Hey everyone, I hope your all doing well. I was digging through some of my stuff in storage when we moved it home and found something that I forgot I had. Its a forged "chopping" style blade. I found it when my Dad and I were looking for native arrow heads and stuff like that.

Do any of you have an idea on the age of something like this?

sorry the pictures are so big.

Just a semi-educated guess; to me it looks like a Medic's variant of the 'bolo' style knives issues by the U.S. military after the Spanish American War (in the Phillipines) and IIRC used up to and through WWII. Those issued to the Medic's didn't have a stabbing point and were meant for cutting poles to make strechers, and build shelters.

As I said, it's just a guess going on the size (related to your hand) and what little I can recall from a line drawing illustration in a 1950's book about weapons or U.S. military equipment. Hope this helps.

Cool man, It could very well be a bolo but where I found it makes me think it might be way before them times. We found about 100 stone arrow heads in the same spot that I found this blade so that makes me think it may be from the fur trade days.

it could be a crudly forged buffalo skinners knife if your thinking of that, they didnt have points, and they had a slight curve, they were used for skinning the buffalo and not damaging the insides like the point of a regular knife did.

My cousin has my grandmother's garden knife that she used to harvest cabbage, lettuce, cut corn stalks and the such. She was born in 1860 so she could have acquired it from an old buffalo hunter we were supposed to have one of those in the family that returned home to peace and quiet of Indiana. I have seen the bolo style knifes used by medics in a surgeons collection of military medical items and they all had flat riveted wooden scales not a handle that was peened on the end so I don't think it is from the Spanish-American War. I think you may be correct that it was a trade knife to the Native Americans from White traders.

Thanks for the info! I have seen similar blades like this but just like Bentiron said, they had rivited on handles. Its really bothering me that I can't quite get to the bottom of this tho. I have shown it to a few people and they all gave me a puzzled look and took a guess as to how old it could be.

did you find this knife in canada?

Yup I found it about 50 miles west of Saskatoon saskatchewan

Oh and another note. I saw some pics of what were thought to be buffalo skinners and the cutting edge was on the outside of the curve this blades edge is on the inside. It's gotta be a chopper of some kind. There are a lot of old farms in the area and a few small towns so it also could have been made by a local smith way back.

I had a local collector look at this blade. He collects stuff from the Hudson bay era. He figures it was for butchering bison.