Interesting Spanish Canary Islands Punal

[Gonzalo G]

Originally Posted by Atlantia

Here is a rather sweet little knife.
Have a good look at the handle as there are little thin disks of white (now dark grey) metal which are made to be slightly larger so they stick out about 1mm. I assume that this can only be to provide grip and as the handle is already a shape that gives a good grip?
But I found myself wondering about it.
Which reminded me of the early smooth handled FS Commando knives and the problems of them becomming slippery and the soldiers being unable to pull them out due to a combination of blood on the handle and wound suction. Which resulted in the later ones having the ridged handles.
Could we be seeing a similar design feature here?

Dear Atlantia, the Canary Knife is a classical model related very closely with the antique mediterranean knife. This kind of handle is found even in the old knives from an area of Mexico dedicated at least from the 19th Century (if not from the 18th Century) to the craft of all kind of edged weapons, Sayula. I have one knife from my father, and its handle is almost identical to the canarian knive´s handles, though mine has a crossguard and a blade based on a very antique spanish-mexican model, resembling the Bowie knife´s blade. Those handles were made smooth and they are were very confortable in the hand. They were multipurpose working knives, though used as a weapon when needed. The FS daggers comes from an old model used widely in Europe as a fighting weapon. It has not new ideas in it´s conception, but the adaptation to specific needs, those of the british commandos. The metal handles were already used, and the design of special features to add ´grip´to the handle, were also very well known.
Regards

Gonzalo