Thick vs Thin

T

Takujualuk

Joined
Dec 2, 2002
Messages
73
Greeting from the NWT. I have owned and used a lot of knives for hunting and outdoor living. I have used all the way from a cheap Mora knife to a 1/4" thick custom made Langley knife with detours all over the place most recently a couple of Knives of Alaska sets. I have to admit that I am disenchanted with the thick knives more so as my skill level has gone up. Once you know were the joints are on a caribou/seal/moose are; a sharp, thin knife is just the ticket. If you need to chop I have found the thick knives a dissapointment. Even the chisle edge on my D-2 steel Knives of Alaska cleaver is damaged by chopping bone in cold weather. An Axe or Hatchet is a much better chopper than any knife and even a Granfors hatchet is cheap compared to a good knife. For kitchen or wood working use the thin Mora blade is just the ticket, try slicing a tamato with a thick blade. For 10.00 US you can get a laminated steel Mora knife by frosts that is sharp, thin but tough, holds a good edge and does whatever a knife should be asked to do. Add a light Axe and a good collapsible wood/bone saw and you have three tools that will see you through any situation. A thick chopping knife won't feed my tent stove with wood a tenth as well as my Granfors forest axe, won't gut, skin and butcher an animal or work wood as well as a thin knife and can't saw like a ..well like a saw. As for weight a Granfors Hatchet, a Sierra Saw and a Mora knife won't weigh much more, cost half to a quarter as much and do 10 x the work of a survival knife. In a practical sense just what are these thick bladed knives designed for? I notice that the natives don't use them... a butcher or thin skinning knife, an axe a swede saw and for the real old timers a crooked knife is all they will carry..north of the tree line add an ice chisel and snow saw or knife and that is about it for edged tools and the real survival experts.
 
Takujualuk :

In a practical sense just what are these thick bladed knives designed for?
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Ones like you described are not designed much for anything besides prying, however you can get 1/4" bowie class knives that will chop as well as a GB hatchet and cut as well as a Mora on many materials (flesh, woods, rope etc.) , you can't get one that saws well though. The big problem is getting one that is properly designed. If you are working with one that chops only 1/10 as well as a GB hatchet then it is a very poor example of that class of knife indeed. You can get much better than that.

However as you note, the more skilled you are the less you need in blade cross section. As you learn where and how to cut you place less stress on the blade and thus it doesn't need to be as durable. Also the more knives you can carry the more optomized they each can become. An Opinel, japanese pruning saw, machete and light axe is a more versatile and higher performance combination than even the best bowie class knife on the vast majority of cutting.

-Cliff
 
I like the way you think, Takujualuk. :D

Yep. There are a lot of thick bladed knives out there; excellent for cutting butter, mud, soup and other non-hardended materials. They belong in the same category is those safety scissors you get in grade school.
 
Takujualuk:

I absolutely agree with everything you wrote. It is refreshing to see others with the same mindset. Welcome to the forums.
 
but in a perfect world, I would always have those tools when I need it.

I have the Frosts, I have a few axe's and tomahawks, and a few compact and survival saws as well.

Many have said that a knife is the most expensive prybar one will ever use, and I agree. However, sometimes dire situations will require the use of a prybar when all you have is a knife. So, when one has made the decision that the value of the knife is less than the value of the prybar, then I would assume that one would want the most effective prybar possible.

You could substitute the word "prybar" in the above paragraph with "hammer", or "chopping tool", or whatever the tool that is in need.

For that, a good thick well made, well balanced, relatively long knife will always have a place in my collection.

Edited to add

Also, I like to take a small spade into the field as well. I find it to be an invaluable tool for building and putting out campfires as well as digging poopholes and stuff.
 
yeah
i mean, one never knows if one will need a tool to *cough* smash bricks *cough*
in which case a thick spine like that of the *cough* CS SM Trailmaster *cough* would probably do some good ;)
 
They like to smash people in the head... It was in the news... time to register and outlaw bricks...

But seriously, two recent uses of my knife as a prybar happened when 1, I was locked out of my apartment and had to pry a window open with my spyderco,

2, in an automobile accident involving an 18 wheeler and a car, the fuel tank started leaking and the doors were smashed shut. A Benchmade Auto-Stryker was the only tool readily available and with a little effort, helped the occupants out of the car.
 
