why knives?

L

linkshande

Joined
Jan 1, 2006
Messages
55
I'm sure this question has been asked in one form or another for eons, but I think I'll ask again anyway. What do you think it is about such a simple seeming tool that captures the hearts and minds of so many people, both makers and collectors to the point that there are entire communities of like minded individuals. I know my response, growing up as I did in rural colorado and being a product of the outdoors. But I for one would be interested in hearing other people's stories. If for no other reason than to prove to myself and the people I work with that I am mostly sane!;) :D
 
:thumbup:
Why Men Love Knives
Making hunters feel competent since 2 million B.C.
by Bill Heavey

There’s something about a good knife that speaks to you on a primal level. It’s been this way for about 21/2 million years, ever since David E. Petzal was just a gleam in his papa’s eye and some nameless hunter-gatherer first began pounding rocks together. Anthropologists say we first made tools for two purposes: pounding and cutting. Your pounding tool is simplicity itself; pretty much any rock will serve to crush a mastodon bone to get at the marrow. But you need something very specific—a sharp edge—to butcher an animal or scrape a hide. Imagine that first hominid flaking a piece of rock into a shaped edge that fit his paw. Imagine the delight in his face as he hefted it and discovered its powers. I bet you anything he smiled, elbowed the nearest guy, and showed off his creation. And the message—verbal or not—has remained unchanged from that day to this: Got me a nice little cutting rock here. Check it out.
I understand this feeling in its totality. Not long ago, I picked up a very nice “rock” indeed. Mine was a serious folder, an Emerson CQC-7. It’s more knife than anybody but a Special Operations guy could justify. But it’s not more knife than I wanted. I liked the way it felt in my hand. The Teflon-coated blade is just over 3 inches long and partially serrated for cutting rope or other fibrous material. It has a Tanto point that can punch through steel. Its handle is an epoxy-fiberglass laminate known in the trade as G-10 that almost seems to adhere to your hand. The knife comes with a clip that positions it head-down in your pocket so that it’s in the right position when you draw it, and there’s a little round thumb plate affixed to the blade for one-handed opening. The click of the blade locking into position is authoritative. It’s a sound that says, I can handle this.
The knife is pure function with no concession to appearance. Because of that, it is all the more beautiful. Like the Parthenon, there’s not a truly straight line in it. It cost...let’s just say, enough that you might be tempted to pay cash so your wife doesn’t see the figure on the credit-card bill. You could easily field dress an elephant with this thing. Heck, you could probably build a house. It makes me feel more competent than I actually am. A good knife will do this to you.
The only problem is that it’s sending me into a severe funk because there is nothing in my life that justifies a knife of this seriousness. I am not in the Special Forces. I am a middle-aged bald guy who lives in the suburbs with a wife and two kids, a big mortgage, and a 1991 Honda Civic. Last night, with my new knife in my pocket, my younger daughter and I fell asleep in her bed after reading The Poky Little Puppy. And not long ago, an attractive young woman held the door for me as I entered a store behind her. When I thanked her, she said, “You’re welcome, sir.” That “sir” said things that no man who still has his own teeth and knees should have to hear.
So maybe my acquiring this knife is a reminder to myself that beneath this veneer of normalcy there still lives a hunter-gatherer whose every day is a struggle against a world filled with sudden and unforeseen dangers. True, saber-toothed cats no longer tread in the night, waiting to pounce, but there are challenges nonetheless. Just last week, for example, I was setting out the garbage cans at the end of the driveway when I ran into my neighbor, Dave, who was doing the same. Dave is about my age and is suffering from the effects of having recently traded in a sweet little pocket-rocket convertible for a green minivan. There we were, two housebroken hominids with lawns full of dandelions, wrangling our garbage cans. Then Dave began stomping the cardboard box from a new baby gate, as the trash guys won’t pick up any container that hasn’t been flattened to under 6 inches. He was kicking it harder and harder, to little effect, when I said, “Let me give you a hand.” I slid my knife out of my pants pocket, and the blade clicked into place. With four quick strokes, I slit the cardboard seams. The box collapsed.
“Whoa,” said Dave. “That is one serious little blade.” “Yeah,” I said proudly, offering it handle-first. “Check it out.”
Article URL: http://www.fieldandstream.com/fieldstream/columnists/article/0,13199,659761,00.html
 
It's quite a complicated little device. I turn wooden bowls, there is a lot to that. but knives also encompass the full range of curves, and rather than pretty much just the profile being curved as in a bowl, the blade alone can have multiple curves. There are functional issues galore, hand fit issues, decoration, and mechanical aspects. The knife allows dozens of seperate arts to come together even in a fairly simple form.

The only real problem is function. I really could get by with a set of TV knives in the kitchen. I wouldn't get by as well, but I would get buy. The fucntional dimension of boats or furniture is broader, but the canvas knives allow is immense, and probably the fact they really aren't utilitarian broadens that canvas.
 
"and probably the fact they really aren't utilitarian broadens that canvas." ?!?!?!?!?!???

