, ultra sharp blades. Such a good edge, and while they don;t hold thir edge for very long, they are very VERY easy to resharpen. That convenience is worth more to me then a razor sharp, super-edge retention blade that takes four hours to sharpen (slight exaggeration LOL). Before my SAK, I EDCed my Peanut, another pattern with ultra thin blades. I use my knife blade to cut, not to baton or pry. I love thin blades.
 
Sodak makes a good point. The big knife acting as a hatchet. I used to carry a Cold Steel Trailmaster strapped on the side of my rucksack. It would come out for chopping and would still cut paracord like a hot knife through butter. I was going to mention it, but forgot. As I said though, it spent it's time on the rucksack.
 
Feel free to ramble on Amos, but your preaching to the choir at this child.

I've always felt if you wanted to know what to really carry on a wilderness trip, look at what they carried when there really was wilderness. The frontiersmen of the cumberland gap era who pushed through to the Kentucky frontier carried the long rifle and the long knife, also called the great knife. This was a 10 to 12 inch very large butcher knife with simple rivited on wood slab handles. Mostly they were hammered out of whatever broken plow shears or other steel was available. In the 1991 or 90 issue of Ken Warners Knife Anual there was an exelent article on the great knife of the frontiersmen of the /french-Indian war era. Most of the musium samples had blades of 1/8 inch or less. Kind of like a short machete.

Fast forward a hundred years and several hundred miles westward, and you have the fur trade era. Like all those that came before them, somehow they made do without 1/4 inch thick sabre ground monster blades. many a vetern mountain man carried a knife that was little different than a New England housewife used in her kitchen. The simple butcher knife. I recall reading someplace that at the hight of the fur trade, a Russel Green River knife was worth a horse in trade with an indian.

Pick any period of history and find those that made a living from the land, and there will be a total absence of any thick blades. In one article I read that I agree with, Mr. Steven Dick wrote in the 1989 issue of Ken Warners Knives Annul in an article on the fur trade knives, that the bowie was mostly the knife of the tavern rowdy, and was very rarely carried by those actually involved in the fur trade, like the mountain men.

Look at one of the most sucsessfull knives in comercial history, the Marbles woodcraft. A blade not over 1/8 of an inch, its dressed out every large game animal on the continent, been coppied outright, and did everything a knife could do. With a lifetime of hunting/fishing/camping where he grew up in his home state of Minnisota, it was a Marbles woodcraft that Charles Lindberg picked as his survival knife in case he went down over Newfoundland or Nova Scotia.

The fad of overly thick sabre ground edges is a fairly recent thing in the knife world. Mostly it seems to be the relm of the armchair warrior who feels the need to have some sort of modern compact exalibur for his adventures to the local state park or National Forest. I am always curious as to what they plan on digging or prying with their knives. I've camped and backpacked from Acadia up in Maine, to the Rocky Mountains, not to mention the Black Forest of Germany and the Black mountains of southern Wales, and I seem to have survived with a pocket knife or two and a good 4 inch sheath knife like a mora or puuko. But then I was camping, not setting about lumbering operations.

Heck, even if you look at the knives that were used and gained a reputation in war like the Ka-bar, and the Camillus version of it, you are only looking at a 5/32 thick blade.

I think this trend is fueled by the knife magazines and holliweird. I don't know of any real outdoorsman who carries one of the knives that Amos is reffering to.

George Sears was one of the first experts in lightweight camping, and his books are still valued today. Somehow he got by with a small hatchet, a butcher knife, and a pocket knife, for his long trips into the wilderness that was in those days, more of a wilderness that we have around today.
 
my grandfather always carried an old timer trapper pocket knife 830T and a old hand saw to completely dress a deer like it had zippers ..
at camp i have a seperate tool box for feild dressing lol ...
 
Amos Iron Wolf, I agree with you.

