J Russell 12" Camp Knife Carbon Steel Beech Greenfield Mass USA 1840-1880s

Antique Russell Green River 12" camp knife, a heavy bullnose shaped knife designed for use around camp doing a wide variety of tasks including chopping kindling or butchering game. As a part of American knife-making history J Russell knives play a pivotal role and this style camp knife a place in the Westward Expansion. 

This knife has a hot stamp indicating it was made before the move to the turners falls and the switch to an acid etch mark in 1880. Russell made a lot of knives for the westward expansion and this knife would certainly have been included in that. 

From this era it is much more common to find the smaller butcher knives that were used as general purpose knives and on whom the John Russell Green River Works made their fortune and fame. 

Russell Green River Works was the first American knife-maker to look to aggressively meet the new and growing American cutlery market which was being met with English imports from Sheffield. In the pre-Civil War time period of the 1830s to 1860 Sheffield engaged in a protracted trade war with the new American knife makers, dumping underpriced knives on the American market in an effort to bankrupt companies such as J Russell, Lamson and Goodnow, and Harrington Cutlery. Russell's answer to this was to offer wages double that being available in Sheffield and to incorporate immigrant Sheffield skilled labor into his process. 

This is a hefty knife weighing in at 1.5+ lbs, the blade is 1/4" thick, it has seen some use and rust leaving some patches of pits, the edge had been sharpened in and was a bit wobbly, it has been re-ground with a convex edge along the face and a second bevel at the very edge.