On the subject of knives;

I've never tried to really explain all this before, but I'd like to
discuss knives a bit and see where it goes...

the knife is mans most important single tool....
We all use knives.... in modern times mostly in the kitchen...
knives come in all sizes and shapes... The smaller blades are
generally used for fine work, or getting into places... the
practical difference between a paring knife and a whittling knife is
slight... the same tool will do both jobs, be one a boyscout pocket
knife and the other a decent quality paring knife....

The biggest difference in knives isnt in style or size, its in the
material the blade is made from...

experts tend to like harder steels, and people not in the know buy
what ever looks nice.... Harder steels are harder to sharpen, but not
enough to justify buying softer steels for any reason I know of...
the softer steels are mostly a modern invention due to early
stainless not being of good enough quality for a decent knife....
later stainless now rivals good carbon steel in hardness... but what
happened, is there was a lot of salesmanship selling the soft low
quality stainless for many years, and instead of people knowing
better they were programmed over time to accept the inferior knives,
and to this day more inferior quality metal is used in knives than
good quality... I grew up in an era and a culture where my family
members used blue steel long after most had gone to soft stainless...
why? Country people, they had all grown up on farms and spent time in
the woods...
It was the city people who didnt know better and sucked up the softer
bladed cheap knives...

country people disdained them... Wouldnt hold an edge.... i.e they
dont stay sharp, sooner rather than later their owner is using a dull
knife..
In current times we are very lucky, we now have very high quality
stainless knives commonly available, and often sold as cheaply as the
soft junk.. most people dont know the difference... Most people in
modern times dont know how to sharpen a knife... they use them dull,
or think some patented widget will sharpen it for them.. Hardly......

the way to test for hardness in blade steel is with a file or a
stone... the soft stainless files easily, the harder stainless will
not, and in fact will trash a file in short order if you insist...
the harder steels require a stone.... and the hardest steels will
even zing on a stone, i.e. slide over it rather than being abraded by
it, you can test hard stainless on a stone and know its relative
hardness just by feel and the sound it makes... I like good hard
steel...
You can tell the difference between a woodsman and a professional
cook or butcher by the hardness of his knife steel.... a cook uses
softer medium hard steels, as does a butcher and sharpens often,
they like softer medium steels because its easy to get a quick edge
and they go thru so much production that they have to constantly
sharpen anyway...

the home type cook is more likely to have even softer steels, mostly
out of ignorance.... and in cooks, their expertise can be judged by
the hardness of their knives, a higher grade "Chef" is likely to
have a quality/harder steel knife than a common professional cook.

the good news these days is the very best steels are starting to show
up in common knives in about any kitchen shop.. mostly due to the
Chinese, they are making knives cheaply enough that the class of
metal is able to go up and still not affect the price... I spend
alot of time cruising kitchen items areas shopping for such knives..

And am regularly finding 440C type stainless in
$2-$5 knives... the only soft knives I own are for cutting bait,
they are made from the cheap 300 series stainless, basically are the
same steel as the early stainless knives... the reason I have them is
for rust resistance, the 300 series stuff is more rust resistant..
and on deck of a blue water boat, I dont want to use my better
knives and have them damaged by corrosion...

there are several classes of knives by design/intended use, from work
knives for myriad purposes, from box cutters, to knives especially
designed for carving.. in work knives blade length is generally as
short as possible, with overall length kept to the minimum required
to do the job for practical reasons, generaly leverage, and getting
into places.. an example might be in leatherwork, I have a knife I
designed especially for cutting leather.. the blade is less than an
inch long, and all curve...

kitchen knives come in varying lengths, from a 3 inch paring knife
used for peeling potatoes, to a longer fine blade used for slicing
onions or tomatoes, generaly 5 or 6 inches.. then there are knives in
the 6 to 8 inch range for general use, cutting cabbage, veggies, or
meat... the professional cook tends to use a longer blade than in the
home kitchen, the reason is quantity, he has to cut up big piles of
food, and uses a bigger blade, often 10 to 12 inches or more..

