Does anybody like penknives? If so, please show them here.

[chuko]

A few more of my pen knives.
Charles
Cattaraugus

Water-Ville

NYK

 

[T. Erdelyi]

Ted.... Where is the Case pen with the really thin blades?

You mean this one? I need to take some better pics now that I have a better camera.

 

[Blake the Blade]

Love that Walden congress with the file, beautiful scales. The nicest knife I've seen for a while.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

I'm lookin' at that Case pen and noticing the other thing that blows me away about this knife. The secondary pen is swedged on both sides to an almost false edge but they're no burn marks and the blade is paper thin with as much flex as a fillet knife.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

 

[Mack]

 

[RickT57]

I bet you could do surgery with!

 

[T. Erdelyi]

Mack is that bottom one an Equal End or a Sleeveboard?

 

[RobertJ1]

Never really thought much about pen knives but the support, love for them and styling I've seen in this thread is making me start to like them.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

Everything I know about this knife I learned from littleknife, this is my most prized Pen Knife, a MOP Lobster/Sleeveboard with pen blades, you know this baby trimmed it's fair share of pen quills. Enjoy...

Hi Ted,

I just found this thread, and as fate would have it, just yesterday read two Hungarian short stories from the late Century about master Sziráky.
His name is pronounced 'Yoh-zheff’ 'Seer-ah-kee’, with the stress on the first syllable , the ‘ee’-s are short, the ‘aaah’ is long (what you say when the doctor tells you to open your mouth to see your throat).

The following info is taken from a popular Hungarian knife related blog I will link at the end of the post.

Joseph Sziráky, frequently spelled also as Sziráki (Sziráky József or Sziráki József, written the Hungarian way) was one of the greatest - if not THE greatest - Hungarian master cutlers of the 19th Century, and certainly the most famous among them all. His fame was such, that he was the hero of, or was mentioned in several short stories (novellas) written by some of the greatest Hungarian writers of the 19th Century, including Kálmán Mikszáth and István Tömörkény. Given, that the Hungarian literature could never gain broader recognition, his fame was doomed to remain limited to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later to Hungary.

He was a pre-eminent member of the once famous cutlery industry established in the Southern part of the Empire, and now Hungary, in the city of Szeged.
A bustling multinational city, with its Hungarian, German, Serbian, Slovak, Jewish population, a regional center of agricultural commerce and industry located near the Tisa (Tisza) river, Szeged (similarly to other Hungarian cities at the time) lured in the early 19th century several German cutlers to establish local cutlery manufacture.
The cutlers brought with themselves the German guild system, and that system - in some form - remained central to the Hungarian cutlery manufacture even to this very day. Even the Hungarian cutlery-making terminology is of German origin to this very day (even though the terms are not strictly German any more, due to the transformation they had underwent in the Hungarian environment).

Among the founders of the Szeged Cutlers Guild was also a cutler called Sziráky Mátyás (Matthias Sziráky), who opened his workshop in 1825. His son, Sziráky József (1832-1899) inherited and expanded his father’s business. As an apprentice, he visited Austria, Italy and Switzerland. The practice of wandering apprenticeship guaranteed that the young artisans not only improved their skills, but also learned the newest techniques, methods and stylistic vogues of their time.
When József returned home, he worked as a maker of medical instruments, but soon he was making mainly knives (even though there are records that he was also making ‘fokos’).

His most famous pocketknife pattern is the fish shaped knife (halas bicska). According to contemporary anecdotal sources, after a devastating flood of the Tisza river at Szeged in the 1870’s, the then already famous master was walking on the newly built levies with the supervisor of the earthworks, count Lajos Tisza, when they saw a fish leaping from the river. Count Tisza asked master Sziráky if he could make a pocketknife like the fish they saw. The master soon obliged, and the famous fish form pocketknife was born.
Traditionally it was made with mother of pearl scales and it became one of the most popular patterns in Hungary, especially around Szeged. József Sziráky's descendants continued the trade until 1939.

Here is the link to the blog I mentioned at the beginning of this post:

http://kesportal.hu/2012/01/12/sziraki-uram-es-az-angliusok/

There you can see two of József Sziráky’s surviving pocketknives, both are from the collection of master Ferenc Kocsis, today’s preeminent traditional pocket knife maker in Hungary.

Also, a link to another short story, about buying a pocketknife in master József Sziráky's workshop:

http://kesportal.hu/2012/02/10/bicskavasarlas/

These two posts I linked above were done by the Hungarian knife enthusiast Edrose (Rózsa Edvárd), and also contain novellas by the Hungarian writers I mentioned above.

Edrose writes his own separate Opinel knife blog too, which besides in Hungarian, can be enjoyed in French and English versions too:

http://opinelno08.blogspot.hu/2013/02/lets-start-with-introduction.html


Ted, if your lobster is indeed made by master Sziráky (or in his workshop under his supervision), you have a REAL TREASURE, my friend! It would make you an instant celebrity (and in the same time a target of green envy) among both the Hungarian knife nuts and people obsessed with Hungarian history and literature.

I am happy, that the knife ended up not only at a person, who would value it as a nicely made pocketknife, but who also happens to be of Hungarian descent, so would value its cultural importance too.

 

[screened porch]

Thanks to those thanking me. You guys are doing great making this thread much more interesting than I expected.

 

[BenHarris]

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[RobertJ1]

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Nifty little guy

 

[Mack]

Mack is that bottom one an Equal End or a Sleeveboard?

Sleeveboard. One of my absolute favorites.

 

[JAB]

Good stuff everyone - I do loves me some penknives!:thumbup::thumbup:

And speaking of sleeveboards...



here's a little Henckels I'm partial to.

 

[leghog]

JAB, that knife above just sings!

 

[screened porch]

Here's something I found today: not very distinguished perhaps, but nice and thin.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

SP Kissing Crane?

 

[hamsco]

My only Penknife.... I've had it so long, I can't remember where I got her.....

 

[5K Qs]

Looks like you have quite a variety, and lots of interesting examples, Ted! :thumbup::thumbup:
I, for one, would be happy to see more detailed pics of many of them when you get the time.

- GT

I'll take some more and post them as I get some time.

Thanks very much, Ted. You have some impressive pen knives that fit right in with all the fine examples in this thread! :thumbup:

Fascinating examples! Is the "Good Roads Machinery" knife one that you posted before along with some history of the company? That looks very familiar to me, but I don't remember where I've seen it before.