All About Pocket Knives

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I love stockmans, mostly for the sheepsfoot blade. The Clip blade is always handy too. The spey blade baffles me though ... after 30 years of carrying stockmans, I haven't found an application yet that the short stubby spey blade with the ultra rounded tip works really well for (I'll admit, I've never yet tried castrating cattle, which is what its designed for). Plus, it's tough to sharpen that rounded tip. Truth be told, I leave the spey blade dull and use it for scraping or other somewhat abusive tasks I don't want to use the 2 good blades for ... so it does have some redeeming value.

I'd love to hear from anybody who actually likes the spey blade, and what they use it for ?

Lay it pretty flat on the stone and sharpen it like it wasn't rounded. Just pull straight through when sharpening. It works well.

I use it for anything that requires a delicate scalpel like cut, or for skinning small game. That rounded tip when sharp, allows for pinpoint accuracy when making a precise cut.

I use the spey blade anytime I don't want to poke through something I am cutting. For example, just yesterday I used the spey blade on a stockman to prune off the suckers on my tomato plants. It allowed me to reach in amongst the branches of the plant and slice off the unwanted ones without stabbing or poking any of the green tomatoes on the vine..
I also use it for food...for example it works perfectly for removing the seeds and veins from the inside of peppers, where you don't want to poke through the flesh.
A long spey blade like on a trapper works great as a spreader...like for mayo or peanut butter...or as a peeler, like for apples....or as a scraper, like for removing stuck on tape or glue...
I find lots of uses for the spey blade, very handy little blade to have in my opinion.

Growing up on a ranch, we used the spey blade for castrating. If you looked at any of the cowboy's pocketknives you would find that the spey blade was always incredibly sharp. It was generally the sharpest blade on their knife, most of them carried a stockman pattern, and consequently it was the one that was most used. Roundup was the time when we did most of the castrating, but that wasn’t the only procedure preformed on the young stock. Usually we would put the stock we needed to work into a corral and take them one at a time into a squeeze chute where we would perform the necessary procedures. Depending on the breed, and of course sex, of the stock we would usually castrate, brand, earmark and dehorn the stock is needed. Cows kept for breeding stock or not usually dehorned as they might need their horns to protect their calves from coyotes.

Castration and earmarking were both generally done with a pocket knife; the spey blade was used for castrating and the clip blade was usually used for earmarking. The ranch I worked on used three separate ear markings. This was over 50 years ago so my memory may be a little off, but as I recall the left ear had a hole cut in the middle; this mark was accomplished by folding the ear in half and cutting a half circle in the folded ear. There were two marks on the right ear; an undercut, which was kind of a crescent or half-moon shaped cut out of the bottom of the ear and the top of the ear with split from about the middle of the year up through the point. This cut in particular required a sharp point because the blade was pushed into the middle of the ear and then sliced lengthwise to the point of the ear. This marking was a usually accomplished with the clip blade is the spey blade generally did not have enough point to pierce through the ear.

Most of the cowboys used the spey blade for castrating and the clip blade for earmarking because the earmarks often required a point to pierce the ear in order to make the initial cut.

When I started working on the ranch when I was 12, I was the youngest and least experienced hand. The more experienced cowboys did most of the knife work although I did earmark a few when I was older.

It never failed when we were castrating and earmarking that when we knocked off for lunch and sat down in the shade one of the guys would pull out their stockman to cut an apple, a chunk of jerky or even a chaw off of a plug of tobacco. Of course they use the same blades, usually the spey because it was sharpest, and of course they had not been washed, you could still see blood on the blades. It never bothered anybody and nobody ever died from it so I guess it was fine.

Anything you need to cut that you don't want to poke a hole through. Like a package with anything inside it that could be damaged (punctured) by a blade having a point. Perfect for dressing small game like rabbit and squirrel, or skinning a fur-bearer (there's a reason that the Trapper pattern has a long Spey blade!)

Ken

Dale,
Great commentary on the use of knife in the cow pen! Brought back a few memories.
As Wade and Ken commented, the spey blade is used when skinning an animal. I've skinned many deer with a Trapper pattern knife, mostly Case 54's, using both blades, the clip and the spey. I now use a folding hunter, still in my pocket, I never got used to carrying a belt knife.
Several of my Case knives that have a spey blades, have etched on them, "For Flesh Only".
Treefarmer

Thanks guys - appreciate the replies and stories about how the spey blade is used in the wild as it was intended to be used

Well - I like the spey for stripping wire and scraping corrosion - anything that might dull my clip or sheepsfoot.

Hey, castrating cattle? I have a kitten that we are going to get neutered, now I wonder?....hmmm....

Nice story Dale. How did they dehorn the cattle? I've seen it done with a meat saw. We had a dehorner,looked like a big bolt cutter, never seen that in action . I don't know if I want to.

colin.p wrote:Hey, castrating cattle? I have a kitten that we are going to get neutered, now I wonder?....hmmm....

A fellow that let us quarry some stone had a Tom cat that was so mean he would shred the calendars on his garage wall. He put it in an onion sack and well you get the picture.....

He said ,when I turned him loose , there were sparks coming off his toenails as he torn across the blacktop road!

Being a city slicker I got to help my F-I-L dehorn calves. That was an interesting lesson in farm life! ftd

My dad, granddad & uncles did their own neutering of dogs, cats & hogs, plus they also docked the dogs.

I've never neutered anything (with a knife) - but I find the spey blade handy for all sorts of cutting tasks. You can "drill" a countersink in soft wood or drywall with the blade, you can scrape price stickers off packages with it, you can score drywall (but not as easily as with a sheepfoot blade), in fact you can cut anything with a spey that you can cut with any other blade, just as easily, if you use the straight edge of the blade. OH

Lansky1 wrote: Plus, it's tough to sharpen that rounded tip.

I've used the Lansky stones for a long time now. Find they work great on a lot of different blade contours.

I'd love to hear from anybody who actually likes the spey blade, and what they use it for ?

In my younger days of hunting, I liked the spey blade for slicing the hide away from the flesh. Nowadays it's used more for slicing packaging open or maybe cutting leather.

I growed up calling them flesh blades, we castrated pigs & skinned small animals.l use it for any cutting chore now days.

Well.... I don't have any animals to castrate, I do have these onions to cut up. Yup, this Spey blade works just fine