#19-5 "Bushmaster" - More Bore from Moosehead

[Moosehead]

Hi all!

In the very popular tradition (we've been up and running for over a year, so I can call it tradition, eh?) established by our esteemed fellow mod BoBlade, it is my pleasure to bring you another tale of Randall bore which I hope y'all will enjoy.

Since first discovering the existence of RMK while surfing the net in late 2001(has it only been such a short time), I have always been fascinated by one of the more unusual looking knives offered.

See here: http://www.randallknives.com/hunting.asp

Model #19, dubbed the "Bushmaster" is offered with either a four and a half or five inch blade. The former version is the one depicted on RMK's website and on page 12 of the current catalogue. However, the original "Bushmaster" bore (no pun intended this this time) only a slight resemblance to today's versions.

The following information has been gleaned from Robert L. Gaddis' excellent book "Randall Made Knives: The History of the Man and the Blades", which is really essential for anyone interested in Randalls. It was published in 1993 by Paladin Press and is still readily available from various sources.

Chapter 13 (pages 209 to 211) contains the following:

In late 1962, Norm Sherwood, a friend of Bo Randall's son-in-law expressed a desire for a knife not offered in the RMK line. According to Gaddis, Norm who was an "avid Colorado outdoorsman", required a "heavy-duty, all-round field and camp knife, one which could even be used to cut brush for a cooking fire as well as to field-dress game."

Bo and Norm collaborated on designing the original "Bushmaster", apparently named because of it fulfilling Norm's need for a knife to take "into the bush" for his planned trip into the remote wilderness.

The resulting 4.5" blade knife depicted in Gaddis' book was dubbed "The Tadpole" by Bo and the author "because of its fat-bellied, long-tailed appearance." Bo is quoted" "we liked it well enough that we adopted it, but it's not a pretty knife, and we just didn't sell a lot of them." A few years later, in the mid-sixties, RMK altered the "Bushmaster's" design to give it a "more pleasing shape".

The "new" version first appeared in 1967, but "With its 4 1/2 inch blade, this was still a stubby looking knife." And so it was that a five inch blade option came about, and was first offered in the 1972 catalogue, giving the knife "a better appearance". "This extra 1/2 inch of blade steel also made the sharp top edge into a useful brush cutter for starting a campfire or making a crude shelter."

So folks here's one of the early FIVE inch #19s with a stainless blade. The knife is mint, with some slight storage marks at the throat of the sheath and keeper strap. The spacer arrangement, the "tight stitched" Johnson rough back sheath and the Norton white soft Arkansas hone all help to date this knife to the early seventies, but one can never know for sure the precise date when this #19-5 was crafted.























Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Moosehead

P.S. Please feel free to correct this ignorant Moose, or add any pertinent information you may have about this neat model.