Of blade shapes and field craft
Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:51 pm
It's that time again.
We processed four sheep this morning, and I just finished skinning the last of them out.
This time I used the small seax that Ursus gifted me for Yule some years back:
While I've of course used it for all manner of little tasks over the years, this was the first time I really used it hard, skinning out four fair sized animals over the course of a morning with several sharpening stops.
And I was impressed!
What particularly struck me - and a thing I'd never thought too much about - was how much better control I had with the dropped mostly-"broken-back" point than I did with a more standard knife shape, where the tip is inline with back of the blade. The best analogy I can think of is - you know how riding in an old '70's car, you saw this giant hood out front? And then in a post-90's minivan, the hood just drops away so sharply that it's like it isn't even there? This had a similar feeling: I knew there wasn't blade mass hanging out in front of what I could see.
It seems a small thing, but over the course of hours it was a really noticeable difference.
Once I hit that membrane layer, it was surprisingly easy work to just snik-snik-snik down the hide.
Which leads me to wonder:
I've heard speculation that the bow endured in scandi countries longer than on the contienent because the hunting tradition never died out among the peasantry: the nobility didn't (as I understand) claim that right as an exclusive priviliege.
Now I'm wondering if perhaps the dropped-tip seax died out in part because fewer people were processing animals as a matter of course? And/or that greater material wealth meant the ability to have a dedicated tool for the job rather than one blade for most everything?
Anyhow - I'm curious to hear the thoughts of those who've done significant meat and/or wood processing with both types of blade. Am I completely off base? Or is there something here?
edit - I'd never really liked the seax proper as a Middle-earth / Dunedain thing: it seemed too Nordic to fit.
And yet... I gotta admit it works in exactly the environment the Rangers live in. So.... maybe?
We processed four sheep this morning, and I just finished skinning the last of them out.
This time I used the small seax that Ursus gifted me for Yule some years back:
While I've of course used it for all manner of little tasks over the years, this was the first time I really used it hard, skinning out four fair sized animals over the course of a morning with several sharpening stops.
And I was impressed!
What particularly struck me - and a thing I'd never thought too much about - was how much better control I had with the dropped mostly-"broken-back" point than I did with a more standard knife shape, where the tip is inline with back of the blade. The best analogy I can think of is - you know how riding in an old '70's car, you saw this giant hood out front? And then in a post-90's minivan, the hood just drops away so sharply that it's like it isn't even there? This had a similar feeling: I knew there wasn't blade mass hanging out in front of what I could see.
It seems a small thing, but over the course of hours it was a really noticeable difference.
Once I hit that membrane layer, it was surprisingly easy work to just snik-snik-snik down the hide.
Which leads me to wonder:
I've heard speculation that the bow endured in scandi countries longer than on the contienent because the hunting tradition never died out among the peasantry: the nobility didn't (as I understand) claim that right as an exclusive priviliege.
Now I'm wondering if perhaps the dropped-tip seax died out in part because fewer people were processing animals as a matter of course? And/or that greater material wealth meant the ability to have a dedicated tool for the job rather than one blade for most everything?
Anyhow - I'm curious to hear the thoughts of those who've done significant meat and/or wood processing with both types of blade. Am I completely off base? Or is there something here?
edit - I'd never really liked the seax proper as a Middle-earth / Dunedain thing: it seemed too Nordic to fit.
And yet... I gotta admit it works in exactly the environment the Rangers live in. So.... maybe?