What is a big knife for?

[Outdoors]

Interesting .... interesting!

Check this place out.
http://www.japanwoodworker.com

Pat

 

[Vorpal Blade]

When I go in the woods I bring a Japanese style pull saw and a few knives. I have a few traditional wood handled Japanese pull saws from Garrett Wade but the kind I have found to be the most useful has a polymer handle with a simple pushbutton release for removing or changing blades.

The Home Depot near me has Marples brand in limited selection. Another brand is Shark Saw which offers blades of different lengths and coarsnesses, all fitting the same handle.

I started with folding saws but no longer use them. I like the biggest blades which fit in my pack. I have also carried one in a homemade scabbard constructed of polycarbonate and nylon webbing.

I find big saws really help with efficient cutting. The weight penalty is small since the blades are so thin. They have exceedingly sharp, offset teeth, like a SAK saw, but thinner. The handle is light too, consisting of plastic with a simple retaining mechanism and metal spring for the pushbutton. When carried in a pack, I keep the blades and handle separate since it is a matter of a split second to assemble or disassemble the saw.

These pull saws are the fastest, most convenient, muscle powered cutting tools I have found so far.

 

[Outdoors]

I like the Irwin saws as well. the thickest ones are better for green wood. Ditto the garden saws. Fantastic saws for the price.

Pat

 

[RokJok]

On the topic of Japanese saws (sorry to contribute to the off-topic diversion ), check out the Nakaya model EX-240 pruning saw from the Nokogiri.com website. I got one a while back, but haven't used it yet. It appears to be quite similar to the Corona pruner available at Home Depot and other home centers & hardware stores, but with a very easily replaced blade. (I'm not sure how easy the Corona blade is to change.)

The good news (for Cliff, myself, and others with the Tashiro Hardware or Diamond-Z Japanese saws) is that the Nakaya pruning saw blades will fit the blade-holder on the Tashiro/Diamond-Z handles.

Also, Deuce Everhart and the crew at Nokogiri.com are amazingly friendly and easy folks to deal with. Very accomodating & knowledgable guys.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

The price of the blades is pretty amazing considering the sawing power and lifetime, the 9 tpi pattern tears through woods very quickly and smoothly and has a very wide range of use. It is also fairly versatile in general, you can cut up thick plastics, even saw through heavy cord.

-Cliff

 

[oldsalt]

Quote:
Originally posted by Cliff Stamp: Load it through the width and hold it right next to the part used as a pick to minimize the torque. They snap easy laterally though but are much stronger through the width, just try it with a butter knife to see the difference.

All I can say to this is that you are a braver man than I am. The Mora is less than 3 mm thick in a tang that tapers and is mostly 7 mm wide. I would not trust my weight to that on a good day nor to a butter knife for that matter. My CS SRK is greater than 5mm thick and is ~ 15 mm wide through the tang and while I would think twice about using it for a peton I am much more inclined to bet my life on it not breaking than a Mora.
It is interesting to me how these threads, for the most part, always seem to center on how well a knife can cut wood, be it branches for shelter, spliting wood for a fire or whittling a trap trigger etc. Occasionally there is mention of cleaning game or clearing brush. However, I would contend that, in a survival situation your knife may be called on to do things you might never think you would use it for, like Dave Alloway used his for. I've used mine for prying up a rock to reach the tap root on a plant I was collecting for Bonsai, twisting fence wire to tighten it for a make shift hose clamp. Cutting through roofing tin and barb wire to free a dogs leg, and hammering various things. Granted these were not all survival situations though my dog might disagree but they could have been. I know that a lot of Mora proponents consider big or stouter knives as nothing more than sharpened pry bars. I contend that a sharpened pry bar may just be what you might need in a survival situation. That said, I own 4 Mora types and carry them as well, along with my sharpened prybars.
JM2CW
OldSalt.

 

[dantzk8]

On one of the local channels (Inuit) a hunter relayed the story of how he survived an attack by a polar bear by using his forearm as a shield because apparently Polar Bears won't turn their head sideways to bite.


