Imperial - An interview with Michael Mirando

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Codger_64

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In another post, "Imperial - An Intervew With Lou Fazzano" ( http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...view-with-Lou-Fazzano?p=13199229#post13199229 ), I quoted briefly from an interview I had read some time back and just found. It appears in the book "The Pocketknife Manual” By the late Blackie Collins published in 1976. This is a good reference book if you can find a copy.

A Conversation with Felix Mirando
Taken from “The Pocketknife Manual” By Blackie Collins 1976

Imperial Knife Associated Companies, Inc. is the world’s largest producer of pocketknives. Schrade, Imperial, Jackmaster, Hammerbrand, and Frontier are just a few of the brands which this company produces now and these are a small fraction of the dozens of brands which they have produced over the past years. Michael and Felix Mirando founded this giant of the cutlery industry and on May 6, 1976, Felix celebrated the beginning of his 73rd year in the industry. Mr. Felix Mirando has done more for the cutlery industry thanany other individual. Beginning in the 1920’s his innovative thinking brought about tremendous changes in an industry that was chained to the traditions of the past. This innovative thinking combined with a strong determination to make the best knife possible for the least amount of money enabled Mr. Mirando’s company to flourish during the depression years and actually grow and profit while the bulk of America’s industry was experiencing a staggering economic setback. Mr. Mirando is still an active participant in the affairs of this company which he and his brother founded so many years ago. His influence has been felt by every major cutlery manufacturer in the world and is being felt by every individual who appreciates a good honest knife for an honest price.


Mirando:It’s a great industry, very close to us- and to me, at least, it has been a very interesting industry. I have been fortunate in being able to grow with the industry from the crude beginnings of handmaking right through the evolution that has been taking place over the past fifty years. Actually, knifemaking goes back to the stone age, but what’s happened to the cutlery industry in the last fifty years is amazing. In 1900 there was only one way you could make a knife-it was to take a piece of steel, put it over the forge and hammer a blade out and file it and grind it by hand.

Collins: How did you get started in the knife business?

Mirando: My father made knives in Italy, and so did his grandfather.

Collins: Where in Italy?

Mirando: A little town called Frosilona, about ninety miles northeast of Naples. The townspeople there were all individual knifemakers. Every family made their own knives. I actually represent the third generation of knifemaking. I made my first complete knife when I was eight years old. I forged my own blade, I drilled it and filed it and ground it and made the lining of the knife and the spring and the bolsters. I drilled them by hand. This was in Frosilona, around 1902 or 1903.

Collins: Was the situation in Frosilona similar to the situation in England-at Sheffield?

Mirando: Exactly the same. In Sheffield or even in Germany. I’m speaking of seventy-five years ago-there was riot such a thing as a large factory producing a lot of knives. Even if a family began to make knives as a business, their methods didn’t change. The knives were still made exactly the same way whether they had fifty people making knives, or just a fellow making one once in a while. They were very crude, utility type knives. Mostly one blade-good solid drawn one-blade knives. They varied a little bit in size and they varied a little bit in shape, but they were just an ordinary type of knife made for a specific use. The farmer, the man working the land, had to have a knife.
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Collins: Didn’t you go to work for the Empire Knife Company when you came to America?

Mirando: Yes, my brother, Michael, and I both worked there until 1916. I started in 1910 when I was fourteen years old and worked six years. Michael worked there seven years. We did everything, I used to harden blades and springs. Sometimes we would get a bad batch of springs-they weren’t properly drawn, as we used to call the tempering in those days. They’d be alright while you were making the knife, but after the knives were packed and placed in the stockroom, you would walk through the stockroom and hear “click, click, click”. Those clicks were the springs breaking.

Collins: You said you worked at Empire until 1916. What happened then?

Mirando: It was in 1916 that my brother and I both decided that we wanted to move on and do something on our own.

Collins: How old were you then?

Mirando: I was twenty. My brother was twenty-eight. Our idea was to move away from the little town of Winstead and come to Providence. The reason for coming to Providence is that our beginning would be in making the kind of knives the jewelry industry was buying, and Providence was then the center of the jewelry industry. We thought this would be the best place to start.

Collins: In 1916, when you and your brother started the business, how many employees did you have, say, after you’d been in business for six months?

Mirando: Our beginning was very humble and small. Up until, well, almost up until 1920 everypocketknife made in this country was still handmade. Drilled by hand, forged by hand and ground by hand. Naturally, our methods were exactly the same as those of every other factory. My brother and I worked byhand ourselves and then we started to bring in a boy or two. Within six months we must have had at least seven or eight employees.