Meat knives come in two basic styles... first is a blade with curve
near the tip, this knife style is used for skinning and slicing up
meat that is raw...

the second style has a straighter edge and a narrower blade... it
tends to be more pointy. this knife is used for boning or slicing
cooked meat..

in field butchering these two shapes are used but generally in shorter
blades... The curved edge for skinning, and the narrow more pointy
blade used for gutting.. blade length is dependent on the size of
the animal being butchered, a deer hunter will have a 4 to 6 inch
blade, while an Elk or Buffalo hunter would have a longer blade.

then there are fighting knives.... they vary in design from thinner
daggers, to heavier hacking style fighters.... experts tend to the
thinner precise blades, while the Rambo heads like the the heavy
hackers.. the hackers tend to come into their own as the numbers of
adversaries increase... less time to be precise.....

Then there is the survival knife.... which tends to have to be all of
the above... most survival knives tend to be the Rambo knives, big
heavy bladed, with clipped points.... These knives are not survival
knives in real terms due to impractical shape and excessive guards...
they are not worth shit for anything but hacking up natives, or
chopping small brush or large hunks of meat.. in effect they are
pointed cleavers.. if you look at my fotos section, you will see my
design for a large survival knife, if you study the shape you will
realize the size and shape are general purpose, and its basically
capable of cutting meat, veggies, cutting tent stakes, or
fighting.....its a little on the large side, because I assumed in its
design criteria that if I could only have one blade I could adapt to
using a larger blade than I normally would use, to increase the
general utility and fighting potential.. the blade is twelve inches
long and 3/16ths thick. which is also thicker than I would normally
use for a working blade, but I chose that thickness for the reasons
of durability and weight for chopping jobs and hacking style
fighting... its my answer to the Rambo knife.. and is many times
more practical than anything you have seen on TV... it also has an
extremely good feel, and the copper wire wrap on the handle is placed
at a point to provide extra grip at the knife's point of balance for
control purposes in fighting much like used on swords where
fingering the guard style technique was used as in Rapiers and small
swords during the Rennaisance. Another point I would like to make,
is hunting, survival, and fighting knives tend to be of thicker
stock, while kitchen or cooks/chef's knives are thinner, This is for
durability factor more than other reasons, with some weight for
fighting purposes... I like to build hunting and survival knives out
of available kitchen knives, so I constanly shop for the thicker
blades in the harder stainless types...

I am currenty working on a smaller hunting/survival knife.. With a
7&1/2 inch blade.. It's design is for less weight.....

I.E. the 7&1/2 inch blade of the latest project is to come up with
a carrying belt knife thats more minimalistic than the clunker 12
inch Tarzan knife discussed above... seven or eight inches is the
average knife length, and there is a reason for that, simple
ergonomics and practical utility.....

All this being said, one thing I know for certain, is the rope
wrapped handle celt blade I made this last year is capable of 95% of
my actual knife needs... and it weighs ounces.....
Another point I would like to make is that a smaller blade combined
with a hachet is better than something like my tarzan knife... and if
given the opportunity, I will have a full sized axe in any survival
situation/baggage array possible... in fact, my guess is my stargate
baggage includes more knives than any other item, why? because they
are so useful, and there are different knives that are best for
different purposes...

am I a knife nut? certainly... But its for more reasons than just
liking knives... I understand their intrinsic value....... they are
in fact worth more than equal weight in gold... I'd rather have an
ounce of knife than a pound of gold in a survival situation....

another point I would like to make, is the hunting knife and the
kitchen knife were one and the same earlier in their evolution... in
fact a good hunting knife still carrys the atributes of early food
preparation knives... we now make cooking knives with much thinner
blades that slice much more efficiently, but the good hunting knife is
a hold-over from the common utility knife of a hundred years ago or
so.... the reason hunting knives retain thicker blades into the
modern era is durability factor, they dont break.... and the reason
they retain food preparation attributes is because thats our primary
need in life... you can run away from a fight, but you cant outrun
hunger...

and hunting is a food harvesting endevour.... The hunting knife and
kitchen knife are kissing cousins..... and there are some kitchen
knives on the market that are better hunting knives out of the box
than many styles sold as hunting knives.....

it all boils down to utility.... What works the best for the purpose....