-Cliff

A french explorator of the arctic regions, Paul Emile Victor, in the thirties years explained how the Inuits (the most brave of them) fighted the polar bears with only a knife.
They naked their chest to don't give catch to the claws. The polar bear is lefty so they had to place themselves inside the left leg! The bear doesn't have teeth close to the articulation of its jaw so they put their left forearm deep inside the shade of the bear to don't let it bite! Then they had to cut the femoral artery with a... short blade.

We will never say enough how admirable is the Inuit civilisation.

dantzk.

 

[the__ul]

I'm quite new to this forum, but not that new to knives.
This has been a interesting, but a very-very long discussion, even a bit too long for reading all the last posts with sufficient concentration.

This thread has really touched my heart because I'm a puukko fan myself. But I found this discussion lacking one quite important side. We have northland-style knife proponents and opponents and, luckily, people from the middle ground. But most of you have found such knives to be something for you. I have grown up with such blades.

I'm from Estonia, not exactly Scandinavian country, but a closest neighbour and we do share most of the "culture space", for all being "northlands". So puukko (I like the finnish word, estonian word would be "puss") type knives are the most common working knives here. And $10 would be quite pricey, you can get a really good carbon-blade-tough-plastic-head worktool for half of that. With wonderful sharpness and edgeholding. Besides, although thin by some standards, these knives can take amazing punishment. My dad broke a few of those on building sites, making holes for cabling into drywalls, drywall metal supports and AFAIK softer stone walls - I'm quite sure that even a real prybar would have had hard time surviving such abuse.

My everyday carry in my backbag (computer tech with blade on belt would look out of place in office ) is a Fiskars worknife, a classical puukko design, I paid somewhere around $6 for it 3 years ago and I expect it to last at least 5 more years. 10 most probably.
It's backup (stays mostly home though) is another puss (bit different from classic puukko) I brought from our local fare from a 80 year old blacksmith. It was from his last batch, unfortunately I was so broke at the time, I could buy only one knive, now I wish I had bought all the batch. The blade is meda from salvage metal (old car), holds decent edge and in most aspects is very similar to this:
http://ornament.dragon.ee/muinasesemed/kraud/pildid/063a.html
the main exception being that the blade on the picture is almost 1500 years old.

My grandfather made good knives too, I have seen four of them but unfortunately managed to keep only two. All are (were) of classical puukko design, the most worn of them looked exactly like this:
http://ornament.dragon.ee/muinasesemed/nraud/pildid/073e.html
these two blades are about 1000 years old.

To keep my post getting much more longer, I better sum up the morale points:
1. puukko is not just a knife, the desing is so old that it has become a part of our culture.
2. at the very least 1500 years of development, the overall shape being quite the same last 1000 years, it is optimal choice for northern forests and work/tool culture.
3. the love of the knife that is your heritage will not let you shut up easily

 

[pict]

"The love of the knife that is your heritage will not let you shut up easily."

Kind of like Americans and our own "short sword" bowie knives. Say what you want about big heavy blades, we're Americans and that's our steel. Mac

 

[Gringogunsmith]

That " cloud cutter" is really nice... I could sure use it in the sawgrass :thumbup:
I wonder if he uses Jerry's " air bleeder" to strop it

There are so many high quality japanese sharp objects I think you could spend quite some time with them. Garrett Wade has a nice slection of Japanese tools :

and these :

I also want to try out the custom swede saws that Gaston Duperre makes, those guys can run them at speeds comparable to a stock chainsaw.

And back to long blades, take down a few acres with this :

This is actual a user based design, Fikes takes the Jungle Honey, a similar blade, to wood readily in his video. I would not have much trouble finding a use for that.

-Cliff

 

[Cliff Stamp]

That " cloud cutter" is really nice... I could sure use it in the sawgrass

It would probably have me out planting weeds, you certainly would not mind seeing the odd bit of vegetation that needed trimming. Here is a similar one :

I would not trust my weight to that on a good day nor to a butter knife for that matter.

