A trapper's tools?

[pritch]

My friend found this stuff while he was building a little road on his land. He imagines an old time trapper sitting at his campfire melting lead and casting bullets when he was ambushed. I don't think the wood handles on the knives would have lasted that long, though.

The two knives. They seem more or less identical, except one has been seriously ground down. One says Hammer Forged Made In USA
 

A very small cast iron cook pot and a ladle that still has a slug of lead in it and a cool little copper stein looking thing.

 



What do you think? Old or really old?

[john k]

The knives around here would be called butcher knives, look like the same kind used in packing plants.   The pot is old, the ladels could be, and from the oxidation, would say they been in the weather five years or so.   Am thinking some kids were messing with melting lead,  and just walked off leaving it all laying out. 

[Branson]

The knives are the sort you used to get from the Herter's catalog.  They were designated "skinning knives."  It's the deep curve that identifies them.
The well used one is older.  Scott will probably give a good date for this -- the scales are mounted with five pins, while the newer one has the scales fastened with two rivets.

The cast iron pot -- look at the bottom.  If there is a "gate mark" where it was cast (about a quarter inch wide and two or three inches long) it was made before 1875.

The cool looking copper thing is a coffee maker.  These are still in use for making Turkish coffee, a very strong coffee.  Water and very fine grounds are put in, usually sugar as well, and placed over a fire to actually boil.   As strong as, or stronger than espresso.  Brass is more common than copper, and I think copper ones are older.

[Fins/413]

What part of the country is this in, most beaver trapping was done by the 1850's.

[Branson]

What part of the country is this in, most beaver trapping was done by the 1850's.

Beaver trapping was all done and gone, certainly.  Trapping other critters, though continued long enough that a friend of mine made money while he was in high school by running a trap line in the late '60s, early 70's.  He lived just a little higher than the foothills of the Sierras in Northern California.

[Branson]

These skinners are still made.  You can get them from Dexter-Russel, Victorinox, Old Hickory, and some company in China.

A Sheffield company offers one with the five pin attachment.
http://www.sheffieldknives.co.uk/acatalog/info_128.html

[scottg]

 

These skinners are still made.  You can get them from Dexter-Russel, Victorinox, Old Hickory, and some company in China.

 So true.
Skinners like this (not the specific only use, just the name of the pattern) were made by everyone in the knife business before 1900 and nearly everyone ever since.
 Russel was very famous for them.
 Pins or rivets, your choice, were often offered as well. Pins were first but after the earliest days just a style choice.
Beech, rosewood or bone handles (in ascending price order), plain or checkered for grip, were offered. 

 So yeah, if you want to think trapper you could be right! Even though beaver trapping (the most lucrative trapping ever because of men's beaver felt hats) was long gone after 1850,
 from mink to muskrat and fox trapping is still alive here and there, even now. 

 Of course if you want to fantasize these were used by a pork packer, you could just as easy be right too.

 I remember seeing some continued production Russel a couple years ago for around $10. and thought it a bargain.
 Same ol plant, same ol work, still at it.
 yours Scott   

[pritch]

This guy's ground is not too far from Huntsville, Utah. There was a little bit of Beaver trapping back in the day. My In-Laws' farm is on the site where this occured, where Mountain Green is now:

http://www.sangres.com/utah/history/deserter-point.htm

[OilyRascal]

I may be misinterpreting the intended meaning, but I'm a bit confused by any statement suggesting Beaver trapping having stopped in the mid 1800s.  Beaver trapping remains very active in this part of the country to this day, and pays very well at over $250 each if you include hide, government bounty, scent gland sales, and land owner fees paid to remove them.

[scottg]

  Beaver trapping remains very active in this part of the country to this day

 This is true. People will always trap.  Some.

  But nobody is coming in with a 4 horse heavy freight wagon full and trading them for the equivalent of a section of land fully furnished with barns and house and servants, with enough left over to live comfortable for the rest of their life, and a luxury yacht besides.
 
    Beaver remains valuable, but once every man of wealth in America absolutely had to have a beaver felt hat and there were several grades of them.  The most expensive were astronomical in today's money.
 Not that top cowboy hats aren't high now.
 But they would have been 10's of thousands in today's money, around about 1840. 

Beaver hats where the designer clothes of their time. Silly money expensive.
    yours Scott

[john k]

In about 1850, silk became available from China.  The fast clipper ships brought it and spices to the east coast and Great Britain, fast because silk would deteriorate until processed.   When they got the silk process down, beaver-felt hats went out of fashion overnight.    Think of the tall silk stove pipe hats, from Lincolns time.   The market for beaver that drove the mountain men into the wilderness evaporated, the trappers bringing in their pelts  to rendevouz the last season got pennies instead of dollars.