Horsewright
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2011
- Messages
- 11,672
I make cowboy knives, its what I do. Around Christmas time I'd received several requests to build an old style knife pattern known as a blunt nose castrator, or in the vernacular a "nutter". Honestly, I didn't really want too. They were kind of foreign to the traditions I know growing up in the cattle country around here. Around here we rope calves to be processed and will usually have a horse holding the back legs and another the front. Having the front legs and the back legs roped and held off the ground prevents the calf from struggling too much. This pic kind of shows what I'm talking about:
Course working with animals not everything always goes right and sometimes ya have to make a quick recovery as this funny little clip of my son going for a quick little ride shows:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BW5UF89gpp_/?taken-by=horsewrightclothing
The knife used in this part of the world for cattle work tends to be thin bladed and pointy, think main blade on a trapper. Its required cowboy uniform around here:
As far as fixed blades go my Tapadero was designed by an extremely experienced cowboy (estimated at having cut over 1,000,000 calves in his career) as the perfect branding knife. I have made and sold many hundreds of these Tapaderos over the years it has been one of my most popular knife models.
In another post on Spey blades some months back I'd mentioned that I'd never seen one used for castration, that it was always the main blade on a Trapper. Course as soon as ya say something like that it happens. Ya see someone use a spey blade. Still this young man is the only one I've ever seen use the spey.
Other parts of the country they have different traditions and methods. Often times cattle are worked in a squeeze chute. We've got one and use it for certain things like doctoring adult cattle, giving injections, things like that but always on adult cattle, we don't use it for branding. But other areas they do. So in the pic of the chute, the panel with the oval white sticker on it, on the right side, can swing away and that would give ya access to the right area of a calf to do castration.
This steer had a foxtail, a type of sticker way down in his eye. So Salty and my son are removing it. The two vertical walls ratchet in and "squeeze" the animal from the sides helping to restrain it. Where the steers head comes out is called the head gate and this prevents the animal from moving forward or backwards too much.
So then one of my wholesale accounts asked for a couple of these blunt nose castrators too and I thought I'd better start thinking about it. I called one customer that I'd spoken too previously and I asked him why a trapper or one of my Tapaderos wouldn't work. He said what the problem is is that when cutting in the chute sometimes the left hand can get kicked back into the right hand, ya know the one holding the pointy knife. Said it'd happened to his son a couple of times who had been cut using one of my knives as he was now working at a place that cut calves in a chute. They also wanted a deep finger groove or guard to keep the right hand from riding up onto the edge when the left got knocked into the right. So I got on the internet and started looking at a lot of pics of these types of knives. They'd been around for centuries and really the Spey blade shape is kind of an adaptation of this too, its what its used for.
So after some head scratching, some cussing and discussing, grinding metal and then grinding more metal this is what I came up with, the first three. Kinda a cross between a spey blade a straight razor and a nicer handle:
So the sheep horn handled one went to the son of the customer that explained their use to me. The rosewood and bocote handled ones went to my wholesale account in AR.
Vertical pancake sheaths to keep things in tight and out of the way when bent over and working fast around the chute.
Deep hollow grinds resulted in a slicer and a dicer.
Pretty darn nice piece of sheep horn. Steel is AEB-L @62 RC so these guys will hold an edge yet are easy to touch up in a corral.
So I thought what the heck lets make another one, elk this time:
Dang if it didn't sell overnight. Bout the same time a guy called and said "I need one out of your mascus steel". Ya know how the customer is always right? Cocobolo on this one and its not a great pic but it was a striking piece of mascus:
He wanted a Horizontal sheath though and he's a lefty:
Made up another one as we were getting ready for a show:
Wasn't a lot of folks at the show, so sales were SLOW. Brought it home put it on the website and dang if it didn't sell overnight again.
So anyhoo I make cowboy knives, its what I do. Finding out not all cowboy knives need to look alike. Whadya think? Questions and comments always welcome.
Thanks for looking.
Course working with animals not everything always goes right and sometimes ya have to make a quick recovery as this funny little clip of my son going for a quick little ride shows:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BW5UF89gpp_/?taken-by=horsewrightclothing
The knife used in this part of the world for cattle work tends to be thin bladed and pointy, think main blade on a trapper. Its required cowboy uniform around here:
As far as fixed blades go my Tapadero was designed by an extremely experienced cowboy (estimated at having cut over 1,000,000 calves in his career) as the perfect branding knife. I have made and sold many hundreds of these Tapaderos over the years it has been one of my most popular knife models.
In another post on Spey blades some months back I'd mentioned that I'd never seen one used for castration, that it was always the main blade on a Trapper. Course as soon as ya say something like that it happens. Ya see someone use a spey blade. Still this young man is the only one I've ever seen use the spey.
Other parts of the country they have different traditions and methods. Often times cattle are worked in a squeeze chute. We've got one and use it for certain things like doctoring adult cattle, giving injections, things like that but always on adult cattle, we don't use it for branding. But other areas they do. So in the pic of the chute, the panel with the oval white sticker on it, on the right side, can swing away and that would give ya access to the right area of a calf to do castration.
This steer had a foxtail, a type of sticker way down in his eye. So Salty and my son are removing it. The two vertical walls ratchet in and "squeeze" the animal from the sides helping to restrain it. Where the steers head comes out is called the head gate and this prevents the animal from moving forward or backwards too much.
So then one of my wholesale accounts asked for a couple of these blunt nose castrators too and I thought I'd better start thinking about it. I called one customer that I'd spoken too previously and I asked him why a trapper or one of my Tapaderos wouldn't work. He said what the problem is is that when cutting in the chute sometimes the left hand can get kicked back into the right hand, ya know the one holding the pointy knife. Said it'd happened to his son a couple of times who had been cut using one of my knives as he was now working at a place that cut calves in a chute. They also wanted a deep finger groove or guard to keep the right hand from riding up onto the edge when the left got knocked into the right. So I got on the internet and started looking at a lot of pics of these types of knives. They'd been around for centuries and really the Spey blade shape is kind of an adaptation of this too, its what its used for.
So after some head scratching, some cussing and discussing, grinding metal and then grinding more metal this is what I came up with, the first three. Kinda a cross between a spey blade a straight razor and a nicer handle:
So the sheep horn handled one went to the son of the customer that explained their use to me. The rosewood and bocote handled ones went to my wholesale account in AR.
Vertical pancake sheaths to keep things in tight and out of the way when bent over and working fast around the chute.
Deep hollow grinds resulted in a slicer and a dicer.
Pretty darn nice piece of sheep horn. Steel is AEB-L @62 RC so these guys will hold an edge yet are easy to touch up in a corral.
So I thought what the heck lets make another one, elk this time:
Dang if it didn't sell overnight. Bout the same time a guy called and said "I need one out of your mascus steel". Ya know how the customer is always right? Cocobolo on this one and its not a great pic but it was a striking piece of mascus:
He wanted a Horizontal sheath though and he's a lefty:
Made up another one as we were getting ready for a show:
Wasn't a lot of folks at the show, so sales were SLOW. Brought it home put it on the website and dang if it didn't sell overnight again.
So anyhoo I make cowboy knives, its what I do. Finding out not all cowboy knives need to look alike. Whadya think? Questions and comments always welcome.
Thanks for looking.
Last edited:
That's quite a knife you designed, and I'm glad you're finding a market for them.
