Suunyd and others I don't know when the first swedges appeared on Sheffield knives. If I find something I'll be sure to add it here. Here are pics of the knife shown earlier with the blades open as requested.
What am I looking at?
These are asymmetrically ground blades?
Can I see any swedgeing?
or am I getting my terms wrong....
Hey neeman, I'll attempt to explain what I'm seeing and if anybody else sees something different please jump on in.
First of all, I am assuming that very little of the blades spines stick up over the handle in their closed positions. The handle eases(notches) for nail nick access on both sides are the giveaway there. This makes the knife even more compact so primary blade grinds and swedging are crucial in helping the blades move in and out of the pockets. Since the nail nicks are on the outside of the blades on both sides of this knife, the swedges have no effect on them.
All of the blades are asymetrically ground so that there is room for its neighboring blade in the same pocket. Also significant on this knife is the fact that the primary bevels are "shouldered in" or plunged into and thru the spine of the blade, with the tip cutting manicure blade's plunge thru the spine being almost imperceptable. Here's the blade lineup based on the top-down shot of the blade spines in Steve's image:
Upper right - tip cutting manicure/file, cut swedge back side
Upper left - pen blade, cut swedge front side, drawn swedge back side
Notice how the neighboring cut swedges on the inside of these two blades give additional space, effectively thinning out the blades so that they have room to pass. The cut swedge on the pen blade(left) appears longer than it needs to be but keep in mind the desire to keep the blades thin but strong as possible for the purpose of cutting. It occurs to me just now that you wouldn't want a manicure file to be as thin so this may be why there isn't as much material, if any, taken off of it in the plunge.
Lower right - coping blade, drawn swedge front side, cut swedge back side
Lower left - master pen, drawn swedges both side
This is a bit different as the master pen blade is longer than its pocket buddy, the coping blade. The cutler could have put a cut swedge on the master blade as well but I believe the choice of dual drawn swedges on the master blade was a choice of asthetics. The plunge grinds on both sides of the coping blade, PLUS the cut swedge on the back(top) side is totally necessary to allow both of those blades to move in and out of the pocket. The coping blade yields to the master blade.
