Thread: Skinning Knives

It was a tradition thing, the blade shape is very old and allows for long sweeping strokes and reduces the chance of cutting something you don't want to, it's basically a old style butchers knife, and yes every farmer used to have one hanging on his belt or in the shed, and as a bush knife it can also be used to do camp chores, but as time and laws progressed it became less acceptable to be seen with a blade on your hip, and so so smaller knives and folders became more acceptable.

The drop point has similar characteristics in the way of reducing accidental slicing, and with better steels they would hold an edge for the whole of the processing in a smaller package, which means less weight and fatigue.

A four and half inch drop point in a good steel, like O1 (or Elmax if stainless ticks your box), with a quarter to three sixteenth inch blade with a micarta or G10 handle and a good leather sheath, like from HGD (kydex not my thing), should be able to skin and process anything you can bring down in NZ, from reds to snapper, cut your bread, peel your orange and chop through some sticks to start a fire in the wet-and do it forever so that you hand it down.

Of course a great big chopper will look cooler, but like an old polyprop tops, stinks when you are lugging it around in the bush...

They are good old knives in the right hand .
My old man kills,skins and guts a sheep like he is flash Gordan ,but then I would not like to count how many sheep he has done after a life on the land .
But it is what somebody has said already.
Was not a large choice around and it served all purpose,s so they never changed.
Knives are a bit like fishing lures ,easy to have too many.