Hi all!
In general talk, always someone recomends Sebenza as for the knife. I was wondering what would be Traditionals answer for Sebenza, i.e you would have the money to buy Sebenza but you would like to get more traditional?
And I don't mean any real valuable collectors knife but real deal working knife with excellent blade material and such.
Well first off we have to define work, and what a real deal working knife is supposed to do.
Go back a couple of generations and you'll find men who were hardworking enough to make most of us look like slackers. Men who worked out in the weather, no matter what the weather was doing. They did everything from cutting open feed sacks for livestock during a blue norther, to sawing through wet soggy hemp on the deck of a fishing boat, to stripping wire while constructing a building. For the most part 99.999...% of knife work is mundane simple cutting chores.
Looking back in history, when they, the hard working peasant/peon/blue collar guys, had to cut something, they used a simple one bladed carbon steel slip joint much like the beloved sodbuster. In fact, the sodbuster owes it's long heritage to a European knife from Germany and eastern europe. Working people used them, as well as knives like Opinels, Douk-Douk's, single blade Russell's Barlows, Lagioule's, low cost clasp knives, and the like. Perhaps the most knife dependent working men around were the seamen. Sailors knives from the 1800's all seemed to be a single large sheepsfoot blade in a simply built slip joint. In fact, locking blade knives were actually a rare thing, even though they were available. When John Wilkes Booth was shot and killed at Garrets barn, he had on him a folding lockblade dagger.
If you what a real deal working knife, I'll have to go with the guys here that said sodbuster. There's not much a soddie won't handle, and if it won't, then you need to go get an ax or saw. It has a good thin carbon steel blade, and rugged construction that will stand up to whatever you may have to use it for in the real world. This does not include zombie killing or some of those other things people dream up to justify knives that you can stab through car doors.
If you feel like you really need a lock, get a Buck 110 folding hunter. Gadzillions of these knives have been used and abused by lots of hard working people, and they haven't developed a good repuation for nuthin. Plus the Buck family is about the greatest people that ever ran a knife company, outside of Case.
That's my vote; Case soddie or Buck 110. Can't go wrong with either.
I was still typing.......:foot:
