I am always amazed when I see guys attempting to use a heavy duty knife for fine delicate tasks. It is simple geometry that dictates, in part, how a knife will perform. In looking at many traditional knives from cultures unarguably known for their survival skills, it is easy to see a common theme, thin is in. An exception being the Kukhri with it's incredibly thick spine. The machete, for example, is thin stock and has been used for generations all over the world in tropical places. The humble Mora is a staple in many Scandinavian cultures. Even the classic slip joint has it's place in history of proven bushcraft blades here in the Americas. Where are all the traditional thick blades?
How about the Bowie? The history of the Bowie knife is too convoluted to go into here. One popular story stream has Jim’s brother Renzin developing the first Bowie as a big hunting tool. When Jim got into a fight with Major Norris Wright and Jim’s pistol failed to fire, and he could not spare two hands to open his clasp knife and stab Major Wright, Renzin gave Jim his hunting knife. “This will never fail you.” In a letter to a newspaper, several years after his brother’s death at the Alamo (1836), Renzin said:
The first Bowie knife was made by myself in the parish of Avoyelles, in this state, as a hunting knife, for which purpose, exclusively, it was used for many years. The length of the knife was 9 1/4 inches, its width 1 1/2 inches, its thickness ¼ inch, single edged and the blade not curved.
Despite this description, I’ve never seen a picture of a period Bowie with a straight Warncliff /Seax blade. It’s probable that the earliest Bowies had a single sharpened edge rising to meet a straight spine. I’m thinking of the Searle’s bowie as a pattern. Not that it matters. Once the Sandbar Fight established Jim Bowie’s fame, American cutlers started making “Bowie” knives of any pattern that occurred to them. The curved and sharpened clip point Bowie came into fashion. As quickly as they could, the English cutlers of Sheffield got into the act. Boatloads of English Bowie knives were shipped to American ports, for distribution throughout the east coast and points west.
Reporters and fiction writers of the day talked about the “big butcher knife” Jim carried. Today a butcher knife suggests a thin utility knife, perhaps a long curved one. The sort of thing you’d find in a meat processing plant. Especially before the band saw changed life in the abattoir. That just shows how language can trip us up. Back in Jim’s day, a “butcher knife” suggested something fearsome, with which a skilled fighter would butcher any man who opposed him.
In the American frontier, when flintlock or cap lock weapons offered single-shot-and-good-luck-afterwards service, it was wise to carry a sturdy knife as a backup. The Bowie also served as the heavy camp and hunting knife for which Renzin designed the blade. Chopping wood for fire or shelter, butchering game, scraping hides, and all the standard things we use big Busse kin knives for. The Bowie was a modern version of the Hudson Bay Company knives that were sent with the voyagers into the wilderness when they traded for hides with the Amerindian tribes, before Jim Bowie was ever born.
It’s true that big bowies fell out of favor, to some degree, as multi-shot firearms were perfected. And many Bowies were abandoned by infantry on both sides of the American Civil War because soldiers had enough to carry. But for sporting purposes of fishing-hunting-camping, Bowie knives were still carried in the later nineteenth century.
As for the modern period, more than a century ago Webster Marble developed and marketed the Trailmaker. A knife with a heavy 10” blade designed for clearing brush and heavy camp work. The Marble’s Trailmaker has never gone out of production to the present day. Then there have been military bolos, long heavy chopper bayonets, Marine Raider Bowies, Western Bowies, Randall Made Bowies, and Busse knives. Exactly when was this period in which super thin knives ruled the wilderness?
But on the subject of thin knives:
Rosarms is just starting out in North America and their knives are thinner Russian/skandi style and are quite strong but they still got tons of request to make the blades thicker for the kind of looks Americans expect.
IIRC Rosarms makes thinn bladed knives not because that’s an Old Russian Tradition, but because of an Old Soviet Bureaucratic Regulation. They were required by law to make their blades of a thin stock steel—or else. That tells us nothing about traditional blades among hunters, herders, farmers, or whatever of the vast Russian forests and steppes.
I make a distinction between desirable EDC knives and emergency knives. If you are guaranteed there won’t be any emergency today, a nice thin knife is the way to go. An Opinel, a Mora, a Case Stockman or Trapper, will do what you need. Cutting string, cleaning under fingernails, opening parcels, slicing tomatoes or salami, cutting a sandwich, your normal everyday knife tasks. I always have a slip joint in my pocket to handle these tasks.
But—note the qualification. Can you guarantee that there won’t be an emergency today? You’d better talk fast and well. Can you make me believe it? I think not. What constitutes an emergency? I don’t know. What will I need to do today? I don’t know. In an unpredictable emergency, will my knife needs be limited to what a paring knife, or a stockman or trapper can accomplish? I don’t know, but that’s not the way to bet. Can I use a paring knife, or a stockman, to cut my way out of an overturned jeep? I think not. Can I use it to cut my way out of a burning building, through a locked steel door? I think not.
There are a lot of circumstances in which I cannot carry enough blade to handle foreseeable emergencies. When I meet them, and I cannot work around them, and the emergency happens, I am Sheet Out of Luck. But when I have the choice, I carry a slip joint to use for fine work. And to use in public, because a nice stag scaled non-locking slippy is less likely to scare the sheeple. I will also carry a knife that’s as sturdy and big as I can manage, given the circumstances. The Dumpster Mutt CG is far from my favorite knife for nearly any use. But it rides in my urban emergency bag because—well, just because.