Cross sectional strength is quadratic along the dimension getting stressed, stiffness is cubic, so it makes a pretty big difference which way you load a blade which is 1/16" thick but an inch wide. To avoid loading the tang you would grip very far forward on the knife, I would use a grip actually over the choil and onto the blade if possible. Of course, you would have to be very careful not to load the blade laterally as the really thin Mora's can be broken trivially then. I would tend to want a thicker blade for that kind of use if possible, far less chance of breaking.

However, I would contend that, in a survival situation your knife may be called on to do things you might never think you would use it for ...

As of late there is critism of this type of knife, but the arguements in general are usually just excuses for people to vent personal issues not actually talk about the actual performance of the knife, most of it tends to be contradictory anyway. Swamp Rat's forums are better balanced, which is surprising as you would expect manufacturer forums to be really one sided in general, but that one is pretty open and the moderation solid and encourages discussion. There is also little toleration for trolling.

I contend that a sharpened pry bar may just be what you might need in a survival situation.

I would consider stress, injury, and companions, all of which you may have little control over and which can place far more demands on your knife than in an ideal situation. In general I would not pick the same knives I carry for EDC for survivial situations for the reasons you noted. In general few people argue this for any gear, hence there are EDC clothes and survival clothes, and a pack that you take to the office and one you take in the woods, blades are no different in that regard.

My dad broke a few of those on building sites, making holes for cabling into drywalls, drywall metal supports and AFAIK softer stone walls - I'm quite sure that even a real prybar would have had hard time surviving such abuse.

Is that common for carpenters there, the replaceable blade knives are not used?

...the love of the knife that is your heritage will not let you shut up easily

Indeed, each culture has found the "best" knife and yet they are all so different. Most of them are also not as dissimilar as often projected. A modern utility bowie like the RD9 is just a really short parang.

-Cliff

 

[Ebbtide]

As of late there is critism of this type of knife, but the arguements in general are usually just excuses for people to vent personal issues not actually talk about the actual performance of the knife, most of it tends to be contradictory anyway. Swamp Rat's forums are better balanced, which is surprising as you would expect manufacturer forums to be really one sided in general, but that one is pretty open and the moderation solid and encourages discussion. There is also little toleration for trolling.




-Cliff

So another's POV is an excuse for people to vent when the POV doesn't match your own?
This sounds trollish to me.
The criticism against big blades, from what I've read, and said, is that they are not a one item cure for the many situations that you could find yourself in, in a Real Life Survival Situation

 

[Cliff Stamp]

So another's POV is an excuse for people to vent when the POV doesn't match your own?

In general regard to the above arguement yes this is common, here anyway. It hasn't happened in this thread yet which has stuck to discussing the knives and not the people.

-Cliff

 

[not2sharp]

Let me observe that large knives and swords were the prevailing form in most cultures. The shift to small general purpose knives is a recent development; a product of the growth of cities and a response to the legal environment of dense urban areas.

n2s

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Even the cultures which had long knives like the khukuris and parangs had smaller knives. There are blade length restrictions in many places which force EDC carry to be different, note the design of the UK Pen, but in general the use of knives as tools I would think suffers most from replacement, similar to axes vs chainsaws. While I would agree that in general obviously urban vs rural enviroments are different, most of the large brush cutting blades such as scythes, sickles, and bill hooks have long been replaced by power equipment here so the use of such tools is very unfamiliar even in rural areas.

One generation ago they were very common tools for clearing land and harvesting so everyone knew the use of a long blade. The use of a strong blade was also well known as they were used heavily in carpentry (hack/shop knives), gardening (heavy blade root knives), and in the kitchen (large thick bladed cleavers) and on fish (splitting which has a heavy blade). These have all again been phased out as most people buy directly now rather than make these things. The most commonly used real life survival tool now is probably a credit/bank card.