And my first real thoughts on this began as a teenager when I saw a
garden variety Hippy in the Eugene area in the late 60's or early 70's
who had made a custom sheath for one of the early Gerber all metal
Chef's knives, to use as a long belt knife for general use.... I
puzzled over the sighting and realized the guy was on to something...
It was a better knife for real life uses than 90% of the hunting
knives on the market at the time..... better steel, better shape,
much more useable than any heavy Bowie with a crossguard...

Gerber later got the same idea and began marketing their chef's
blades with the addition of a grit filled epoxy handle coating as
hunting knives, and they were very very successful commercially and in
the field....

the bottom line on knives is any knife is better than no knife, but
the better the quality the better off you are in real terms... Cheap
quality knives are popular with low quality humans... and a real
woodsman invariably has good knives... The best he can buy or
make.....

Another example of the crossover between kitchen and hunting knives
was the Green River brand knives popular with mountain men and
settlers, also the indians, in early american history.. They were
nothing but high carbon steel kitchen knives with slab sides rivited
on of various sizes and styles. and made a rennaisance with the black
powder fad of the 70's.... no different than other brands that were
in production into the 70' and 80's... basicaly to our ansestors
kitchen & hunting knives were a seamless concept.... I think the
artificial divison was caused by the popularization of the Bowie
knife, which started life as a fighting and survival knife, and
ended up being percieved as the ultimate hunting knife shape, which it
isnt...
In fact its a poor style for a hunter, and the blades were too thick
for ease of use, and with excessive crossguards they became very
impractical as usable chore knives... and in the modern era continue
in myriad forms as fighting and survival knives in spite of being very
crude, heavy, and impractical for actual use in any situation but a
back alley... Sadly the military copied the style for combat/survival
knives, and servicemen got very impractical knives thru several
wars...

This trend continues even today, and in most knife shops that cater to
hunters and survivalist wannabees there are more bowie style blades
than anything else in the showcases... and are usually purchassed by
males with more hormones than knowlege about knives... its another
example of salesmanship steering a trend away from anything
practical.... luckily custom knives also became popular in the 70's,
and custom makers were creative enough to not stay locked in to the
bowie style, and since then, custom knives in more practical styles
have led to production styles of hunting and survival knives
vectoring off from the bowie, and into some really nice stuff...

Basically the bottom line in survival & subsistence knives is you need
a decent knife of good hardness, in a useable size and shape... 99%
of knife use even in survival situations is day to day chores, and
isnt fighting bears, or taking on armies of enemies... I'm afraid
modern humans have watched too much TV, and its affected their
perceptions about knives... this bowie versus more practical shapes
delima was a discussed problem even in literature of the turn of the
century a hundred years ago... and people with bowie styles werent
considered practical and knowlegeable woodsmen or hunters... The trend
continues to this day...

if I were designing a knife for use by people as a practical user in
survival situations where they also had axes and other tools, it would
be about an eight inch drop point with little guard, and good steel.
And I would and have recommended that a person also have a much
smaller knife in the 3 to 4 inch sizes for general uses... basically
you can get by with just one knife, but better versatility comes with
having two sizes... And my logic on my 12 inch Tarzan knife was for a
single item survival tool... which it turned out to be very good
as... much better than the same materials designed into a bowie...
and my current knife project is for a smaller easier to use for chores
design. knives have been a life long personal hobby... and I am less
attracted to killer knives than practical users... And I suspect many
males of being overly focused on violence and combat.. Its borderline
mental illness in my opinion... being ready, able and knowlegeable
about fighting knives, and fighting, isnt a bad thing, but extreme
focus there, isnt a sign of a well balanced and practical human.....
So I hope this disertation helps some grow up a bit concerning
knives... Concerning Women and knives, they tend to be more
practical about sizes and shapes, but unfortunately usually lack
knowlege in the area of quality in design and materials, and also most
often have no concept of the limits of knives to stand abuse.. my
advice to any woman wishing to upgrade her knife area knowlege, is to
get better harder steel, learn to sharpen with a stone, and then use
your knives gently and carefully, and get a hatchet or cleaver for
heavy more brutal jobs.... women tend to break fine knives, and use
dull ones, and buy soft ones, all are signs of ignorance. most
modern men arent much better... do I expect this advice to change the
world? No, mass ignorance has way too much inertia... It was written
for the individual who wishes to be on the right path into the future.
And there are very few humans aware enough to know they should learn
more about knives....

I hope I have helped those people.