Quote Originally Posted by Drac View Post
Thanks MacMillan of Rathdown and Dale.

I was curious on the sgian. While the dirk is a usable knife it always struck me as a bit big for an EDC even though the common knives back then were much bigger than what we would concider for carrying around to work these days. My main line of knives I make are hunters and it would seem that a dirk would be an ackward size. Not that it couldn't be used but that I would have thought that there would be a smaller knife for dressing out game.

On the link between the bowie and sax that was something I throw out as an example. If you would like I can try and find the thread that the real historians (in otherwords not me) of the knife forum. The general discussion was that the two surviving discriptions of the knife used at the sandbar duel discribes a very rough and ugly knife, probably more like a butcher knife. The idea of the link is that many of the "bowies" that followed were made in or based on designs from Sheffield England. That's what little I remember (and may not be complete). Any more and I would need to direct you to the tread rather than get myself into more trouble.

Back to the question at hand. The carrying of swords is not that outdated as you would think.

The following link is on US Navy swords and while I won't say it 100% accurate it does for the most part paralell what we are taught in Navy histroy -

http://www.history.navy.mil/library/...form_sword.htm

It wasn't until 1942 that the sword was offically removed and referances manual in 1904 and 1938 of the carrying of swords. Interesting enough the dirk was offered as an altenative to the sword.

jim
Drac I am no where near an expert in this but Naval Dirks are stylistically quite different from a Scottish Dirk, mostly in hilt shape and the addition of Brass Quillons.