- Joined
- Feb 21, 2006
- Messages
- 4,677
I was sitting at lunch today and a guy that works in my department says to me, "My wife dug up an old pocketknife from my mothers stuff." and he continues to describe it. He says it has bone handles, and he tried to read the name on the tang with a glass with no sucess because of the rust. After lunch I popped into his office to have a look. At a quick glance I identified it as a Catt. He wanted to clean it up so I told him I would take care of it after he mentioned buffing it up.
I took it and put it in the soup, (mineral oil) in the lab for a few hours. After wiping it down the blades were very dark, and hardly any pitting at all. A nice sound knife with a great patina. Tha bone on one side wad split in half the long way and glued, looked like some time ago, but a nice honey bone with great jigging.The Knife is a 2 blade equal end cigar?pen. The master blade had about 6-7% wear and the pen was hardly used. Spear master blade and pen on the opposite side. Nice swedges too.The bolsters and liners were steel. When I gave the knife back to him it came back with a really nice walk and talk. He was pleased as punch because he was using a letter opener to open and close it. I continued to tell him that it was a collectible, possible worth about $60 70 bucks maybe, and that if he buffed it, it would ruin it. I thought that because of the steel liners that maybe it was made during the big one, forties era. I said just put it in your pocket and it will slowly reap new life. He thanked me and I thanked him for letting me bring back to life a bit of Americanna. It made for a nice Friday afternoon.
I took it and put it in the soup, (mineral oil) in the lab for a few hours. After wiping it down the blades were very dark, and hardly any pitting at all. A nice sound knife with a great patina. Tha bone on one side wad split in half the long way and glued, looked like some time ago, but a nice honey bone with great jigging.The Knife is a 2 blade equal end cigar?pen. The master blade had about 6-7% wear and the pen was hardly used. Spear master blade and pen on the opposite side. Nice swedges too.The bolsters and liners were steel. When I gave the knife back to him it came back with a really nice walk and talk. He was pleased as punch because he was using a letter opener to open and close it. I continued to tell him that it was a collectible, possible worth about $60 70 bucks maybe, and that if he buffed it, it would ruin it. I thought that because of the steel liners that maybe it was made during the big one, forties era. I said just put it in your pocket and it will slowly reap new life. He thanked me and I thanked him for letting me bring back to life a bit of Americanna. It made for a nice Friday afternoon.