Navajas of the Galleons

[Chris Evans]

Dmitry,

But why did the locking knives blossom later on? Tradition?

I have serious doubts about locking navajas having been ever normative in Spain. Much more likely is that it they represented only a fraction of the total numbers of folders in use and then only in the regions where cutlery industry was a significant part of the economy, as in Albacete.

As to why a lock was needed: For a knife to become a serious weapon, it must allow for the thrust. The wielder of a folding knife that does not have some sort of blade fixation mechanism when open, runs the risk of finger amputation should the blade close, be it whilst thrusting or if the blade is parried with a jacket, as was the practice in the Spanish fight.

Forton gives examples of post Borbon legislation that prohibit locks and then tells us on Pg 108 that the authorities did not have a problem with with folding knives per se, given their general utilitarian necessity, but rather their violent usage, for which a blade fixation mechanism was a requirement and thus legislators focused on this feature.

On the same page Forton says that since the majority of navajas in use had some sort of lock, the adverse legislation had a devastating effect on the cutlery industry. I find this assertion very hard to accept because:

a) Non locking navajas were much easier to make and thus cheaper. Hence, anybody who needed a working knife would not have exposed themselves to the wrath of the law, nor (given the prevailing poverty) spent hard earned money needlessly and would have opted for a friction folder.

b) The bulk of the large French navajas imported into Spain during the XIX century had only what I call a demi-lock, which did not prevent the blade from closing if some force was exerted on it, much like a modern so called slip joint.

c) For work, to this day cheap friction folders are still extremely popular in Spain and not the locking navaja. These are typical examples:http://www.filofiel.com/tienda/index...=22_34_112_472

In any event, since fixed blades were prohibited, cutlers still could make a living from making legal friction folders as the boutique cutlers of today do. A much more likely cause behind the decline of Spanish cutlery was its uncompetitiveness in the face of industrialization in the rest of Europe, especially France.

Cheers
Chris