Anyone here use a KA-BAR?
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I could be wrong (it happens every once in a while 
) but wasn't there an entire industry in Sheffield that for a very long time was supplying a large numbers of Bowie knives, as well as daggers and the more familiar Green River styles ?
If folks were ditching them in numbers that's fine - someone was still buying them though.
I've said this before elsewhere but when the chips are down you don't care what kind of knife you have - you'd be grateful for a sharp piece of glass or stone to cut with if things were really bad.
The kit you carry is far less important than your ability to use it.
Observe most primitive cultures today, whose primary cutting tool is a large, inexpensive, mass produced machete.
Try telling them that they are going abut it all wrong and/or using the wrong kit...
In more recent history Randall produced a lot of Bowie styles (not to mention their large daggers) and although they were clearly better made than your average Ka-Bar they were of similar dimensions with a double lug guard. They must know something...
If it's sharp at one end and has a safe handle at the other you can do something useful with it.
The only limiting factor is the user.
) but wasn't there an entire industry in Sheffield that for a very long time was supplying a large numbers of Bowie knives, as well as daggers and the more familiar Green River styles ?If folks were ditching them in numbers that's fine - someone was still buying them though.
I've said this before elsewhere but when the chips are down you don't care what kind of knife you have - you'd be grateful for a sharp piece of glass or stone to cut with if things were really bad.
The kit you carry is far less important than your ability to use it.
Observe most primitive cultures today, whose primary cutting tool is a large, inexpensive, mass produced machete.
Try telling them that they are going abut it all wrong and/or using the wrong kit...
In more recent history Randall produced a lot of Bowie styles (not to mention their large daggers) and although they were clearly better made than your average Ka-Bar they were of similar dimensions with a double lug guard. They must know something...
If it's sharp at one end and has a safe handle at the other you can do something useful with it.
The only limiting factor is the user.
And straight razors. Sheffield was to England what Solingen was to Germany.
Of course any sharp edge is better than no sharp edge. But do you not think that some types of sharp edges are more suitable for specific tasks than other sharp edges?
If you're saying that machetes are essential tools for the jungle, I agree. If you're saying that machetes are Bowie knives, you are mistaken.
Randall's Bowie knives and daggers are marketed to fighters and Rambo-wannabes. There are plenty of both of those in the world, especially the latter. If knife fighting, or fantasizing about it, are important to you, they will serve you well. For bushcrafting, however, they are poor designs.
Looking at what fellows carried before and after four years of continuous outdoor living is entirely relevant.
Experienced outdoorsmen would indeed think of you as inexperienced if you showed up at camp with a Bowie knife to spread peanut butter and field-dress deer. It would be like showing up for a footrace wearing ski boots.
From Nessmuk: "The ‘bowies’ and ‘hunting knives’ usually kept on sale, are thick, clumsy affairs, with a sort of ridge along the middle of the blade, murderous-looking, but of little use….; rather fitted to adorn a dime novel on the belt of “Billy the Kid,” than the outfit of the hunter... [The preferred knife] is thin in the blade, and handy for skinning, cutting meat, or eating with….”
And Kephart: "... the familiar dime-novel pattern invented by Colonel Bowie... is too thick and clumsy to whittle with, much too thick for a good skinning knife, and too sharply pointed to cook and eat with.…. Such a knife is designed expressly for stabbing, which is about the very last thing that a woodsman ever has occasion to do... A camper has use for a common-sense sheath-knife, sometimes for dressing big game, but oftener for such homely work as cutting sticks, slicing bacon, and frying ‘spuds.’ For such purposes a rather thin, broad-pointed blade is required, and it need not be over four or five inches long. Nothing is gained by a longer blade... The notion that a heavy hunting knife can do the work of a hatchet is a delusion.”
Calvin Rutstrum, Ray Mears and Mors Kochanski express similar sentiments about knife design.
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I doubt the Laplanders spend their time spreading peanut butter and field dressing deer with their leukos. But if that's all "experienced outdoorsmen" do in your neck of the woods, then it makes sense. I would also guess that in the past 40 years, the Buck 110, yer basic bowie knife blade design, has field dressed more deer in the US than any other. But that's another point.
Are you saying you can't see the similarity between a leuku and a Kabar and their potential? Or are you saying Laplanders are tenderfeet? Ya know, I've read all the same books that you have. All the hot air you are pumping out is nothing new. Everyone here appreciates a lightweight, thin bladed mora. We all get that and then some. But most folks here don't run around with blinders on either.