I sharpened a fish splitting knife recently, I can't remember the last time anyone asked me to do it, and this one looked like it had not been used in years. Of couse the closure of the fishery probably had something to do with that.

-Cliff

 

[Thomas Linton]

. . .
The most commonly used real life survival tool now is probably a credit/bank card.
. . .

-Cliff

If you are using flame for ignition, a credit card is great tinder.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

You can also cut them to shape for swivels or make buttons for clothing, they work ok as scrapers to remove light bark, you can also sharpen them to make plastic cutlery, they are also ok to make needles for use on loose fabric. Plus if you are Chris Ferguson you could also likely use them to fend off the occasional smarter than average bear.

-Cliff

 

[Outdoors]

Let me observe that large knives and swords were the prevailing form in most cultures. The shift to small general purpose knives is a recent development; a product of the growth of cities and a response to the legal environment of dense urban areas.

n2s

I'd beg to differ.
Swords at least were highly restricted in Europe far before the rise of large cities. First the cost of large forged items was prohibitive for most people, and second swords (as military weapons) were generally restricted to the nobility or soldiers. I'd bet these conditions prevailed widely.

Pat

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Generally the large blades discussed here as more of khukuris, machetes, parangs, boloks, goloks, etc., more so than swords, working blades common in rural areas.

-Cliff

 

[the__ul]

My dad broke a few of those on building sites, making holes for cabling into drywalls, drywall metal supports and AFAIK softer stone walls - I'm quite sure that even a real prybar would have had hard time surviving such abuse.

Is that common for carpenters there, the replaceable blade knives are not used?

Luckily no, most people (esp. real carpenters, we are cable guys ) use the tools meant for such jobs - chisels etc
He's just (in)famous for using whatever he can grab first for any purpouse he needs, I personally keep my knifes as far away from him as possible.
Replacables are very widely used, but as those puukko type working knives are very-very cheap (while most of them are still good quality), people do tend to use them bit less carefully.

...the love of the knife that is your heritage will not let you shut up easily

Indeed, each culture has found the "best" knife and yet they are all so different. Most of them are also not as dissimilar as often projected. A modern utility bowie like the RD9 is just a really short parang.

Well, the culture aspect is really important here. You can not understand a tool (or a weapon) analyzing it's shape and function only. Tools are a part of culture and you need to see the big picture to understand it.
Puukko was carried all the time (some places, still is) - it was part of dresscode
You had it on you all the time, you used it for everything and everywhere - from cooking to housebilding.
For that, you need a blade that is small enough for your exact work, yet still capable for bigger cutting jobs. Also, you do not want to carry pointlessly heavy blade with you all the time. Third important factor influencig the blade size is the cost of good steel - expensive in the period the puukko was still developing.
All of that sums up in a knife, that is quite small by many standards, but makes it up with good functionality, quality and craftmanship of it's users.

Of course, our culture has bigger knives too, our kiin is comparable with matchetes in size and some of it's functions. Fortunately, northern forests can usually be walked through without needeng to cut a path into it. Actually, the whole concept of chopping open a path sounds like pointless show of force - around here the traditional way would be trying to pass through forest without any needless hassle. I have not seen any tropical forest close and personally, but I believe that just walking through could be impossible there.
Here you would better conserve you energy and just slip through - thus our need for matchete-type knives is limited to field clearing only.

For most of the (bigger) woodworking in traditional way one wold use an axe. The crafty way of splitting a big log with Mora demonstrated a few threads back with wonderful photo-tutorial, gives me a mental image of an old, grandfather-type farmer saying: "nice trick, but better whack it with your thick skull - then you perhaps will not forget your axe next time"
No offence ment towards the skills of those who can do such things, but I would consider doing something like that only in the extremists of survival situations. Gee, how, in such a situation, would I come across such logs without a fear of meeting an axe?
(and that does not mean, that I would not try to do it myself in next weekend for the fun of it)