Wick Ellerbe said:
There are few documentable knives, other than trade types, from that time.
That has been my problem. I have seen tons of knives from the 16th century, 17th century, and, of course, massive numbers of knives from the 19th century, but 18th century knives are almost non-existent! If we were to rely on existing examples alone, it would seem that the 18th century man never used a knife beyond a table knife! Very few "belt size knives" or "butcher knives" seem to exist from the period....at least not so as you would know (auction catalogs, museums, historical books/websites...) I have no explanation as to why. 18th century Table knives or smaller knives are not too terribly hard to find, but larger ones...
Of those that I have seen, they have been of two types. One, the full tang simple drop-edge knife (as shown above), which can have the ball-butt, a birdshead butt, or just a sort of flared shape. Some German knives like this I have seen (still relatively small in size, and not 7 or 8 inch "belt knives") have iron bolsters, either riveted on or integral with the blades. Lonehunter's knife is about as historically accurate as is possible.
The other is a "spike tang", with the same blade design. Handles are turned wood, maybe with a metal ferrule. There are known French "trade knives" like this.
The Dutch, and to a lesser extent, the Germans, liked "sheepsfoot" blades, but these that I see are more table knives (spike tangs and turned or octagon shaped handles).
I think that the common practice of wearing a sword in the 18th century greatly lessened the use of large knives, which was common in earlier centuries, but still, you would think that you would be able to find large numbers of full-sized butcher knives. :idunno: It's hard to slice a ham with a 5" knife blade!