When blades ruled the land

[golok]

About one or two centuries ago, out in the wild, wild West. Guns came as part and parcel of the attire of the land. Knives (bowies and others) also featured prominently.

During those days, knives were used regularly and for anything that needed cutting. I reckon just ordinary iron or steel of no particular hardness or importance were used to be made into cutting tools.

If they didn't cut that well, the user probably used a little more of his brute strength to complete his task.

Nowadays, we have steels of superior quality. Materials of substance that would have knocked the guns out of those cowboys' holsters. And yet, there are fewer, or should I say less prominent uses for knives. Maybe I should say, fewer people than before use the ubiquitous knife of old.

What does that tell us. I am not knocking technology but I was thinking science has taken us to levels unimaginable as far as the blade is concerned. But these days, it is not doing us much good except accomplishing a task, or any particular task, in 5 seconds or less.

Most of the time, knives (like those we talk about here) have been reduced to being admired or framed up in display cases or being treated as investment pieces.

All this meandering distills the issue to two basic statements:
in the past, knives were used more often in society but basically crude; present days, knives used less often but definitely of better make and of superior quality.

Question: Whither the knife in the future world?

 

[Charlie Mike]

RKBA! If the gun/knife grabbers have their way... then nope.

But I am trying to be optimistic, so.... In the future, I predict that we will have something I like to call a Vibra-knife. These would work via a vibrating blade... same principal as a jigsaw. The knife would probably be battery powered. Th blade vibrates so fast, that mere contacvt with skin would cause a gash.

 

[not2sharp]

Don't be too hasty to knock on the past.

Many of those older knives were used heavily, and their owners knew that a lot counted on having a good quality knife. Perhaps, steel chemistry and physics were a little more mysterious at the time, and tooling was a little more artisan then it is now. But, unless a new element has spontaneously developed within the last 100 years, all of the materials in use today were available in their raw form in the past.

There were knives made that would put to shame most of the stuff on the market today. There may have been no RC measuring devices, and modern steel factory statistics were still in the future, but these knifesmith knew what worked and how to achieve it. That's more than can be said of many knifemakers out there today. Don't let the modern jargon thorw you. Its has more to do with marketing than producing a good knife.

n2s