That Leuko has a wide tip and no guard, which is probably the Ka-Bars greatest limitation as a bushcrafting knife. It's also got an edge all the way to the handle. And I bet it has a proper deep sheath, too, as opposed to the shallow ones with a snap that Ka-Bars come with. And that Ka-bar looks like it's had at least it's upper guard cut off. Perhaps we can agree on this: "It's possible to modify a fighting knife to make it more useful for our purposes." Personally, I'd rather just buy the Leuko as-is.
ETA The Laps field-dress plenty of (rein)deer. And I just looked up the Buck 110. It has a 4-inch blade. Hardly a Bowie knife.
(BTW, Hoodoo, no need for the rudeness in your posts. As a mod you could set an example.)
ETA The Laps field-dress plenty of (rein)deer. And I just looked up the Buck 110. It has a 4-inch blade. Hardly a Bowie knife.
(BTW, Hoodoo, no need for the rudeness in your posts. As a mod you could set an example.)
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I'll give you that.
As long as you do the same. Yes, the Kabar as it comes is not one of my favorites. But it is easily modded. The Roselli leuko is also not one of my favorites. There are other leukos with thinner blades that I favor. The point is that I don't dismiss quality knives out of hand. They all have their good points and their bad points. True there are some really useless knives out there, but surely the Kabar is not one of them, especially after applying a little elbow grease. I think Dan Schectman wrote an article in Tactical Knives some years back about a trapper/survival expert in Canada whose favorite knife was a Kabar. Dave Alloway carried a Cold Steel SRK. Was he a tenderfoot? Joe Bigley favors a USMC combat/utility knife (along with a mora). Is he a tenderfoot?
The Buck 110 is a bowie designed blade. But you can go bigger with the fixed blade design of Bucks. The original statement that was made was that the bowie design was highly popular in the US. All you have to do is look at the Buck line of hunting knives and their success over the years to see that. Then you can look at the Cold Steel line and see it as well over the past decade. Rutstrum liked the Expert. Basically a thin bladed bowie design.
Out of curiosity, are there any specific sites you'd recommend/found for researching these facts?
Hoodoo, I'm liking the mods done to your KA Bar, it's making me want one
I'll give you that. So are many other things that shouldn't be.
Interesting historical trivia: My dictionary defines "Bowie knife" as having a 6-12 inch blade with a guard "intended to catch an opponent's blade or provide protection to the owner's hand during parries and corps-a-corps", a streamlined point to "enhance penetration when stabbing", and a clip point with a sharpened back edge "in order to allow someone trained in European techniques of saber fencing to execute the maneuver called the "back cut" or "back slash"".
However, the knife originally made famous by Jim Bowie when he killed three men with it "was straight-backed having no clip point nor any hand guard".
This is my last try since this is going so wildly off topic.
Knife fighting is not a subject we care to discuss here for obvious reasons.
The Ka-Bar was not a fighting knife exclusively - it was designed as a combined fighting/utility knife (information freely available on the Ka-Bar website) and most people I have spoken to who use them, including past military users, have been far more concerned with the utility side of things for establishing camps etc.
Most people with more than an ounce of common sense are able to make an informed decision of their own. With the greatest of respect to Mears, Kochansky et al, if they all suddenly said a 5, 6 or 7 inch blade knife was the ideal there would be the inevitable stampede for the latest must have while the rest of us sit on the sidelines having long since adopted the stance that there is no ideal in all situations and conditions and that any attempt to make one is nothing more than a trade off of the highest order.
Large knives and small have been used by most peoples throughout the ages. The Bowie, in most of its various guises, is, in fact, little more than a Scramasax or Seax if you prefer, which was the standard working knife of its age and sizes ranged from the huge to the svelte.
Can anyone say with any certainty that "The notion that a heavy hunting knife can do the work of a hatchet is a delusion" ?
That's codswallop.
At least nine times out of ten I would take a larger knife over a hatchet any day of the week and I know a lot of other folks of a similar mind. For those who prefer the hatchet I have no problem with that - it's a personal choice based on what you can make work best for you, not what someone else tells you to think. There's a bit too much of that in the bushcraft world, frankly.
What I can say is that everything I can do with a typical hatchet I can do better or at least faster and more efficiently with a larger knife with the exception of using the poll for a hammer (only on soft materials, not on metal).
A large axe is useless unless you are going into log construction, a small axe is of limited use to most but sometimes handy to have, and both are usually outperformed by any one of a number of modern manual saws.
The original question (for those who seem to have overlooked it) was that the individual concerned has one of these knives and is interested in possibly using it in an outdoors scenario. How we made the quantum leap to knife fighting, small knives only, tenderfoot labelling and so on is beyond me.
20 years ago folks were making 5 - 8 inch Bowies, the odd (significantly) bigger Bowie, an occasional up-swept skinner and a lot of drop point hunters. If you made anything else with the possible exception of Tanto style knives you didn't sell them. The owners of those knives managed bushcraft and hunting activities with them just fine, and this was before anyone knew what a Mora was or that they really should be using something else.
Here in the UK most of us grew up with the leather stacked small Sheffield Bowie knives that were about all you could get your hands on, but we hunted, fished and generally got up to no good in the outdoors with them all the same.
The very best butchering job I ever saw was by a vet who used a Swiss Army folding knife on a large Elk.
I have been guided on hunts in Canada and Alaska by people toting anything from Chris Reeve one-piece hollow handled knives, hand forged, or stainless, or Damascus and, once, by someone who used a Schrade Sharp Finger and, boy, was he ever good with it. I doubt he even knows who Mors Kochansky or Ray Mears is or, if he does, I doubt he much cares what they have to say about his preferred choice of cutting tools. Given the guides respective expertise and the simple fact that they make their kit selection (both large and small) work for them, who would I be to question it ?
The leuku example above is a great definer - it pre-dates the Bowie knife by a very, very long time and is the de facto standard to Laplanders. They, coincidentally, know a thing or two about living in the bush and they were using their leuku's until very recently for that purpose countrywide - some still do.
This has become like any one of the pointless arguments over calibres, or longbows v compounds for hunting, or...
I think a key point is missing here - I think the 'adapt' from "adapt and overcome" has been well and truly dropped. Almost anything can be made to work well enough, if you choose to give it a run.
Ka-Bar: not everyone's cup of favourite beverage. Can be made to work very well for those inclined to do something useful with one, and will never work for anyone who can't see it through the right eyes. If you have one and want to try it you might be pleasantly surprised. If you're not, clean and oil it and put it away or move it on, but at least you get to make an informed choice based on your own thoughts and experiences with it.
Knife fighting is not a subject we care to discuss here for obvious reasons.
The Ka-Bar was not a fighting knife exclusively - it was designed as a combined fighting/utility knife (information freely available on the Ka-Bar website) and most people I have spoken to who use them, including past military users, have been far more concerned with the utility side of things for establishing camps etc.
Most people with more than an ounce of common sense are able to make an informed decision of their own. With the greatest of respect to Mears, Kochansky et al, if they all suddenly said a 5, 6 or 7 inch blade knife was the ideal there would be the inevitable stampede for the latest must have while the rest of us sit on the sidelines having long since adopted the stance that there is no ideal in all situations and conditions and that any attempt to make one is nothing more than a trade off of the highest order.
Large knives and small have been used by most peoples throughout the ages. The Bowie, in most of its various guises, is, in fact, little more than a Scramasax or Seax if you prefer, which was the standard working knife of its age and sizes ranged from the huge to the svelte.
Can anyone say with any certainty that "The notion that a heavy hunting knife can do the work of a hatchet is a delusion" ?
That's codswallop.
At least nine times out of ten I would take a larger knife over a hatchet any day of the week and I know a lot of other folks of a similar mind. For those who prefer the hatchet I have no problem with that - it's a personal choice based on what you can make work best for you, not what someone else tells you to think. There's a bit too much of that in the bushcraft world, frankly.
What I can say is that everything I can do with a typical hatchet I can do better or at least faster and more efficiently with a larger knife with the exception of using the poll for a hammer (only on soft materials, not on metal).
A large axe is useless unless you are going into log construction, a small axe is of limited use to most but sometimes handy to have, and both are usually outperformed by any one of a number of modern manual saws.
The original question (for those who seem to have overlooked it) was that the individual concerned has one of these knives and is interested in possibly using it in an outdoors scenario. How we made the quantum leap to knife fighting, small knives only, tenderfoot labelling and so on is beyond me.
20 years ago folks were making 5 - 8 inch Bowies, the odd (significantly) bigger Bowie, an occasional up-swept skinner and a lot of drop point hunters. If you made anything else with the possible exception of Tanto style knives you didn't sell them. The owners of those knives managed bushcraft and hunting activities with them just fine, and this was before anyone knew what a Mora was or that they really should be using something else.
Here in the UK most of us grew up with the leather stacked small Sheffield Bowie knives that were about all you could get your hands on, but we hunted, fished and generally got up to no good in the outdoors with them all the same.
The very best butchering job I ever saw was by a vet who used a Swiss Army folding knife on a large Elk.
I have been guided on hunts in Canada and Alaska by people toting anything from Chris Reeve one-piece hollow handled knives, hand forged, or stainless, or Damascus and, once, by someone who used a Schrade Sharp Finger and, boy, was he ever good with it. I doubt he even knows who Mors Kochansky or Ray Mears is or, if he does, I doubt he much cares what they have to say about his preferred choice of cutting tools. Given the guides respective expertise and the simple fact that they make their kit selection (both large and small) work for them, who would I be to question it ?
The leuku example above is a great definer - it pre-dates the Bowie knife by a very, very long time and is the de facto standard to Laplanders. They, coincidentally, know a thing or two about living in the bush and they were using their leuku's until very recently for that purpose countrywide - some still do.
This has become like any one of the pointless arguments over calibres, or longbows v compounds for hunting, or...
I think a key point is missing here - I think the 'adapt' from "adapt and overcome" has been well and truly dropped. Almost anything can be made to work well enough, if you choose to give it a run.
Ka-Bar: not everyone's cup of favourite beverage. Can be made to work very well for those inclined to do something useful with one, and will never work for anyone who can't see it through the right eyes. If you have one and want to try it you might be pleasantly surprised. If you're not, clean and oil it and put it away or move it on, but at least you get to make an informed choice based on your own thoughts and experiences with it.
Have to say, that was very well put. I'm more of a hatchet/axe person than a big knife person but I do love to carry and use the big knife now and again. They can be pretty useful for shaping wood or removing the offending briar from my leg.
I think I know where Oblio is coming from. I've made similar arguments against the "big chopper" and the "one knife" survival fantasy. But I don't recall the last time I only carried one knife.
Was an American military history major in college, "gear lists" are a favorite topic, and I have shelves full of books. Hard Tack and Coffee by J. Billings is an easy, interesting read about the little details of everyday life for Union soldiers. The Life of Johnny Reb, Wiley, is the same for Confederates. Rebel Private, Fletcher, is a favorite I think I'll re-read starting today, (thanks for reminding me of it). Arms and Equipment of the Civil War, Coggins, is a good one, too.
If you make it to the US, there are excellent museums, especially in former Confederate states.
There are also a lot of "reenactors", and web sites devoted to them. Some are a lot more knowledgeable than others, of course, and as usual with the internet it's sometimes difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I love looking at old pics. As I said in an earlier post, it was the fashion of the time to have a photo taken before marching off to war, and there are thousands of them. Many are now available on Google. For photos during and after the war, start by Googling Mathew Brady and go from there.
My wife grew up in Fredricksburg, Virginia, the site of a major battle. There are a lot of private collections there, including her family's, and meetings where people buy, sell and trade. Searching for artifacts is a sport there.
I remember an abandoned greenhouse made from those glass photographic plates when I was a kid, and spending hours looking at the panes with a magnifying glass. Vandals smashed them all one day, and I've wished ever since that I'd taken some.
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... I'm more of a hatchet/axe person than a big knife person but I do love to carry and use the big knife now and again. They can be pretty useful for shaping wood or removing the offending briar from my leg.
Being an absolute hypocrite, I usually have a bunch of cutting tools with me, mainly because I enjoy seeing what works, what doesn't, and then trying to figure out ways of making what doesn't work, work.
Normally I can distil problems down to my approach rather than the tool in question, although I've still never cracked how to skin a deer with the corkscrew on my Swiss Army Champ...
One of my favourite big knives (or small machetes, depending on your perspective) is the Cold Steel Barong. Very cheap to buy, easy to look after and extremely versatile. Loads of cutting power for little effort, the handle doesn't give hot spots and the blade allows you to easily use it as a draw knife. I use one a lot in making longbows (from gathering staves to roughing out and then fining down) but it shares a lot of common ground with the leuku, which is about as effective at everything and a lot nicer to look at and own
My regular selection of axes, at least one of which goes with me on most outdoors trips:
I know, I'm a hypocrite - I can live with it
The original post asked for opinions about the Bowie-style fighting knife known as a Ka-Bar, that's how. The OP referred to it as "a killing weapon" himself. He hasn't complained about getting the opinions he asked for.
Here's what my dictionary says it is: "KA-BAR (trademarked as KA-BAR, capitalized) 11 3⁄4-inch fighting and utility Bowie knife issued to the United States Marines and adopted by the United States Navy as the USN Fighting Knife Mark II."
The word "tenderfoot" obviously struck a nerve, even though it was applied to no one in particular. The fact remains, though, that using inappropriate tools does make one look inexperienced.
I regret having weighed in on this thread because instead of a logical, spirited discussion it's been irrational and impolite. I figured that since it's a Marine knife, and I was issued one in the Marines, got the usual training in how to use it, and had it for a twenty year career, that my perspective would qualify as informed. I can say the same thing about bayonets, but I'm not gonna pretend they're good for bushcrafting, either. There are much better edged tools for our purposes. You'd look like a tenderfoot doing camp chores with a bayonet, a sword, a shiriken or a straight razor, too, unless you were improvising because nothing better was available, or as a joke or a publicity stunt.
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I have to make these points... Military training is not bushcraft so your 20 year career does not qualify you to make the "bushcraft rules", military training is all about not being dead which is survival... You said earlier that you soon ditched the knife so how comes now you had it for your 20 year career?
No one knife is better at everything but if I could get dumped into any one of a thousand environments between the arctic to the jungle in all honesty I'd probably opt for something like the kabar or mod knife to perform all tasks (albeit some not at 100% optimum functionality) I certainly wouldn't want a mora to help make an igloo or to dig post holes for a shelter as well as defend myself from the wildlife - human included.
Once you make your idea of bushcraft more general than where you have been or where you want to be, your ideal knife changes... so maybe another thread is in order... to pick one out of the almost infinite knife choices to suite perfectly every situation and task you may face in the outdoors.
I hate that there is such a bushcraft uniform these days, it's sometimes like a damn playground.
No one knife is better at everything but if I could get dumped into any one of a thousand environments between the arctic to the jungle in all honesty I'd probably opt for something like the kabar or mod knife to perform all tasks (albeit some not at 100% optimum functionality) I certainly wouldn't want a mora to help make an igloo or to dig post holes for a shelter as well as defend myself from the wildlife - human included.
Once you make your idea of bushcraft more general than where you have been or where you want to be, your ideal knife changes... so maybe another thread is in order... to pick one out of the almost infinite knife choices to suite perfectly every situation and task you may face in the outdoors.
I hate that there is such a bushcraft uniform these days, it's sometimes like a damn playground.
Spoken like someone who watches a lot of TV.
When I retired I gave away my knives, flight helmet, flight jackets, flight suits, ALICE pack, utility uniforms and whatnot, mostly to kids. Is that good enough, or do you need notarized statements from them and a copy of my retired ID card? I noticed an E-tool in the basement recently, would you like it?
Oblio, if you don't want people to be rude to you, try following your own advice.
I think we all need to chill on this.
The majority of impolite posts have come from you. And still are. Everybody else has been polite and rational, you seem to be almost ranting.
I apologize for the TV crack. Knee-jerk reaction that shouldn't have been typed. Last post in this thread, the last word is yours.
I think I know where Oblio is coming from. I've made similar arguments against the "big chopper" and the "one knife" survival fantasy. But I don't recall the last time I only carried one knife.
Me either. In fact I avoid it like the plague, but a survival blade has to have a fighting ability to do its job for me. I also think that a big knife can do the job of a small knife, but not the other way round, so if you going to carry one it has to have a certain size and strength to it.
As I said before, I think if you used a Nessmuk style set up, and practiced with it, I can see no reason not to get on with a Ka Bar.
One of the things that always amazes me is that we can have these discussions, when a native with a kurki or a machete can do unbelivable things with that one large knife.
Been typing this for a while now, the dictionary and a lot of the other experts, seem to have a lack of knowledge or insight into the point of the bowie mods, or even why they were made.
Hoodoo, wish you had not shown your moded one. I really like the look of that. Have you changed the bevel, or edge on it? Understand that one of the mods needed to make it useful.
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