Collins: And you were turning out how many knives?

Mirando: Oh, just a matter of maybe a hundred dozen a week. At that period, of course, we were not making the so-called complete knives or jack-knives. What we were making was a skeleton type of knife that was used by the jewelry industry. They bought the skeleton knives and then they finished the handles themselves. The knives were known as Waldemar knives and were used on the end of a watch chain.

Collins: When did you begin to change your methods of knife production?

Mirando: It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20’s. We were the first people in the industry to develop a way of making knives that involved mass production. Now in order to do this, we had to first come up with the ideas and then try to develop the equipment, tools and fixtures needed for doing the work in a different way. There wasn’t anything available already made in the way of machine tools we were using, you know. When we came up with an idea, we would take it to different people-mechanics or toolmakers-and have them try to develop it. A lot of it, of course, was through trial and error. In the 1930’s we were alreadyproducing pocketknives in an entirely different way than they had been produced in previous years.
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"...a good honest knife for an honest price"

I'll use that quote from Blackie Collins.
 
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Collins: What was your production in the 1930’s?

Mirando: By the late 30’s our production of knives got up to about 10,000 pocketknives per hour. And after humble beginnings in a blacksmith shop, by 1940 we were the largest producer of pocketknives in the world.

Collins: By the way, how did you deliver those first knives?

Mirando: How did I deliver them? When the first gross of knives was completed for a concern in Attleboro-jewelry manufacturers-I got on the trolley car in Providence and went to Attleboro and delivered them.

Collins: And that was from over your uncle’s garage, wasn’t it?

Mirando: Yes. We moved and rented a small space in this building in June of 1917. All the buildings here were subletted to different companies. For instance, one little jewelryfactory would rent 5,000 feet of floor space, a half floor, or one floor. In this building alone there might have been ten or fifteen different tenants. So, we came in as a tenant and rented a small space.

Collins: And kept getting more and more space?

Mirando: Yes, that’s right. More and more until we occupied the whole block plus another plant not quite as big as this.

Collins: How many factories are now Associated companies overseas and here?

Mirando: Six.

Collins: Including the razor factory?

Mirando: Yes. Then we have the three warehouses-one in Long Island, New York, one in Toronto, and one in Cologne, Germany. It’s a great history-it goes along with what you’re looking at-a little bit of a pocketknife. Very interesting. If some of those people who lived in the 1900’s could come back today, they wouldn’t believe it-that those are still knives. They wouldn’t recognize the factories- as a matter of fact, theywould not call this a knife factory.

Collins: How many knives do you make in a day now?

Mirando: Well, if you’re talking strictly knives Collins: Knives, everything. We’re making at the present moment about 110,000. Once there was an old foreman here who had made knives in Sheffield and had been in the pocketknife business all his life. One day he said, “Mr. Mirando, I’ve been very derogatory of Imperial knives all mylife. I knew you people made nothing except low-priced knives and I thought they were all junk, no good. I realize now that you put a lot of quality in your knives, and that the things I have considered not to be quality features were made that way on purpose.” He said, “God knows what would ever have happened to us people who were making fancy handmade knives if you people had decided to make the same type of knife with the way you know how to make knives.” We make knives to hit a specific trade market. The quality of knife we make-the amount of work we put intoit-is to hit the price range that that market wants. We make knives in these Associated companies now that range in price from $2.19 to $100.00, and I think it’s saying a lot that we put the same pride and craftmanship into the cutting edge of each knife, no matter what it sells for. Take one of those very inexpensive knives. The spring in that knife will be 46 to 48 Rockwell C hardened, tempered as well as you can do it metalurgically speaking. The blade is 10 95 steel, which is a pretty good cutlery steel, properly heat treated. Now, it hasn’t been ground as sophisticatedly as some knives, nor has itbeen sharpened to the degree we would on a higher priced knife, but if a guy buys one of those knives and knows a little bit about sharpening, he’s got a tool that will last him a long time and do a great job at a reasonable price. What this company has always insisted on doing is putting a good value into whatever they made at the price. Even with what we take out of these inexpensive knives, they still have a strong structure and good steel in them.
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Collins: What kind of steel do you use?

Mirando: Most of our stainless is 440-everything in stainless pocketknife blades is 440-and most of the carbon steel is 10 95. For the linings and that sort of thing we use 1018, which is, of course, low carbon steel and most of that we brass plate. This is for the lower priced knives. The higher priced knives have solid brass linings. We do make some stainless steel linings, also. We’re about the only company left in America still in the bayonet business for the U. S. government, and we keep a lot of blade stock around on speculation for the next bayonet order.

