Need help with Trade or Green River knife design

B

barnett25

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Sep 18, 2008
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I started out wanting to make a knife for a family member that would be something like Daniel Boone might have carried. However I quickly found that there is very little reputable information about this era of knives on the internet. However I was able to find some examples, and I am now torn between two designs. The English trade knife (seen in the first picture), and the much later Green River sheath knife (second picture).

Any information anyone has on these knives (or any alternative patterns) would be greatly appreciated, however I have a couple of specific questions.

1. I am looking to forge this knife from 1084 (aldo's), what rockwell hardness should I shoot for? I have seen suggestions of around 52-55, but I don't know how well that might work.

2. While I would like to use a historical inspiration (to make this more than just some knife) I would also like it to be useful for the modern whitetail deer hunter, as well as at least somewhat pleasing to the modern eye. Does anyone have any suggestions on the usability of these designs? I know the green river should be a good skinner, but I wonder about the trade knife.

3. What kind of thickness should I shoot for on these? I know the originals were very thin, but given that this does not have to be an exact reproduction, would there be an advantage to going thicker?

Thanks,
Justin
scalpersmall.jpg

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I've made a number of these knives using the Green River blades. I think a more modern pattern, the Green River Belt knife would be more suited for a modern day hunter. It seems to be a hybrid of the two knives you mentioned. I think 52 - 55 might be a little soft, particularly if you differentially temper the blade.
 
Seems like you might be talking at cross purposes. The imagined knife of a frontiersman as a fighter-bush-knife seems like would be a different tool altogether than something practical for dressing deer. I wonder if you might want to consider a pair on knives: a larger trade knife type and a smaller skinner type, or some such?

Did you see this fella's photos of old knife remnants (in his sub-album links)? -- Bobs Gallery > Fur Trade Goods 1600 to 1700's.

Track of the Wolf has some cool looking period-esque knives on their site: Home > Cutlery > Knives- custom, handmade & primitive > Trade Knives, 1750 - 1790 era.
 
The pictures of originals you show there were of English scalpers. Three small iron pins, and tapered, or untapered partial tangs were the more common design. If you will notice, the pin holes are drilled low on the tangs. This allowed an oversized grip to be installed and yet have the pins appear as centered. It would seem that grips were mostly of one size fits all. Grips varied from oval, to hex, to faceted octagon. The wood could be beech, most common, to boxwood, or reddish SA hardwoods. For a good all around design, I would choose the French type with it's dropped point. The French most commonly used two iron pins, larger in diameter than the English, at about 1/8", but about the same handle shapes. Both French and English often copied each other in order to compete in certain areas of the country. The Green Rivers did not appear until the early 1840's.
 
Bo T said:
I've made a number of these knives using the Green River blades. I think a more modern pattern, the Green River Belt knife would be more suited for a modern day hunter. It seems to be a hybrid of the two knives you mentioned. I think 52 - 55 might be a little soft, particularly if you differentially temper the blade.
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I wondered about that, I just found someone somewhere online saying that knives of this period were in that range. But I don't know if this person knew what they were talking about. And I didnt really know what practical concerns this would raise for a knife that is meant to be used.

Phil Dwyer said:
Seems like you might be talking at cross purposes. The imagined knife of a frontiersman as a fighter-bush-knife seems like would be a different tool altogether than something practical for dressing deer. I wonder if you might want to consider a pair on knives: a larger trade knife type and a smaller skinner type, or some such?

Did you see this fella's photos of old knife remnants (in his sub-album links)? -- Bobs Gallery > Fur Trade Goods 1600 to 1700's.

Track of the Wolf has some cool looking period-esque knives on their site: Home > Cutlery > Knives- custom, handmade & primitive > Trade Knives, 1750 - 1790 era.
Click to expand...

That first link is a fantastic resource! I agree with what you are saying about talking at cross purposes. Basically what I am looking for is something that is usable today (although I am willing to accept some compromises on usability), but is heavily based on some late 18th to early 19th century pattern. I know plenty of deer skinning went on during this period, but I cannot find a knife design that seems well suited to this task before the Green River knives of the mid 19th century. I am assuming that the perfect 18th century buck skinner knife pattern must be out there and I just haven't found it yet.


