A Mystery Penknife

[Jack Black]

Spotted this wee penknife in the market today. It had quite a bit of rust, which made the blades hard to open, but I’d expected to be able to see a mark under the rust when I got it home. However, there are no markings on the blades at all. It’s almost certainly made in Sheffield, where many ‘anonymous’ knives have always been produced, but they generally at least give the city’s name. Thought you folks might like to look at a few pics of my mystery knife anyway.

 

[CoffeeCat2112]

Those blades look like a tight fit.

 

[Jack Black]

Those blades look like a tight fit.

Yeah, they're OK, but there's quite a bit of wobble to them.

 

[akadave2]

Believe it or not Ive seen and old Winchester pen knife that looked identical!

 

[glennbad]

Is that a brass liner that the cell piece is recessed into?

 

[Curtis_Lowe]

Is that a brass liner that the cell piece is recessed into?

Wondering the same. Are the liners and bolster steel or just badly tarnished.

 

[CoffeeCat2112]

It looks like the brass and cell are a unit together. If so, the rest of the knife looks a lot like this one:

G crown R

Jack, you can PM me if you want; I don't know the rules about linking to other knife sites.

 

[Jack Black]

Believe it or not Ive seen and old Winchester pen knife that looked identical!

Really? That's very interesting. Would love to see a pic if anyone has one. It's almost like some sort of pre hollow scale Imperial/Richards.

Is that a brass liner that the cell piece is recessed into?

No, I'll try to take better pics in daylight, but basically what looks like brass is just the edge of the scale material.

It looks like the brass and cell are a unit together. If so, the rest of the knife looks a lot like this one:

G crown R

Jack, you can PM me if you want; I don't know the rules about linking to other knife sites.

Thanks for that Blaine. Well spotted :thumbup:

 

[Jack Black]

Is that a brass liner that the cell piece is recessed into?

No, I'll try to take better pics in daylight, but basically what looks like brass is just the edge of the scale material.

It's dull and raining here today, but hopefully these show it just a wee bit better.









The form definitely seems to be a way of reducing production costs, but I wonder how widely the use of these type of covers was, and whether or not they pre-date the use of one-piece hollow scale/bolsters (a patented invention).