You know the ultimate survivalists? the natives of the land. just observe the knives they carry. They're usually thin bladed. Natives in South East Asia get by with a thin stock (usually 5/32" tapering down to 1/8") parang/golok/machete of sorts, and sometimes a small knife which nowadays is sometimes substituted with a cheap kitchen knife / box cutter. Axes are for felling trees, adzes for building homes / boats etc. For hunting, sometimes they use bows/arrows/spears/blowpipes and guns if they have / can afford them. There is no real need for anything big and heavy and overbuilt. In fact, most of the native blades are ground thin and are rat tail tangs. If you are chopping a lot, you'd appreciate rat tail tangs due to the fact that the handles absorb a lof of the shock. I wouldn't chop with a cordwrapped full tang handle...sorry, but I have urban hands.

now, are the overbuilt, busse/strider/tops (etc) style knives tougher than the native blades? probably yes. but in the jungle, you're not going to be cutting concrete / rocks...if you need to break them, you just toss them till they break or you find another substitute. And animal hide is not made of metal.

Cutting ability is paramount.

Personally, I like thin blades also....1/8" to 5/32" for bigger knives, but always ground thin at the edge. not as thin as maybe Cliff Stamp would like, but thin.
 
Here we go again, you either are a woodsman getting by on next to nothing, or else you are a greenhorn indulging in fantasies... Somebody tell the poor people in the Himalaya's that their khukuris are all Hollywood/Rambo induced fantasies!

There are many accounts of people in "wilderness times" having and using larger knives. Many, of course, had to make do with what was available, steel being expensive.

George Sears didn't make too many long trips, by his accounts. He liked "smoothing it" rather than roughing it, and getting back to comfort afterwards. Hardly Daniel Boone by any stretch of the imagination.

For me, the bottom line is that all of the "old timers" advocated carrying a small hatchet. I find that a properly designed larger knife can cut as well as a hatchet, but also perform a host of other chores that a hatchet can't. Therefore, for me, it's much more useful. I'll bet a lot of the "old timers" of yesteryear would agree if they were alive today. They didn't have the choices that we do.
 
I tend to agree with sodak your preference for thick or thin isn’t dependent on your skill level. There are a lot of very skilled people who have forgotten more than I’ll ever know who like big and thick blades. Even though I’m one of the smaller and thinner knife users I do see the value of a larger and thicker knife. Heck truthfully there really isn’t a style of knife I don’t like and would refuse as a gift. Try them all and maybe you’ll find something works for you that you didn’t think would.
 
I like a thickish blade, and tbh I wouldn't buy a huge bowie 12-14 less than a 1/4 of an inch thick and if it's tempered properly i.e. differential it should be fine, a lot depends on the makers skill.
 
I think we can all agree that thick blades come with a high "coolness" factor. I'm in the process of deciding on a bushcraft knife myself right now and, honestly, I start seeing things like "3/16" and "7/32" and I start drooling. Makes me want to get one, find the nearest set of woods, and commence choppin'!

But, and I don't want to rub the chopper fans the wrong way, I can't help but question the necessity of the thick choppers. If you cannot, say, clean and fillet a trout or make the all-important fuzz stick (everybody's always making fuzz sticks!) with a chopper, then it seems to me you are going to also need a smaller, thinner knife.

Then why not replace the chopper with a dedicated chopper like an axe?

I dunno...maybe you can clean a bluegill with a quarter inch thick 7 inch long knife. Never tried it, so who am I to say.

And in conclusion (woo-hoo!) I think the bottom line is that if you like your chopper...cool! Chop away! If you can survive in the wilderness using only your peanut...cool! Sharpened pry bar and ninja thowing stars in the forest...knock yourself out! Awesome!

This whole knife thing is supposed to be fun, isn't it?
 
There's something out there in this crazy world we live in for everybody, so to each his own, have at it, but no matter whaT you choose or do, ENJOY!!!!!!!!!
 
For what its worth...the bushcraft/do-it-all/survival knife I'm getting...

Grohmann stainless flat-ground #3 Boat knife. 4 x 15/16 x 1/8.

If its been good enough for our friends up there in Canada for decades, its good enough for me.
 
At my age I'm not lugging anything bigger or heavier than it absolutly has to be. If it don't fit in a pocket, it ain't going.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.:D
 
marcinek said:
But, and I don't want to rub the chopper fans the wrong way, I can't help but question the necessity of the thick choppers. If you cannot, say, clean and fillet a trout or make the all-important fuzz stick (everybody's always making fuzz sticks!) with a chopper, then it seems to me you are going to also need a smaller, thinner knife.