LRB said:
The pictures of originals you show there were of English scalpers. Three small iron pins, and tapered, or untapered partial tangs were the more common design. If you will notice, the pin holes are drilled low on the tangs. This allowed an oversized grip to be installed and yet have the pins appear as centered. It would seem that grips were mostly of one size fits all. Grips varied from oval, to hex, to faceted octagon. The wood could be beech, most common, to boxwood, or reddish SA hardwoods. For a good all around design, I would choose the French type with it's dropped point. The French most commonly used two iron pins, larger in diameter than the English, at about 1/8", but about the same handle shapes. Both French and English often copied each other in order to compete in certain areas of the country. The Green Rivers did not appear until the early 1840's.
Click to expand...

I have heard about the French drop point scalpers, but I have yet to find any pictures of them. Do you know where there are any online, or perhaps something that at least looks similar so I can see if it would be well suited to my goal?
 
The first photo is copied as close as I could get to an original French scalper. This one has the oversized grip which overlaps the lower edge of the tang. The second photo is a copy of a copy rendered by one of the leading experts on French trade knives, and is probably my best selling model in scalpers, although the first in the photos was the most prevelent type. This design has the grip finished oval and the grip matches to the tang edges evenly. I suspect that the original it was copied from might have been altered by the owner. The French trade scalpers were apparently always made with a tapered tang, and most often with two iron pins of about 1/8" in dia. The English can be found either full thickness or tapered, but still usually a partial tang, and used pins of about 3/32" at most. These blades are about 1 1/4" wide, by 7", by 3/32" in thickness. The French leaned toward 3/32" to 1/8" thickness, while the English ran from 1/16" to 3/32". Both of these designs are 18th c., but carried over into the 19th c. The English most often filled the grip overlap with a cutlers resin of pine pitch and brick dust. The French did not bother with the gap.

Picture092.jpg


pennyknife714_640x480.jpg
 
LRB - Those are a couple of nice knives. Is the back sewn sheath period and nationality correct for the scalpers?

barnett25 - I think the HRc is correct for the time period for most of the knives. Although the range probably varied more widely than given. A modern day user would probably prefer HRc in the 57 - 59 range. Some of the best knives of that period could have reached that hardness.

Given the two choices you've stated, I think the scalper would make a better hunting knife. 200 years ago owners of an 8" (blade) butcher would have made do when cleaning a deer. One survival writer wrote that, with a little more work, he could do everything using a big knife that he could with a small knife but not vice versa.
 
Thanks for the great information guys! I think I am leaning toward the French style trade knife with maybe a 5-6" blade. Do we know what sizes the small, medium and large trade knives were?

Thanks,
Justin
 
" LRB - Those are a couple of nice knives. Is the back sewn sheath period and nationality correct for the scalpers? "

The back center seam sheaths are the correct type that were imported with the knives, but may have been an optional accessory. The originals are reported to have been made from about 4oz. leather, then given the Cuir Blouilli hardening treatment. For extra safety, I use 6/7 oz leather with the CB treatment. These sheaths normally had no belt loops, and were either just slipped between a belt and the body, or tied to the belt with thongs. These below have been stained black with vinegaroon stain as I belive most or all were. The knives are English style. The top one being more a table knife. The lower a typical English scalper with boxwood faceted grip. As to acual measurements of originals, the French could be tracked down in many cases as their guilds were pretty strict on specs, but I am not that sure on the English. Probably very close to the French. The smaller versions seem to have had about 5" blades. The mid sizes around 7". The ball grip version below has a 6" blade.

Picture099.jpg


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Thanks so much for the information, and for sharing your work! I have learned more about this subject from this thread than from 3 days of online research. Every time I found a piece of information about frontier knives I would find out 20 minutes later that the information was incorrect. It seems like there is quite a hole in our knowledge (at least online) about these knives, compared with say, japanese swords, or other more popular topics. And some discussion I have seen seems to suggest that even most books on the subject are not very accurate.

Thanks again, I think I have enough information now to start my project. I will be sure to post the results when I am done.

Thanks,
Justin Barnett
 
IMO ANYONE interested in this subject should get the book Fur Trade Cutlery Sketchbook by the Museum of the Fur Trade - a cheap (about $8.00 plus S/H), yet excellent resource. These are scale drawings of original knives from the 16th-19th Century.