Collins: And what steel is used for the bayonet blades?

Mirando: 1080. However, they insist on having basically a spring temper for bayonet blades rather than what we would consider blade temper. They want them in the 52/50 hardness range. That material is . 207 thick. We put it in the grinding machine and grind it down to a cutting edge in one pass through the machine. We do make a lot of bayonets.

Collins: How much raw material do you stock?

Mirando: We’ve got in this building at the present moment in carbon steel and stainless steel an inventory of about $750, 000 in uncut steel.

Collins: How about the tooling you have? What kind of cost is involved there?

Mirando: You mean what they cost us, or today’s price?

Collins: Today’s price.

Mirando: Oh, I would say offhand, easily ten million dollars. Once a tool is set up, you get a part off of it that’s right. Every time that tool is set up again, before the tool can run, an inspector has to approve the set-up. Then, depending on how critical the part is and the dimensions are, every fifteen minutes or every half-an-hour or every hour the inspector goes around and checks what is coming out of the tool against the sample part.

Collins: How about your heat treating facilities?

Mirando: We’re set up here to harden both stainless and carbon steel comparable to anybody else in the world, I don’t care what the industry is. We do all of our stainless heat treatment in an atmosphere furnace. We use an atmosphere of cracked ammonia, so that when the steel is raised up to about 1950 degrees-that’s the temperature we use for 440-it will go completely through the furnace, pick up no oxides, and come out the other end with absolutely no discoloration.

Collins: Now what is the atmosphere again?

Mirando: The atmosphere is cracked ammonia, a gas which is NH3 one part nitrogen, three parts hydrogen. It’s actually broken down at a very high temperature to its basic components and the oxygen is excluded. The ammonia gas feeds in with a little positive pressure so that it’s always forcing the oxygen out. Of course, hydrogen burns and is explosive, so we have a little flame at the end of the furnace so that anyhydrogen that tends to find its way out into the room is automatically burned. Basically, what you’ve got inside there is nitrogen, but it is a mixture, and neither one will react with the stainless steel. The stainless goes through the furnace at up to 1950 degrees and into an atmosphere quench on the other end. It’s now gone-if it’s 440-it’s gone from a hardness of about 22 or 23 up to 55 or 56 with no change in color.

Stainless steel is difficult to stain, but once you get the stain on it, it’s very difficult to get it off. We find it far less expensive to prevent the oxide from forming than to try to remove it once it gets in place. For the carbon steel the operator runs two furnaces. One has blades and the other springs. Now, we use 1095 for both blades and springs, but we harden the blades to actually the blades in their initial hardness go up into the low 60’s-62 or 64, and we draw them back to 57 or 58. The springs have a different temper and a different quenching technique, so they only go up to the middle 50’s and we draw them back to between 46 and 48.

The part moves along on a conveyor, it enters the furnace and comes up to temperature, comes out of the furnace and drops into an oil bath. Another conveyor picks the part up out of the oil bath and automatically feeds it over to a cleaning machine that takes the oil off of it and puts it into a vat, where it goes into the tempering oven. Collins: How long are the parts exposed to maximum temperature? Mirando: Oh, I would say a matter of about four or five minutes, before the conveyor drops them into the oil. As long as you’re assured that you’ve got complete temperature penetration all the way through the piece of steel, that’s all you have to be sure of.

I’m sure you know that if you keep them at the high temperature too long, there’s a tendency to burn off the surface carbon. The smaller blades always move well on the conveyor belt but sometimes the larger hunting knife blades have a tendency to hang up and could possibly overheat. These larger blades are done in what we call a batch-type furnace. An operator pushes a batch, which will probably be about 600 to 700 hunting knife blades, into the furnace. They are brought up to temperature, then when they reach temperature, they are automatically lowered into the quench tank. When they are cooled off enough they are automatically ejected at the other end of the furnace.

As the hardened blades come out of the cleaning operation-that’s just a detergent type cleaner-they are hoisted up and put into the tempering oven. They stay in the tempering furnace for roughly four hours, depending on what we are going to do with them, and the stresses and strains we put into the blades are relieved until we have the proper flexibility. On carbon steel we’ll lose a few points of hardness in the tempering operation. You can substantially improve the spring temper of a blade and build a harder blade with more flexibility less likely to break-if after it’s been hardened it’s put through a deep-freeze operation.