I have customers that couldn't get through a day without one of my knives on their belt!
Goes on as soon as they get dressed in the morning.
 
There are basically two things that fascinate men.
When you run your hand over a nice knife handle,take it out in the woods and abuse it,and just leave it in the house when you are done ,a knife won't slap you,complain,or leave you like the other thing would.
(with all my apologies to Cindy and the other great ladies on this forum)
 
My wife doesn't understand knives either,she says it's a guy thing. Well I don't understand women and I guess thats a guy thing too, but all said and done I love em both!.................lol........John:confused:
 
I have always been infatuated with knives. When I was five I made my first knife by tying a pointy rock to a stick. Since then I have been on an almost constant quest to get more and better knives. Knives have not only become an important part of my life but, in some ways, a way of life.
I have identified two main points that justify my obsession: one philosophical and the other practical. The practical first:
As stated in the article above, the two basic tools are the hammer and the knife. Of the two, the knife is the only one that requires any sort of manufacture. Looking around my office, I can see dozens of things that would make a servicable hammer but the only working knife is in my pocket. The knife and hammer being the most basic tools, they are also the most versitile. A knife and a hammer will get you through almost any job pretty well. Since we can find a hammer almost anywhere, the knife is the only tool we need to carry. The irony is not lost on me when I think about all of the knives I have made and designed — each with its shape painstakingly chosen to optimize its efficiency at its intended tasks — and then to think about the differences between the different cutting tools used by the very first knifemakers. Only an expert in stone tools could recognize the difference between a paleolithic skinner, food knife, scraper, spear point, or dagger. The knives that they used varied to a much lesser extent than those we use today, albeit partly because of the limitations of their materials. It goes to show us, however, that for all the time we take as makers designing our knives and as users selecting our knives, we could get by just fine using nothing but a leaf-shaped blade knapped from flint and attached to a crude wooden handle with glue made from tree sap. Nevertheless, familiarity breeds variety and after 2.5 million years of familiarization we have an equal amount of variety.
Philosophically, carrying a knife (even that one you paid $200 but never use) reminds us of who we are. All things being equal, there is no reason why a frail, naked ape would survive in the world with much bigger, stronger, faster, and sharper animals that would compete with us for the same resources or enjoy eating us. All things are not equal, however, and it is knives that tipped the scales for us. Evolution "knew" this* and took away our physical advantages in order to bestow us with other abilities. Other than their relative lack of innovation, the reason that other primates do not make knives is because their hands are too big. Their larger muscles require larger attachment points and larger bones to support them and as a result they lack the manual dexterity required to make good stone (or otherwise) tools. Chimpanzees have been taught to knap flint by anthropoligists, but they hate doing it. I immagine it's kind of like trying to talk while on novicaine — it's dificult and frusturating and so you just don't do it. But we are different from our cousins, the chimps. It is our evolved physiology, both mental and physical, that allows us to make tools is the sole reason we were able to leave the trees and become the masters of our own destiny. To carry and revere a knife is to embrace the reason we are everything that we are.

- Chris

*normally I hate to see people grossly misusing words in a scientific context (and I, of all peole, should know better) but I let poeticism get the best of me. I apologize. *slaps wrist*
 
excellent responses gents, and if nothing else they have served to remind me that one person with this obsession could be called a lunatic, but as many of us with this passion as there are can only be said to remember things the rest of the world has forgotten....Either that or it's a totally new form of comunicable virus.
 
I think I Larry put it best, but I'll add that a knife is a keystone tecnolligy, with a knife all other tools are posible, without it none are posible. It can be pure function, pure art or anywhere inbetween. And if your ladies don't understand the draw of knives, take all there kitchen knives away and see what happens:D
 
Guns and knives have always been an obsession of mine. Pure insanity for me, at least that's what I'm told.:D
Scott
 
Beautiful and thought provoking thread, all great thoughts well expressed!
Lady knife has been a companion to man since the beginning of man, she has been known as tool, art and faithul companion, shared every meal with us and speaks to some who wish to hear.
 
Good knives are like good women:

Treat 'em well and they'll always come through for you. Treat 'em badly and they'll either break at a bad time or end up cutting you.

It's not always easy to find a good one, but you can usually tell right away when you do.

A pretty one will always catch your attention, but a good one will win your heart.

Their beauty ain't just on the outside.

If you loose a good one, it breaks your heart.

The right one can last you the rest of your life.
 
Maybe I am a bit sick....but when I warn someone "watch it...that is scary sharp" and then they run their thumb down the edge of one of my blades and bleed before they feel the pain.....I can't help but feel good to be a part of darminism.....

Kidding aside, there is something so primal about finely controlled destruction in the form of a sharp blade sutting anything precisely that i doubt I could put it into words eloquently enough to explain....everyone here knows it when they pick up a 15" bowie and take a hunk out of something.....
 
A knife was the first tool that allowed early men to control thier environment in a proactive way. It is the father of all tools. All great accomplishments of man, all our gleaming cities, all our dizzying technology owes its very existence to the birth of the first knife.

Civilization itself was built on the sharpened edge of a primitive cutting tool.
 
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