I am currently reading Everett Dick's SOD-HOUSE FRONTIER, but am always ready to pick up the next in the pile to read. Having read Kephart's missives pretty extensively and G.W. Sears' stuff, somewhat less enthusiastically, I think I'm going to give WOODCRAFT & CAMPING another shot. Of course, I read it long ago, but didn't care much for his rhetoric as much as I appreciated Kephart's common-man,nonchalant attitude. I don't know why exactly, but Nessmuk always came across as being a bit of an elitist....same with Thoreau. Sears' little canoe, the Sairy Gamp, was always much more intriguing to me than his knife design, but I am a fair man and will give him another chance.
. Too much required reading of some of the older authors during my college days may may have contributed to my prejudices.
I liked his little axe and his little canoe, but that ORIGINAL knife design of his always gave me the shivers. It always seemed like more of a 'skinner' than an all-around general purpose camp knife like the one Horace designed.
That is not to say that this 'adaptation' of the drawings and surviving Sears' designed Colclesser blades are not useful and practical, just not as versatile as was that of Kephart for a do-everything knife design. Sarge, correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that both designs are fully convexed....making them both useful for kitchen and field-dressing duties.
To paraphrase George Orwell; ''All knife-designs are equal, but some are more equal than others.''
