Short Book Report: "Firearms, Traps, and Tools of the Mountain Men"

[SpyderEdgeForever]

I found this interesting book titled " Firearms, Traps, and Tools of the Mountain Men" by written by Carl P. Russell. This is a reprint by SkyHorse Publications, and it was published in 1967. The author is an expert historian and shows beautiful and very accurate drawings and line-sketches of different traps, tools, guns, axes, knives both folding and fixed of all sorts, daggers, American Indian "dags" as well as pre-European stone knives and edged tools/weapons, equipment, ironwork, etc, of the Fur trade period as well as before and after. He shows a WW2 era "Kabar" knife and other knives. My favorite parts are the descriptions of the Spanish and French folding clasp knives, and he shows drawings of these basic forms, and has historical receipt recordings of purchase orders for assorted knives and tools used by the mountain men, fur traders, and other folks.

The French Moroccan clasp knife is alot like modern Opinel knives and South African Okapi knives.

You can read some parts from the book here on Google Books:

https://books.google.com/books?id=mFEtA ... es&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What is also fascinating is to read the prices of knives back then. For ten dollars in the early 1800s you could easilly buy an entire dozen or even two dozen hand-made and early factory-made locking folders, and the blades were high quality. Ofcourse, the average salary was lower, as well, but still, it is interesting.