What is a big knife for?

[Dodd]

Yes, if you have any clue as to how a knife can be used. Get a little branch and carve a chisel point on it and use that to split the wood.

First make a starter split

Hey!
That's a BRKT Highland, isn't it?
Good pics.
I only have one knife (I'm just learning).
It's a BRKT Evolution One, and it's HUGE.
I thought it would have about a 4 inch blade when I got it, due to it's proportions in a picture.
I've cut down small rotten trees with it, and used it for cooking over the past few years.

Now, my precious acts like a security blanket.
It's just so purdy. ;-)

 

[Cliff Stamp]

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.

On an interesting note, replaceable blades here are generally 10 for $5, and it isn't uncommon to buy packs of these on a semi-regular basis because the blades tend to crack off in harder use quite frequently, or get so badly contaminated with gum/tar that they are useless and have to be broken off. In a relatively short period of time enough money is spent on replacement blades to buy custom knives. Solid fixed blades of folders would be much better for extended use, but you would have to sharpen them far more frequently and most people are just not willing to do that.

Fortunately, northern forests can usually be walked through without needeng to cut a path into it.

Most of the long blade discussion here doesn't focus on carving a path, but more for cutting the vegetation for some actual use, shelter, fire, bedding, food, or you are blazing a trail to make it easy to follow, etc. .

[batoning]

I would consider doing something like that only in the extremists of survival situations.

That is generally the idea because you can almost always have a small knife.

-Cliff

 

[Outdoors]

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 original past was about large knives and swords and historical usage. I'm not sure why you felt the need to chime in on this particular post.

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 agree that in the last hundred years or so, the trend has clearly been towards increasing restrictions on larger blades. However, maintain that the commmon availability is acturally relatively recent. IIRC, the oldest khuk specimens are in the range of ~500 years old. The oldest ones shown in the HI FAQ of this age are not agricultural tools, they are weapons.

Machete's are even more recent dating to the post colombian period, and in the form we know them, after the development of inexpensive steel.
http://www.vikingsword.com/rila/index.html

Similarly, Japanese agricultural tools are generally smaller. No big agricultural blades in that tradition either.

Pat

 

[Cliff Stamp]

Machete's are even more recent ...

Machetes are stamped flat stock steel, essentially a very cheap way to mass produce a light parang from sheets of low alloy steel, so are really recent. Harvesting blades are fairly old, sickles, scythes, bill hooks, but if you want to look at it historically, people have not been mass growing wheat and such for very long either in terms of how long there has been people.

-Cliff

 

[Outdoors]

Yes -
sickles are the oldest (pre CE), and scythe's the latest (~800's CE). The blades on the early sickles and bill hooks appear to be shorter than the modern ones. Again, the high cost of steel is the likely limiting factor for these longer blades in historic times.

Pat

 

[Temper]

Dodd, Its a Highland Special, they are a tad bigger than the Highland and IMHO more comfortable.

 

[Thomas Linton]

IIRC, the oldest khuk specimens are in the range of ~500 years old. The oldest ones shown in the HI FAQ of this age are not agricultural tools, they are weapons.
. . .
Pat

Might the farmer's tools get "used up" while the noble's waepon surivives for the museum? Being partially hardened, once you've sharpened into the soft part of the khukuri balde, it's off to the smith as material for a new blade.

The observations regarding material availability seem right on.

 

[Outdoors]

Might the farmer's tools get "used up" while the noble's waepon surivives for the museum? Being partially hardened, once you've sharpened into the soft part of the khukuri balde, it's off to the smith as material for a new blade.

The observations regarding material availability seem right on.

I Dunno Tom.
but it seems like they can scare up agricultural (and other) tools from other periods. I'm sure the odd farmer's tool gets lost in the field or under the shed. I know I've lost enough machetes in the field!

Pat