All the stainless blades we make-pocketknives, kitchen cutlery or what have you-goes through a deep-freeze operation. The 440 blades are hardened to the high 50’s on the Rockwell C scale. Then they are put in the deep freeze at 120 degrees below zero for roughly four hours. That gives them spring flexibility, and you’ll find that you have a 440 blade up in the high 50’s with excellent spring temper. This way we can get the maximum hardness and still not have a brittle blade. After we have hardened and tempered the blade properly, then it is a matter of grinding and finishing to get the particular quality that we are looking for.
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Collins: What kind of grinding machines do you use and how many do you have in operation?

Mirando: We have eighty-eight grinding machines at the moment, and they are strictly our own. Imperial designed and built them. Every time we find a new grinding machine on the market we buy one, or two or three or four. We test them-if we learn anything we keep them, otherwise we scrap them. Our own machines are absolutely the finest to be found anywhere. If we bring in a new machine and test it and it doesn’t work, it might still suggest to us some way to improve our own machines. But, as a basic machine we’ve never found anything as simple and as good as our own.

Collins: How long has this machine been basically unchanged?

Mirando: It never goes three years without being changed in some way, but the basic idea and the basic construction started about 1938 and we’ve gradually improved them over the years. Interestinglyenough, all the bases of these machines are the old Hemmings machines that were used back in the 1920’sand 1930’s. It was cheaper to buy Hemmings for spare parts than to buy new castings, so all the bases are old Hemmings castings.

Collins: How do you keep from losing the temper of the blades as they are being ground?

Mirando: We have a very sophisticated cooling system here, because, as you know, if you have a blade that is 58 on the Rockwell C scale and you don’t cool it properly while you’re grinding, you’ve got nothing.

Collins: That’s right.

Mirando: We have special coolants, and we have automatic valves on the machines so that the coolant runs on it while the blades are actually being ground. The coolant stops when the machine is shut off. This means we have a lot less coolant running through the system and we can control our coolant very accurately, and controlling the coolant is very critical to grinding.

To get the coolant off of the blades, we stick them in what we call sawdust after the grinding operation. Back in the old days for this sort of drying operation theyused sawdust. It was available, it was cheap, etc. Then, I would say in the middle 1940’s, somebody came up with the idea of grinding up corncobs, as that particular material will absorb three or four times as much moisture as sawdust. Plus the fact that it is very inexpensive because corncobs are a scrap product. We buythat material by the trailertruck load-a forty foot trailer at a time. We use that much of it.

We have people we call retrievers who go around taking the blades out of the sawdust, making sure they are dry, and counting them. They see that the blade is moved to the next operation as it should be. Collins: Is the coolant recycled? Mirando: Oh, yes-we have a cleaning system for the coolant. Every drop of water that goes through the grinding machines goes through the cleaning system, and all the impurities are removed from the water and the coolant oil we have it in. It’s all recirculated, so we have a completely closed system in which we control the concentration, the acidity, the temperature, what have you, so that we have a very consistent coolant fed to our grinding machines.

Collins: What is the coolant?

Mirando: It’s about 99% water, with a soluble oil added to it.

Collins: Why is the oil added?

Mirando: The oil is there because the water has a natural property characteristic of all liquids known as surface tension, which means that it takes a little force to break through the surface of the liquid. If a coolant oil is added to the water, the rate at which the water will take away heat is substantially increased. By changing the coolant oil we can almost double the amount of heat we can remove with a given amount of water pouring over the work. It’s staggering to see what some of those coolants can do.
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Collins: What is the next step for the blades?

Mirando: Now the blades go into barrels where they’re tumbled with various types of polishing medium. They come out of the barrels with a fair finish, the grind lines are gone and they are in reasonably good shape. We have a polishing operation in the barrels also.

Collins: What is the medium?

Mirando: It’s fine-ground walnut shell.

Collins: Is any compound added to that?

Mirando: Yes, we add a polishing compound. We also use this operation to polish pakawood handles before we assemble them on kitchen knives, rather than having to do it by machine or hand. The larger a piece is, the more difficult or the more impossible it is to tumble it, so at certain points we shift over and use machines. There are certain types of finishes that we have to go to the machines to get.

Collins: I understand that your engineering department has devised many tests for product quality.

