What Does A Real Puukko Look Like?

[redsquid2]

Over the past couple of months, I have gone on several Google expeditions, looking for the genuine puuko. I have done this because I am fascinated by a design that has been essential to survival for hundreds of years, in the adverse geography of the far north. After looking at maybe 50-60 pictures, I am still baffled in the face of so many knives called "puuko".

So here is what I am guessing:

1. It is a 800 year old design.
2. It originated in far northern Europe.
3. It was designed for fishermen. It's handle is designed for a safe grip in cold wet conditions. It is also designed for cutting in a sawing motion, with the force being applied on the "draw", not the "push." It is basically a barrel-shaped handle, with an oval cross-section. It has a swell in the middle, where the palm wraps around it. The security of grip is provided by the way it naturally fits in the fist. It is made of stacked rings of birch bark.
4. Its blade is narrow-long vs. wide-short. It is also a thin blade vs. thick.


Is there a book out there which includes the history of this knife design? Where are the facts?

 

[1234]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puukko
http://www.finnguide.fi/sightguide/artdetail.asp?a=1784


1234,,,,,

 

[Frederick89]

In the Kalevala, the epic poem of Finland, you can get few descriptions of the puukko. One thing must be clear: with the word puukko you can call correctly only the finnish wilderness knife. In the scandinavian countries (Finalnd is not) the knife is simply called kniv, while mantaining similarities with the puukko, but the puukko is essencially finnish.

The oldest and more common puukko shape is this. Palm long carbon steel blade, tang hammered into the curly birch barrell handle, cowhide sheath with wood liner.


The end of the tang is some kind of sharp pointed and the blade is simply hammered into the handle, no glue or resin of any kind, and iss kept in place by teh tang piercing into the wood.


Birch bark handled puukkos, mantaining roughly the same measures and features,


follow a bit youger style, still having his oringin during the early Middle Age. With bark handles is good to have a rather big tang in order to give the layers more sustain and to avoid the benting that might occur applying a lateral torsion to the handle.
Bark flaps are placed crossed, straight-sideways-striaght-sideways, to give more stregth to the structure exploiting the friction between the wood fibers.
Tang is peened or rivetted rather than just hammered in place.

Birch bark is a wonderful material as it's velvetly soft, while grippy like G-10 in every condition, always warm, water/blood/moisture proof and almost inert with changes of climats and temperature.

 

[redsquid2]

Thank you, Frederick. I am understanding the puukko better now.

 

[CWL]

Here are some traditional puukkos, note that they weren't limited to only outdoors survival use, every Finn carried one. Notice the ones at the bottom with metal attachment, these were for hooking to a button inside your jacket for daily carry in towns and cities.