patch knife period correct?

[jrbaker90]

How period correct is a patch knife for the 18th longhunter? I read that they wasnt used by one blog and I been wondering if they were or if they wasnt thanks

 

[tenngun]

Small knifes were carried, and it was common to cut patchs at the muzzle. The term 'patch knife'was not used of old.There are relitivily few accounts on loading a rifle outside the military, even though we still have lots of accounts and reading them you get the impression that when cutting patchs a belt knife was called to task.
Since small butcher style knifes were common belt knifes we could say that patch knife was also you cook knife,eating knife, fingernail tremming knife ect. How ever I would be hard pressed to belive that some one didnt carry a razor or parring sized knife in handy reach when shooting, leaving his butcher for bigger work.Just as todays reinactor would put his patch knife to a varity of small jobs when needed, not just patch cutting."a rose by any other name"

 

[Artificer]

A very common, if not the most common small knives carried during the 18th century was what they called a “Half Penny” or “Penny Knife.” In the VERY early 18th century it may or was a small solid knife and was changed in common form to a folding or clasp knife well before the French and Indian War. It had no lock or spring and usually some kind of turned wood handle. It seems locks became a little more common on folding knives during the 1740’s ”“ 1750’s. Adding a spring to help keep folding/clasp knives open seem to date from just before and around the 1770’s, after the crucible steel process to make better springs was developed in the 1740’s and became cheap enough to use in folding knives.

As to cutting patches at the muzzle like we do nowadays on target ranges, well”¦.. they could have done it that way, but pre cut patches seem to have been the common way they did it in the 18th century. That made reloading faster and thus better for hunting and in hostile country where a fast reload might save one’s life.

Gus

 

[LRB]

I cannot remember any specific source, but have read more than one that places spring locks to the mid 17th c. Springs were not dependent on crucible steel. It just made them better and more reliable. Spring steel was not cheap until the Bessemer process came in to common use. Actually, for the short range of spring travel in many folders, the steel would not really have to be heat treated to operate. As far as cutting patches at the muzzle, I agree. Maybe for the first load of the day, or until after the first shot of an engagement. Patch knives are much like some other items such as priming horns and bullet boards. Little, to no documentation of their use by common riflemen or hunters. If a rifleman was to cut at the muzzle, he would have used his belt knife, which most often would be a simple scalper, butcher, or other cheap trade knife.

 

[Stophel]

From what I have found, the "Penny knife" seems to be a 19th century (even 20th century) item (???). I have yet to see any documentation of these things in an 18th century context anywhere. Remains of them do not seem to be found in American archaeological excavations at all, so far as I've seen. Spring back folding knives ("Barlowe" knives), however, are legion. Everybody carried folding pocket knives, just like today, and I think that they did MOST of their general cutting chores with their folding knives... just like today. Whether they cut patches at the muzzle much or not, I don't know, but I doubt it was done a whole lot.

Now the French did do some really plain springless knives, and they are found in Canada, but they are not the same as the familiar "penny knife" design. IF someone has any good documentation of the colonial American "Penny knife", I would be interested in seeing it.

Otherwise, 18th century straight knives seem to be VERY limited to butcher/scalper knives and case/table knives. The Germans did like to make smaller hunting knives for skinning, and some of them could well have made their way here, I suppose. These would usually be in a set with a fork, and maybe a marrow scooper-outer thingy (I forget what they're called), or matched up with a hunting sword or Waidpraxe (which is basically a fancy meat cleaver).

 

[nwtradegun]

Madison grants book on hunting pouches has many with a knife attached to bag.

 

[Stophel]

Few of those bags are likely to really date prior to 1850. And most of those knives are hardly what people usually consider a little "patch knife". A lot of people poo-poo Grant, but even he didn't date many of the bags as being all that early.

As I recall, there is an 18th century reference to Daniel Boone having a knife attached to his shooting bag/strap, but I can imagine that it was a full size knife, but who can say?

:idunno:

 

[Artificer]

Of course there were spring locks on knives in the 17th century. That was not the point. The point I was making was that until the crucible steel process, the cost of making steel springs (before that process) was so much that for inexpensive clasp/folding knives, it was not common to see them until near or in the 1770's from Great Britain.
Gus

 

[LaBonte]

"”¦ He blows through his rifle to ascertain that it is clear, examines his flint, and thrusts a featther into the touch-hole. To a leatthern bag swung at his side is attached a powder-horn; his sheath-knife is there also; below hangs a narrow strip of homespun linen. He takes from his bag a bullet, pulls with his teeth the wooden stopper from his powder-horn, lays the ball in one hand, and with the other pours the powder upon it until it is just overtopped. Raising the horn to his mouth, he again closes it with the stopper, and restores it to its place. He introduces the powder into the tube; springs the box of his gun, greases the "patch" over with some melted tallow, or damps it; then places it on the honey-combed muzzle of his piece. The bullet is placed on the patch over the bore, and pressed with the handle of the knife, which now trims the edge of the linen. The elastic hickory rod, held with both hands, smoothly pushes the ball to its bed; once, twice, thrice has it rebounded. The rifle leaps as it were into the hunters arms, the feather is drawn from the touch-hole, the powder fills the pan, which is closed. “Now I’m ready,” cries the woodsman”¦."
yes they did cut patches at the muzzle even back when - how common is another question...this quote is from Audubon 1820's