The knife design world has gone way too far in terms of blade thickness.

I don't have a need for anything over .180 inch and prefer fixed blades in .125 thickness and folders somewhat thinner yet.

Even my beloved Model 1 Randall from 1966 is only about .180 having started out as a .25 inch billet then forged to shape. Even modern randalls appear to have gone thicker.
 
Takujualuk,

Welcome to the forums!

I agree with your take on thick vs thin blades - great first post!


-Frank
 
Steven Dick has an editorial in this month's Tactical Knives about this very issue. Dick mentions that 19th century Indians, mountain men, and traders all used very thin knives for meat preparation and whittling or carving. These men literally depended on their knives to live in way that very few people in the 21th century developed world can imagine. None of these guys used a thick, tactical sharpened prybar. I would imagine that they used an ax or hatchet for chopping.

In all fairness, most tacticals are marketed as military knives that could be used for a variety of jobs and pressed into a weapon of last resort. That is a very different mission from the role that a knife plays with a hunter/trapper.
 
I think what leads to thick knives is several factors there is one huge factor however:
#1: Instead of promoting cutting performance makers have been promoting durability. Though small, but siginificant, gains in durability can be gained through heat treat, design and materails, the easiet way to add strength and durability is to add cross section, which results in a direct loss in cutting performance.

The truth is that very few people have a real need for this kind of durability in knives, and for those tasks which do require a high strength, a $4 prybar is a much better choice. It is like the idiots that use their snap-on screwdrivers as prybars. eeeekkkkk. It is enough to drive you crazy.

Thin knives simply cut better.

Because makers have built their repuattion on the hype of durability (and I don't mean any one maker in paricular, just a general trend in the "tactical" or "combat" knife industry.) they have to overbuild their knives, and performance is directly impacted.

Luckily there are still knives that perform properly. Many customs and production knives. The best part is that some of the highest performing knives are very inexpensive, like opinel and mora knives.
 
MelancholyMutt, Bricks and NYC. My father and uncle both had bricks dropped on their cars from the overpass on the belt pkwy. It's too bad they didn't stick with building brown stones. There might have been fewer bricks around to use as weapons! NYC...I sure do miss that place. Yea-right!
 
Yes, I like nice, thin knives too. However, I think someone does need to defend the big/thick knives.
Yes, an axe, saw, machette, and folder make quite a versatile set. Indeed much better than about any big knife I can think of. However, now be honest here, how many of you carry all of these items with you every time you step into the woods? I sure don't. Most of my trips aren't that long. It's just easy to strap on one really big knife, that can do the same work as all the above tools combined. Sure, it may not work as well at any given task, but to paraphrase an old saying, a big, thick Bowie on the belt is worth more than a whole sack of tools you left at home.

I have also noticed that many people who are critical of big knives are actually trying to use medium sized knives, or they're trying to use their familiar "small knife techniques" with a big knife. As you said, once you know where the joints are on an animal, a 1/4" thick blade gets in the way. That statement tells me that you're using a knife that is too small to simply break/chop the bone, or you've never even thought about using a knife like that. Either way, there's something wrong besides just the knife. Now, no offense intended there, man. I'm just throwing that out for the sake of conversation. Most of my big butchering experience relates to deer, cattle, and hogs.
 
None of these guys used a thick, tactical sharpened prybar. I would imagine that they used an ax or hatchet for chopping.
Click to expand...

That is perhaps a key point. "Survival and Tactical" are funny concepts, the general idea of which seems to be to make do for a short period of time. Mountain men and other 19th century larger then life characters were not surviving. They were living in the outdoors, and that is a big difference. These guys would have had far more equipment and materials then the modern outdoors enthusiats. You can load an awful lot of material on a few ponies.

For North America we could probably all get along reasonably well with little more then a SAK. If you see someone with a bigger blade it is probably becuase they have a different definition for "getting along" then you do.

I like big heavy knives. But that is probably because I first got into the hobby when a couple of machetes failed me, forcing me to change my plans. I wasn't trying to survive, or to build a fire. I was trying to hack my way through a trail blocked by two years worth of dead fall to get to a cliff face I had explored a few years earlier.