Then why not replace the chopper with a dedicated chopper like an axe?

I dunno...maybe you can clean a bluegill with a quarter inch thick 7 inch long knife. Never tried it, so who am I to say.
Click to expand...

You're absolutely right, you will need a smaller knife as well. Check out my post here and tell me what you think:

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=499354&page=4

I wouldn't want to carry an axe, as it's too heavy and only has a single purpose. It will, however, blow away both the knife and the hatchet in chopping, no question about it. The knives I'm suggesting will chop as well as a small hatchet, and do other things as well - more functionality. I'm not advocating carrying only a big knife, just replacing the hatchet with one - that's all.

I wouldn't want to fillet a fish with either a big chopper or a hatchet. Could be done, but not well, at least, not by me. Making a fuzz stick with a chopper isn't that hard if it has the proper geometry.
 
sodak, you make a solid argument for the "replace axe with thick knife" theory.

Once again...nothing wrong with thick...just personally prefer thin (about 3/16 max) myself.

jackknife...if it is small enough to fit in your pocket...How are you going to baton with it? ;)
 
Judging from the posts and conversations that I've had with Jackknife, he probably doesn't need to. I'll bet he's got some serious tricks up his sleeves... One of the many reasons I really enjoy his posts!

I should also add that although I have strong opinions on certain things (you think? :D) I enjoy reading posts from people with other opinions. Sometimes it affirms what I think, sometimes it makes me question what I think. But most importantly of all, it makes me think. That's a good thing!
 
marcinek said:
jackknife...if it is small enough to fit in your pocket...How are you going to baton with it? ;)
Click to expand...

Actually very easy. I've done this in snowy wet woods before.

Find a deadfall with nice dry limbs sticking up ninety degrees to the ground. Very little snow or rain will be sticking to it. Break it off and if its 1 to 1 1/2 inch thick great. Break or saw into 6 inch lenghts. To break them short, find a forked tree or sappling and put the end into the fork a few inches up from the crotch of the fork. You will be using the fork in the tree like a pipe bender, to concentrate the force right where you want it. To make it break just where you want, take your pocket knife and cut a V-groove around the wood where you want it to break. You're making a stress fracture line, and it only takes a minute to make the fracture line for each break. I've always been able to find a forked tree or sappling around. Its all about leverage and the physics of mechanical force. Once you break the standing dead wood into very short lenghts, I use an Opinel number 8 or my mora to baton gently. Just tap the blade with a lengh of wood, no need to bang away. Easy does it. With the inch to inch and a half broken to 6 inch long pieces, they split by the time the mora is only 1/3 through the wood. Inside is very dry wood and I further split the halfs into quarters. This works with just about any hardwood like oak, mayple, poplar, or even softwood pine. I've even done this with a Wenger SI and a Victorinox soldier, being very gentle with the tapping. Again, thats TAPPING, not banging. Its more about cutting technique, not brute force.

With the dry insides now available, shave off some of the dry core wood into very thin slivers and lay over a cotton ball or two that you have put vasoline on, or even chapstick. If you have some fatwood along so much the better. Make sure you have a nice little pile of kindling that you have shaved off the outside wet layer, and is ready to feed into the fire. Start with very small pieces, or even some dry pine bark stripped from a deadfall.

Survival with a pocket knife is very doable if you just use a few mechanics and forthought. It is nice to have a hatchet along, but sometimes thats not in the cards, so I keep in practice using the most basic things I have in my pockets. I've tought this to my children and grandchildren. Since I'm a pipe smoker, I have Bic lighters spaced around my packs, and on my person. If I'm out in the boonies someplace and I don't have a way to light my pipe, then THATS a real emergency and can get ugly.:D
 
jackknife, to be honest, I was just messing with you, because a while ago you discussed your motorcycle trip and how you built fires only using a Soddie and very minimal batonning. I think at the time you wrote that you felt that batonning was "over-hyped", or something along those lines.

Messing around or not, I'm glad you went into further detail into your "stopping by woods on a snowy evening" fire-starting technique. As usual, very relaxing and informative.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top