Butcher knife

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A butcher knife is a knife designed and used primarily for the butchering and/or dressing of animals. During the late 1700's to mid 1840's, the butcher knife was a key tool for mountain men. Simple, useful and cheap to produce, they were used for everything from skinning beaver, cutting food, fighting adversaries, and scalping. During this time, I. Wilson, of Sheffield, England was a major exporter of this type of knife to the Americas. In the 1830's an American company named J. Russell became the major producer of inexpensive, high quality cutlery. They soon became a name in every household and in the mountain man mythos.

Even today, the butcher knife is used throughout the world in the meat processing trade. The French chef's knife is a derivation of the butcher knife, and is used as a general utility knife. Other similar meat-cutting knives include the carving knife and the cleaver knife. The carving knife usually is designed for slicing thin cuts of meat and often has a blunt or rounded point, with a scalloped or granton blade to improve separation of sliced cuts of meat. The cleaver knife a is similar to the butcher's knife, but has a lighter and thinner blade for precision cutting.