One of my favorite subjects!
It is my understanding that the knives used by the trappers of 150 years ago were mostly very thin, like 1/16". There are probably a number of reasons for this...
1. They are easier to profile a wicked cutting edge with primitive tools.
2. They were less expensive then, just as they are now.
3. When they wanted to chop, they had hand axes and hatchets.
4. In those days it was much harder to do clean grinds from a thick spine to a fine edge. Not impossible, but harder, and it cost more, reletively speaking, than it does today to accomplish it.
Mountain men were not knife-nuts. They bought what they could afford. Remember the fur companies paid them as little as they could and charged them as much as they could for their supplies. Better to buy a half dozen cheap thin knives than one thicker one that you might loose anyway!
I'm one of those who believes that you can't just look at what was used historically, because they did the best they could with their technology, while we can do much better with ours. We can probably put as wicked an edge on a knife with a 1/8" spine as they could on one with half the spine thickness! Our steel is much better, etc. Of course it stands to reason that if we produce a modern 1/16" knife we could make it even more wickedly sharp than any knife a mountain man could dream of!
I am personally an advocate of <i>thinness</i> in utility knives. I've gained a lot of respect for the strength of modern steels working with a 1/16" thick Mora2000 "survival knife" that cost me all of $26! FWIW, I think that maybe 3/32" thickness is best for anything in the small utility-hunter class 4" or shorter (blade). More than strong enough latterally for anything such a knife should have to do, and much easier to profile correctly than thicker knives.
There is a problem in the knife industry around this though. The less expensive factory utility knives are mostly all thin, like 1/16". They sell (I'm thinking of fixed blades) for anywhere from $5 to maybe $25. If custom makers and higher-end shops are going to make small utility knives and charge from $50-$150 and up for <i>user knives</i>, how are they going to justify it? Nicer handles, better materials, and superior fit and finish are one way, but while important, they aren't the "business end" of the knife. Makers promote higher-quality steels, and this helps a little too, but cheap stainless doesn't feel all that different from ATS-34 or BG10; thin is thin. One can, however, make the blade itself <i>feel</i> more expensive by making it more substantial by thickening it!
I think this is the reason why you don't see hardly anything in either the custom or small-shop arena that are less than 1/8" thick! I do check out most of the web pages that are recommended here on BFC for lots and lots of custom and small-shop makers, some already famous, and some just starting out. I think it is very strange that even 2.5" "bird and trout" knives or "small game hunters" are almost never less than 1/8" thick! Not that there aren't a few exceptions, but even most of them are middle-tier factory products like A.G. Russell's "woods walker". I've only met ONE custom maker here on BFC who produces a standard model from 3/32" stock, that being Laurence Segal (
www.rhinoknives.com/gallery 5th pic. down).
Anyway, I find it all very interesting...
