Lot 26: Cooper Knife by: Jack Bligh

In 1770, when Samuel Hearne was exploring the Great Slave Lake in Canada, he encountered a tribe of Aboriginal people who used copper-bladed, yellow-colored knives. Fur traders soon began to refer to these people as Yellowknives, and the tribe’s home became known as Yellowknife, currently the capital of the Northwest Territories in Canada.

The copper was as much as 96% pure and was forged with hard rocks. I have tried to duplicate the process by melting scrap copper into an ingot and forging it into a flat piece of copper and then forging the knife. The blade bears the marks and is untouched by machinery except where I sharpened the knife. The hardness of copper is approximately ½ that of low-carbon steel.

In 2022, I was commissioned by the Yukon government to make 5 copper knives in a manner that may have been made before 1770.