The imagined knife of a frontiersman as a fighter-bush-knife seems like would be a different tool altogether than something practical for dressing deer.
Click to expand...
Actually not often that different- while there are documented "custom knives" made by cutlers and blacksmiths during the 18-19th Century, by far the most commonly used knife by frontiersman of the 1700-mid 1800's both in the east as well as the west, were the scalper style noted by Wick (basically a variation of medieval table knives) and the humped back butcher style. The French Boucheron style, again as noted by Wick above, was popular enough that the English even made copies, but the style became less popular after the F & I War.

The hump-backed butcher style actually pre-dates the Green River products of the 1840's and later. While not as popular as the scalper style until the 1820's and later, the butcher was made at least as early as the mid-late 1700's.

Lengths varied quite a bit - mostly from 6" to 10", and at least during the 1820-1840 Classic Rocky Mtn Fur Trade era the 7-9"ers were the most popular based on the period trade lists (see her for more info http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/amm.html ).
FWIW - During the 1970's a buddy and I got together a series of actual trade knife blades from the late 1700's through the 1860's and had them tested:
1) the closest modern steel to the most common steel used back then would be in the range of 1065-1084
2) RC ran the gamut from 44-54, generally softer than commonly used today, but then most folks didn't have hi-tech stones or other sharpening methods. Knives were often file sharpened or local stone of some sort. There are records of some Indians complaining that their knives were too hard (most likely blades from the less common and more expensive cast aka crucible steel used for some trade blades after 1745) - a knife that can't be easily/properly sharpened under field conditions is more or less useless to the end user, thus the generally softer blades of the era.)
3) Tangs can be either half or full-tanged and be "correct" albeit the half-tangs were more common based on the archeo and written records.
 
Cool info Chuck, especially to learn shorter lengths were common. When you say 7-9"ers, I presume you're referring to blade length?
 
I have ordered the Fur Trade Cutlery Sketchbook, thanks for the tip.
I have some Bloodwood I was thinking of using for the handle, could that be one of the "South American red hardwoods" the originals used?

Thanks,
Justin
 
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I think bloodwood would be an excellent choice to give the knife a little more class.
 
Just A historical note. I popular story is of Daniel Boone taking a knife off an Indian he shot. Was said he carried that knife for the rest of his life. That knife was reportedly eather a Scotish Dirk, Anglo Sax, or an Aimes Riflemans knife. All of whitch are correct for the time period. All of whitch are big knives with 9 to 12" blades.
 
From my info, the Ames Riflemans knives were not produced until 1848 at the earliest, and were adopted by the military in 1849. Nathan Ames started his cutlery business in 1829. Previously the Co made shovels and other implements. Wild Rose can likely give more precise info, but that is what I have.
 
Correctly staited I should have said an a Rifleman's knife, like carried by the Rogers Rangers, similar to the later Aims Stile.
 
I hope I don't get in trouble for resurrecting a thread this old, but I finally decided to sit down and post the results of the help this great community has provided me in the past. Here is the trade knife I gave my father for christmas in 2011 as a result of this thread. I actually made two, the other was for my sister's boyfriend. I forged them from 5/8" x 1/4" 1084. It has a short, tapered tang with two rivets that hold the blade in a bloodwood handle. The shape of the handle is my interpretation of a historically accurate octagon design, but reworked a little to align with my own personal design preference.
The blade was flat ground on a 4x36 sander, then I aged the blade using a blue and bleach process.
I made a wood sheath with a leather wrap. The leather is actually from an old pair of boots my dad got as a gift from his father when he was young. The leather was not veg tanned, and was pretty rotten, which is why I used the wood insert.
My Dad keeps his on the wall, but the other one gets used as an EDC (much to my surprise). Although the leather has torn on the sheath, the knife itself is apparently holding up just fine. Considering these are the first knives I have heat treated at home by myself I am pretty happy that they have held up. I can probably thank Aldo's easy to HT 1084 for that.

Thanks again to everyone that helped me out with this project back then. I promise the next project I work on won't take 2 years to get posted. ;)




 
Best thread! Thanks for taking the time to throw this out there.

Wick's knives just ooze quality don't they? And a bunch of great info to boot. Can't believe I missed this first round.

Great job on your own work too! Enthusiasm meets desire.

This is where we come from fellas.
 
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