The so-called patch knife is a late 19th/early 20th century term for the smaller bag knives, which IMO mostly came about when the frontier no longer was so wild and woolly. If you're a farmer or townsman out for a day of shooting smaller game such as squirrels or rabbits, in the more settled areas there was no real need for a larger or separate belt knife, and if the knife is attached to the shot bag one is ready to go by just grabbing your rifle and the bag with accoutrements the bare necessities attached.
Even less cumbersome would be for such a hunter a clasp knife of some sort, a day horn (which IMO most priming horns were in fact), and a bullet board with a few patched ball stuck in ones pocket - no real need even for a pouch and large horn to get a few squirrels for the table.

 

[George]

And another from Audubon's Journal, the Deer Hunter episode, early 19th century, don't know the date.

"...on one side hangs his ball pouch, surmounted by the horn of an ancient Buffalo, once the terror of the herd, but now containing a pound of the best gunpowder; his butcher knife is scabbarded in the same strap;"

Spence

 

[BrownBear]

Thought provoking quotes LaBonte and Spence.

Thanks!

 

[LaBonte]

A couple more of knives attached to pouches...

"My powder horn and ball pouch always contained more or less ammunition; but on examination, I found them empty. My knife also, which I commonly carried appended to the strap of my shot pouch, was gone."
~ John Tanner, Great Lakes Country, c.1800 (Tanner, 112)

In Squire Boone's description of his famous hand to hand fight with the Indian at the Cove Spring fight in 1777 he talked about he and the Indian grappling for a knife that was "attached to his hunting pouch" strap, and both having a tough time grabbing it as the handle was slippery with both of their blood.

 

[Artificer]

An interesting tidbit from British History Online:

"In the 1740s Benjamin Huntsman (1704-1776), a Sheffield man born to German parents, made huge improvements to the then current methods of making STEEL. As so often happens with innovations generally, this new product was rejected by the Cutlers of Sheffield who claimed the steel was too hard to work. As a result, the Sheffield cutlers lost out for a time to manufacturers in France, who had adopted the methods and began to export knives to England. However, by the 1750s, the Sheffield cutlers themselves had apparently mastered the new steel [Simpson (online)]."

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=58869&strquery=knives

This "new steel" was the crucible steel I mentioned earlier.
Gus

 

[LRB]

Well, crucible steel was not really new, just kinda reinvented. It was being made in India at about 300BC, and it is speculated to have possibly been made in Egypt and even China at or before then. After resurfacing in the 18th c. it was for a time also popular in and as jewelry. That would lead me to believe it was not cheap until some time after 1800 when coke became the common and cheaper heat source for all steel making, because of a general shortage of charcoal. I recall reading of a pick pocket that stole a silver watch with a steel chain. He was given extra punishment because of the crucible steel chain which was valued more than the watch. For a time, 18th c. crucible steel was made from shear steel and even blister steel, which was both time and labor intensive. When crucible steel began to be made by just iron and carbon in the crucible, I do not recall, but it did not start out as such. Huntsman had 2 or 3 competitors who emerged at about the same time as he with crucible steel, and one quickly surpassed Huntsman's quality. Coincidence or idea theft, Huntsman was not alone in experimenting, and may not really have been the first to make the new steel.

 

[Swede50]

Couldn't you use a patch knife with a loading block to speed up the loading process?
Was it done this way?

 

[Stophel]

No one really knows how far back the loading block goes. I recently saw a tin-type photograph (so would presume about 1840's-1850's) of a guy with his rifle and accessories, among which was a rather large loading block that had probably 20 shots in it.

 

[BrownBear]

Couldn't you use a patch knife with a loading block to speed up the loading process?
Was it done this way?

That's the way I fill my loading blocks. I like that it doesn't leave any fabric sticking up on the top side like precut patches loaded into a block. In my experience the excess is always hanging on stuff in the bag and dislodging the balls when you get out in rough country and do a lot of moving around. Standing around or shooting on the range, not so much.

 

[LRB]

When I deer hunt, I go in very similar to LaBonte's suggestion. Loaded rifle, three patched balls in a bullet board hung around my neck, 5 charges in coin wrappers with a prime horn in my jacket pocket. Even in a tree stand I can reload pretty fast and easy when needed.

 

[BrownBear]

I'm much the same on my hunts, but with a 3-load block and day horn (only holds 1,000 grains- about the size of half a banana) and measure in a small bag. Half a dozen loose balls and a strip of ticking in the bottom of the bag, knife on my belt or in the bag. Could just as well put it all in a pocket, and I do when the agenda calls for hunting really nasty brush. No danglies allowed there! :thumbsup:

 

[Capt. Jas.]

When I deer hunt, I go in very similar to LaBonte's suggestion. Loaded rifle, three patched balls in a bullet board hung around my neck, 5 charges in coin wrappers with a prime horn in my jacket pocket. Even in a tree stand I can reload pretty fast and easy when needed.

:thumbsup: