Anyone Experimented with a Seax ???

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coote

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Apr 3, 2006
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The seax is a style of knife attributed, I believe, to the early Saxons. It may even be that the name Saxon came from the word seax. But I haven't researched this for myself.

Anyway, a seax seems to be a fairly straight knife with a straight cutting edge, perhaps with a small 'lift' toward the point. The back of the knife tapers down to the point.

The old ones seemed to always have just a simple spike tang.

I'm thinking that I should make one just to get some first hand experience of what my old ancestors may have played with.

Has anybody had any experiences with a seax? Can bigger ones do light chopping? What are they like to work with? Etc?

Here's a pic of a little Indonesian knife which I've posted before. It seems to have what I'd call a 'seax' shape:

IndonesianKnife.jpg
 
I have a Viking Seax which has a 16 inch blade. They were used all around the world and varied in blade length from 3 inches to two feet. I bought mine in Australia.
 
I have a couple. one has about a seven inch blade and about a 1/4 inch thick on the spine. I use it alot just like any other knife I have of that size. the point seems like it could break off used to pry but for fine work the sloped last two in. work great. I chop with the middle of the blade and baton through if needed I just dont hit the last inch to be on the safe side. my other one has about a 15 inch blade and is meant as a weapon, it could be used like a short machete, I just wear it ceremonially at Blots.
 
Hi all,
I converted a khyber bowie that had kinked and ripply imperfections 5" from the tip into a nice, useful seax. After cutting off the tip, at angle from spine to blade, I was left with an 18" seax with a 12" blade and from the broken back to needle tip it's 5". It really feels good in the hand now when I use the blade center for chopping kindling, the needle tip cuts up a viking feast really well,(whole chickens,pork shoulders and beef roasts),works well as a draw knife and the thick, slightly flared spine that many khybers have allows me to baton efficiently. I do my best to stay aware of the needle tip, as I bet I could easily put a bend in it, but so far so good.
IIRC the seax was the most common EDC for many norse cultures, as it performs so many functions. I keep it in a sheath, blade up, hanging slightly off lateral, pommel up, across my back just below waist height.
We do some SCA re-enacting as a Norse family and it fits in well with my kit.
And it looks like kind of a wicked last option weapon if my sheild were shattered and my broadsword lost.

Sorry for the long explanation, a new digi-camera is on the list, but down a ways...

Be Well and Drink to the Hammer of Thor...
Mark
 
Ah...thanks for that. I went off and researched 'Asatru' as it is something I've never heard of. I was quite impressed with what I read. More and more nowadays I see a lot of good - and common threads - in a variety of 'religions' (for want of a better word). To me it should all be about spirituality rather than following a hierarchy. Here's one of the links I found: http://www.runestone.org/home.html

Interesting comments. I like the look of the seax shape, but without a curved front portion on the blade I imagine that it would not be so good for skinning an animal or some woodworking. But for so many artifacts of this shape to have been found, they must have been popular. Good for killing I suppose, but there were many other tasks that required a good blade.
 
Just had to jump in here and say "Heilsa" to my brothers here. A few of us up in our area have a small forge and are trying to make our own. Pretty crude but it's a start.
 
yag ar har. not asatru, but odinist.

I've got a really nice 6 inch (blade) runecutting seax that I've had for a decade or so, not a survival knife.

I have used a 14 inch (blade) langseax to chop wood and watermelons and such, and they work okay. If you accept the argument that having more weight at the tip can be a BAD thing, the langseax design is a good chopper. for a smaller WSK, say in the 4-8 inch (blade) range, the seax is visibly the base design of a lot of the old trade knives and general belt knives. I made one with a dead straight cutting edge and a scandi grind and it's very handy on the jobsite and at home, but I haven't really tried it as a skinner. I should, since I've always just accepted the "truth" about massively curved skinning blades.
 
I 'got' your joke RiddleOfSteel :)

Koyote wrote: "I haven't really tried it as a skinner. I should, since I've always just accepted the "truth" about massively curved skinning blades."

I reckon that is a good way to look at things. A straight blade would certainly be better than no blade...and I've been thinking about it.

Over the last couple of years I've skinned dozens of brushtailed possums with the folding knife shown at the right of the second to top row in the picture below:

folders.jpg


This folder, in my opinion, has a blade that is very similar to my concept of a seax. It has a very slight upturn in the end of the blade, but it is virtually straight compared to many knives.

I find this blade to be particularly good for skinning the possums. The knife is mainly used to open the skin, and the skin is mostly just pulled off. But as I was skinning today, I looked at what I was doing and I realized that this straight blade should be just fine for skinning all sorts of things.

The asking price on this particular folder was less than US$1 !! I bought a whole lot of them anticipating that I might get through them quickly....but I'm still using the first one I pulled out of the box.

So... I reckon that a short seax should be fine for skinning. The animal I use a knife the most on while skinning down here is a pig. So I should try the seax shape next time I have a hog to skin.
 
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