To each his own. If you ask, don't be surprised if the other guy has a rational explanation.

n2s
 
Thanks for all the welcomes: Possum..no offense taken. When I started skinning animals I indeed used my thick knife to cut through bone. Unfortunately at -20 to -40 the harder the knife the more likely you are to chip it . Also I noticed the Inuit Elders used a thin little knife and undressed the caribou as if they had a zipper. (the caribou not the elder). The younger guys might use a big soft butcher knife to cut the ribs from the backbone..keeping the knife inside some muscle to keep it warm untill they needed it. the older guys found every cartilage point and never chopped. After ruining the edge on my new triple tempered D-2 steel Knives of Alaska cleaver chopping bone at -30 I turned my back on expensive hard thick knives and went with a thin, sharp knife and found those joints.
When I got lost and needed to chop I went with a cheap Normark hatchet. Over time I neeeded the hatchet less and less. Now I don't need it at all. It still takes me two to three times as long to skin and reduce a caribou to it's component parts as a real elder but I no longer feel like a duffer and I don't need a thick knife. For camp and wood shaping chores the thin knife is also far superior. I have a few of my dad and Grandad's tools including some old skinning knives ground away to some pretty exotic shapes. None of them are thick. The idea of one all purpose tool that you have with you at all times is pretty pursuasive but I can't see a quarter inch thick crowbar/saw-knife being that one tool. Just my opinion.
 
I tend to agree. I find that a thin knife is better at cutting and as far as I am concerned, that is what a knife is for.
 
remember there was a few women, several years ago, who were attacked by vagrants with Paving bricks? I think the both of them were knocked into comas.
 
One of the reasons that I put very few bolsters and guards and butt caps on knives is that they add a lot of weight to the blade. About 10 or 11 years ago my father had killed an 8 pt. buck and asked me to process it for him. I was going to get to show my dad how well my knives would cut and hold an edge. I took a 4 1/2" skinner with stainless guard, elk handles, and stainless butt cap (my favorite), a long boning knife (chicago cutlery), a fillet knife (case), and a small paring knife with slab handles that I had made from a cross cut saw. A few minutes of using the heavy skinner and it was time to switch knives. In short order I was down to the paring knife. I finished the deer with the small knife and it would still shave. I sold the skinner the first chance I got and the long knives did a respectable job of cutting up the big chunks. I guess I am in agreement as to using thin knives to cut. I can also see a reason to carry a somewhat larger knife for occasions that warrent its use. In my part of the country, it isn't too far to civilization in the event of being stranded so my requirements would be different than some one that lives in Montana or Florida. I think that the main thing is that you have confidence in your knife or knives that you carry and know their limitations. This would enable you to choose the knife for yourself. Most of the every day chores of cutting of mine can be done with a small neck knife. There are bigger knives in the truck and shop and barn and etc. So you see it isn't too far to a knife that will do the job. This is just my .02.
 
Well, this is as close as it comes to a subject that people mostly agree on. I tend to take a really honest look at my uses for a knife. There's a goofy pride in deciding, "Hey, I'm too rough on my knives, so that one is too thin!" But since I've become more of a performance addict, I've gone way thinner. When I think I might need a thicker knife just in case, I take two knives, and I don't compromise on this anymore. Out camping, I tend to use a TTKK or Deerhunter, and I bring something bigger in case I need to do woodworking (folding saw, hatchet, whatever). I'd almost always rather carry two tools, than one tool that's too thick to do most jobs well.

Joe
 
we need to qualify and justify what we take with us.

venturing out into the woods, I would take a thin knife, a sturdy folder, a thick knife, a hatchet or axe, a shovel.

Now, say you needed a versatile tool to do the work of all the above tools, the only one that would do all of them, albeit with a lot of effort and low efficiency, is the thick knife.

I think the discussion is comparing apples to oranges. A thin knife is cutting efficency, a thick knife is cutting versatility.

a friend of mine (a lurker in this forums) had to take a crap in the woods (well, actually in central park in NYC) and he took out his Strider to dig himself a cathole. Now, although it didn't actually happen, the Strider would have been a good tool to dig with, lacking any other heavier tools. Of course, a shovel would have been the BEST tool, but lacking that, the thick knife would have been better than a thin blade.
 
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