WHY...tapered tangs

S

Soilarch

Joined
Oct 15, 2007
Messages
297
Most things about knives, if you'll just sit down and think about, have a purpose. The old "form follows function" philosophy. Why tapered tangs? Only thing I can come up with is that it:
1)puts more weight into the blade. (This it seems like this would be negligible and aweful lot of work for very little return.)
2) it just looks cool


Is there another reason, have I missed something? Does it really make a noticeable difference?
 
Balance, hand geometry, looks cool, I've heard a number of explanations. The biggest difference I've heard is how they feel in your hand, they have a different balance. However, and maybe someone can corroborate this, but when I was messing around forging our a tang, I notice as I pounded the steel to stretch out the tang longer, it naturally tapered thinner at the butt. Maybe it started as just a side effect from forging and just grew from there. Good luck!
 
Much better ballance in full tang blades, especially those with short blades and full sized handles. Of course it looks good and on top of everything it shows skill on the knife makers part. It also helps your knife stand out from production blades wich generaly lack such work.
 
In addition, it takes out overall weight of the knife and if you're forging in the taper of a full tang knife, instead of grinding metal away, you save on material. If you can make 6 forged full tang knives out of a bar of stock with flat tangs, tapering the tangs will allow you to make 3 additional knives out of the same amount of material.
 
Think for a forged blade it has to do with saving of materials.

The reason I do it is that it looks cool, shows added effort over factory knives and when combined with skelitonizing the full tange makes a surprising differance in ballance and wieght. Just a little mettal off the rear of the tange makes a lot bigger differance than you would think ballance wise. Makes the knife feel more "alive" in my hand.
 
Tapering the tang also removes weight from the handle area to accommodate the added weight of handle materials, bolsters, etc. It makes the overall weight of the knife less while helping to keep the balance point in the ricasso area where it should be.

Oh yes, and it looks really cool too!
 
Previous to the mid 19th c. steel was treated as a precious metal. It was difficult to produce, sometimes difficult to obtain, and expensive to buy. For full tang, or even partial tang knives, it was almost an economical necessity to taper the tangs. As mentioned somewhere above, one can gain more blades per bar if the tangs are tapered, or drawn out as a hidden tang. Even the tangs of thin bladed kitchen types, and trade knives for the new world were most often tapered, and commonly made with only a partial tang for economic advantage. The better balance, and pleaseing appearance was a secondary result.
 
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