the SOD is my favorite knife. toughern hell <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> according to the busse combat site the NMSFNO is SUPPOSED TO BE .25 thick!

I must disagree.

Our oldest weapon is almost certainly the club or mace, as we could just pick up a likely-feeling piece of branch and hit things with it. But for the vast majority of human history, our manufactured weapon of choice has been a spear. The knife was first developed to skin and butcher the animals we killed by the spear, and then by the atlatl, or bow.

When you took a small blade onto the battlefield with the intent of fighting with it, you carried it as a fallback option. For example in the Roman army, a pugio was standard equipment. A dagger is very different than a knife in that it has a very fine point, and sharpened on both edges. It's optimized to stab. It's also banned in most places in the USA. A knife can be used as a weapon, but it's not designed to be a weapon from the ground up: your average combat knife sees more time opening containers and jamming things one way or another than it sees blood. The honor of "purpose weapon" falls to the dagger. And even a dagger is a very limited weapon next to a sword, which largely replaced it, or any of the polearms which remained popular until after gunpowder started taking over.

Even in World War 1, with the rise of trench-fighting, soldiers needed a melee weapon... But if you look at most "trench knives", they aren't knives at all, they are daggers and stilettoes.

*shrug*

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

At her age it's doubtful she's going to be strong enough or fast enough to effectively use a knife. Besides, a knife is a last-ditch weapon that works best when it's a surprise.

To address what a few others have said... DUELING with knives takes a lot of skill and practice. KILLING somebody with a knife is not the same thing, and to be effective simply requires surprise and a decent knowledge of human anatomy. You ever see a video of a prison shanking? Those guys are never skilled knifers, but that's how it works most often in real life.

She'd be much better off with a 9mm or .38 special and some range time, a good holster and carry style that's easy for her to use (i.e. easy to draw, reliably, every time) and an introductory practical pistol course of some sort.

Carrying a weapon regularly is a way of life, not just a decision. It requires an entirely new set of skills, new mindset, and practice in order to be effective.

The first and most important skill she needs to develop is "situational awareness." See them coming before they get to her. If you can see trouble coming, BEFORE it gets to you, you have a much greater chance of surviving it. This means, sit with your back to the wall, and keep an eye on everybody. Watch their body language. Pay attention to who's doing what.

If she wants to make this leap, more power to her! As an angry, gun-toting, meat eater, I welcome her!

Yep the oldest weapon is most likely a rock held and used as a club.
Through out history the design and size of knives has been influenced buy the fighting. The Spartan Hoplites for example used a short sword with a blade length around 10-13" about the size of a modern Bowie. The blade was designed for both cut and trust. Why? well standing in a shield wall with your shield pressed up against your enemy's and with people pressed up against you both behind and to each side the long sword is useless...

When the fighting shifted from ground based to horse based a longer weapon was needed. But the short knife took the form of the dagger with it's long slender double sided blade which was called the "Misericorde" or dagger of mercy. It's commonly seen on knights. The knights plate armor is resistant to the sword but the dagger can be wedged between the plates or driven through the eye slots. I recently ran across a reference that the Japanese may have used tanto's a great deal in close quarter armored foot combat on the field for this very same purpose.

WWI started out with the soldiers wearing stocking hats into battle. Some obsurvent doctor noticed that most of the wounds were from shrapnel to the head as a result of the air burst artillery rounds. Helmets were designed and soon issued which oddly enough closely resembled the war hats worn in the middle ages buy men-at-arms. I read some where that in Europe medieval war hats were studied when designing there helmets.

I suspect that the stiletto type blades were a carry over from the middle ages. To bad they completely over looked the Bowie knife which is a far better design. What can you say....

On a side note NASA went over and studied some of Henry the VIIIs armor like the one pictured below when they were designing space suite.



To the soldier everything is a tool for war which may be used for some other task.

So would a tree-chopping herring be a melee weapon? Or do you leave it in a warm bucket for a few days so it becomes a chemical weapon. Hm.

</Monty Python>

The Spartans like most soldiers of their day did carry a sword...most likely a xiphos or occasionally a kopis. A xiphos is slender, double-edged, and slightly leaf-shaped, with blades mostly around the 60cm mark in length. A very effective stabbing design. The Spartans in particular moved in later days to a much shorter xiphos, with blades as short as 30cm. It was still slender and doubled-edged, not like a Bowie at all. A kopis, less common, is longer, single-edged, and much heavier; optimized for hacking and chopping.

It's important to note that the sword was, again, only a secondary weapon. A Spartan's primary weapon was his dory, or pike, a simple point-on-a-stick. He drew his sword only when his dory was broken, or when the formation collapsed and you were too close to use it. Also significant here is that a Spartan had a huge shield to protect himself with, increasing the usefulness of his small sword.

Battlefield single-edged swords evolved from the xiphos to the falchion, and then abandoned for a time as armor simply got too good for them to be any use. Single edged weapons finally reappeared as the sabre when gunpowder made the wearing of armor obsolete.

Just trying to say, short bladed weapons intended for combat are universally doubled edged, making them daggers (or no-edged, making them stilettoes), and the only single-edged weapons on the field designed to be weapons were long and heavy, beyond even machetes. Which isn't to say that knives can't be used as weapons, or weren't used as weapons. Conscripts, especially, rarely had any standardized arms and brought whatever they could, so you had all manner of pitchforks, mallets, felling axes, hooks, scythes, and knives. But the knife was never intended to be firstly a weapon. The so-called "combat knife" or Bowie pattern is a relatively recent development, and rarely sees use as the weapon of a trained combatant since rifles and even pistols are more effective.

Opinion and semantics perhaps, but there you go.

the knife is the OLDEST FORM OF TECHNOLOGY.

the concept of sharpening something and using it to kill is as old as humans are. be it a spear, knife, etc...

Correct......

Although a knife might not be the most appropriate option as a self defense weapon for some... it's versatility as a tool makes it indispensable. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I suppose it might if it were frozen... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />





My comparison of the xiphos to the bowie was not in design but rather in size. The xiphos's double edged leaf blade gave it some forward weight in the blade increasing it's chopping ability. Double edged daggers of the current traditional shape are really poor choppers. It's interesting that the Hoplites were the only ones to use the shorter sword. The hoplon or large shield was their main overall defense and everything revolved around it. The spear worked at distance but lost it's effectiveness in close quarters which is where the Xiphos entered the picture. They wisely covered all the basses from short to extended distances.


Generally speaking the spear was the primary weapon all the way up to firearms and yes the sword was secondary. Single edged swords did not entirely disappear as they were popular in the mid to far east. Single edged swords were also common in northern Europe among the Vikings and among the Saxons in Germany and the Japanese. These swords were not heavy and were designed for the field. The double edged sword did have the advantage of being able to be used longer in combat when one edge dulled you could simply flip it over. There are references to swords being replenished during battle in Sagas.

I disagree that knives designed for combat are "universally" double edged. Perhaps in a modern sense they are however certainly not in an historical one.

I really don't understand why the bowie was not adopted as a battle knife it's far superior to the doubled edged dagger. I realize that in today's modern army the knife plays less of a fighting roll and more of a General duty roll. Even the Bayonet is rarely used for combat purposes however like I said to a soldier everything is a tool for war which may be used for some other task.

Well said !!!!


Next to the Dog mans best friend...

I carry this when I go on walks, along with a blade: