Well I imagine that got your attention didn't it?
But it's a serious question.
Let me explain, when we look at the history of mankind a fixed blade knife wasn't the main tool option.
Otzi the iceman, for example, is probably the earliest none written example of a outdoorsmans tool choices. Yes he had a flint knife but that was the standard of the time. His main tool, the thing of value and there for the tool he valued the most was his bronze axe. If a knife was better why didn't he have a bronze knife and a flint axe?
Travel forward in time to the dark ages, what was the tool that every man had for both work and war? An axe, not a sword or spear these were for the elite, the warrior class. Yes, most people had a small fixed bladed eating knife which probably doubled up for a carving tool, but again the technology was limited. Although I do own a bronze handle from a roman pocket knife which was caste to depict a hound chasing a hare, there for we can assume it was a hunting knife and due to cost of manufacture at the time probably owned by someone of status.
Travel forward again to a time where metal tools were much more common and technology had evolved to allow cost and choice to be much more a personal thing such as the earliest days in the birth of the America's. A time where we have records of people's lives, a time where almost all people lived and worked outdoors in one form or another, what do we find? The choice of tools for the outdoorsmans, the long hunter and the soldiers on the frontier even the indigenous people they encountered was the folding pocket knife and the axe. Fixed bladed knives were used for butchery, of both beast and man, but for outdoor life it was a folding knife and a axe.
Records from the French and Indian wars show that soldiers on both sides were issued pocket knives, one in summer and two in winter, and belt axes. No records I have seen record soldiers being issued fixed bladed knives, indeed the belt axe is even recorded as being issued to replace the bayonet.
Jump forward again to the last century or so. People like Nessmuk, sportsmen and hunters, what do we know of their choice of tool? Well still we see the ancient wisdom of pocket knife and axe! Yes, the famous Nessmuk knife was there, but like the long hunter of old, his sheath knife was used purely for butchery or eating.
Even in the two world wars where more industrialised men where taken from town or semi rural life the cutting tool they were issued was a pocket knife.
So what's my point?
If at a time when men lived and breathed a life in the woods the pocket knife and the axe where the tools of choice, for many thousands of years (technology allowing) - now at a time where we all live in a life almost totally removed from nature our so called gurus and outdoors experts all preach we need a fixed bladed knife!
Why? What has changed?
Given that 90% of our so called outdoors experts are monkey see monkey do and are just regurgitating information they've been taught at some school or another and have rarely grown up in a immersed outdoor life so potentially don't have the depth of experience of our forebears, who was the person who started the trend or fad of the fixed blade knife?
Or, as I suspect might be the case, who was the genius who realized that modern outdoors folk lack in skill so much that it was better that carry a fixed bladed knife rather than the tools of choice of their ancestors?
OK, well done for bearing with me, I'm sure your now chomping at the bit to reply, but before you do bear in mind I'm not talking about collecting fixed blade knives or their practicality or beauty, i'm talking about why modern people (urban types we are now) seem to believe a fixed bladed knife is so special that they now ignore the woods wisdom of generations people who lived and breathed the life of a woodman.
And as a example of this let me add one last little gem! Batoning, so removed are we now from the wisdom of old that we had to invent a way of using a tool, not designed for the job, to split wood.
Moras etc aside, financially a good pocket knife and a belt axe is better value and more versatile than a sheath (one tool option) fix bladed knife.
Phew, hopefully I've explained my thoughts clearly enough. Now I'll grab a pipe and a coffee and await the replies I'm sure you good people will share
It used to be the custom to lay out all of those belonging to the people who turned up to a Meet. Kind of show off the shinies.
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