Mirando: Yes. Take a pair of 440 scissors-we don’t just accept our theoretical knowledge that theywill stand up. Every day a couple of pairs of scissors come off the production line and they have to cut 100,000 strokes and not dull, or we’ve got to know why. Our engineering department built a test machine with a counter on it that counts the upper strokes, and the scissors must go through 100,000 strokes and still cut properly. We also have a machine built to deflect blades through a given number of degrees and check to make sure that they come back to zero. If you take a 440 blade and deflect it 20 degrees, as a guy might with a big hunting knife working on a bone, and it’s not properly heat treated, it won’t come back to zero. But if it is properly hardened, tempered and deep frozen, it will come back to zero every time just like clockwork.

Another interesting set-up we have involves our very inexpensive knives with thin gauge plastic handles. Somebody said to me one day, “What happens to that as a guy puts it in and out of his pocket, you know, because many people keep pocketknives for years?” Well, we made a machine we can put a pocketknife on and a piece of cloth on and we can determine how many times a guy can put the knife in and out of his pocket before he wears it out.

One test came about after we developed a knife sharpener and decided that a 100 grit was the proper stone for us to use. One of our salesmen reported back from the field that the customers were messing up their knives when they were sharpening them. So we said, “Well, that’s not because of the grit of the stone, that’s because they don’t know how to use the knife sharpener.” They said, “Well, we’d like to know what would happen if you changed the grit of the stone.” So, in addition to the 100 grit we were using, we had 120 and 180 grit stones made up. We used three blades with absolutely duplicate weights so we could have all conditions the same.

You know, a person can change things, but when we set them up mechanically they all came out the same. We were able to prove very successfully that the grit of the stone didn’t make any difference, and that you could get the same effect on the 100 grit as you could onthe 180 grit, if you held the blade properly. We also showed them that if you didn’t hold the blade properly, you messed the blade up no matter what the grit was. We’re called on to do all sorts of things like that.

Collins: I’m sure that you must test for sharpness. How is that done?

Mirando: For our sharpness test we buy a very sophisticated type of rubber from a laboratory outfit in Chicago, so that every shipment of rubber we get is the same thickness and has the same specifications. This enables us to compare sharpness over a uniform basis for many years. We have a constant speed motor and we draw the blade at a constant rate across the rubber. The depth of penetration at a given number of inches of draw is a good comparative measure of the sharpness of a knife. We have standards set on all of our lines-they must penetrate a certain number of inches of rubber for a given draw so that our quality people don’t have to argue about whether the knives are sharp or not. We also use the machine to test competitors’ knives.

Collins: Do you also have a test for springs?

Mirando: Yes. In one test a knife is opened and closed 3,000 times to test the life of the spring-and we have yet to see a spring break in that test. 6,000 times is the most we’ve ever run them and we’ve never run one until it was completely exhausted-it just doesn’t seem to work out that way. We run other spring tests, some of them very sophisticated, not only for standard pocketknife blade springs, but also for a few other products we make for people in which we use springs and have to see that the specifications are completely controlled.

Now, of course, cross sections of things, particularly of blades, are critical to us. When we find something that is good or we get a set of specifications, we bring parts here and we cut a cross section out. We can cut a slice out of a blade, or whatever, and project it on a screen and get all the exact dimensions on it and see what it is. Many times we’ll set our specifications up on certain. angles, certain grinds and so forth, but in order to check it we have to cut it apart. Of course, if you’ve got a nice knife and you paid somebody a couple of hundred bucks for it, you don’t like to cut it apart to see what it looks like, do you? We have an answer for that one, too.

For many years we tried to find a way of examining things without destroying them-particularly blades. We must have spent $25,000 with various engineering firms trying to develop some kind of instrument that would give us this information. Finally, a couple of years ago, one ofour engineers ran across a microscope that projects a beam of light. It has crosshairs that you can adjust and line up, and from the flat surface there you can read every angle on the blade without destroying it.

Collins: What would you actually look at about a knife blade with this machine? What portion of a blade would you be examining?

Mirando: We’re interested in the included angles, you know, in the basic grind, but usually what we’re most interested in is the included angle on the final sharpening operation. One other great thing aboutthis microscope-when people look through microscopes or examine a problem, you know it’s very difficult for one guy to look and another guy to look and see exactly the same thing. With this microscope our engineers, our production people and our quality control people can look at the same thing at the same time. Then, they don’t argue about what they saw. Another type of examining machine we have is called a profilometer. It measures the surface finish of a blade in millionths of an inch-micro-inches.
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Collins: Profilometer?

Mirando: Right. You know, you have various types of finishes-a mirror finish and a glaze finish, ground finish, polyground surface-all sorts of surface finishes-and many people, particularly the government, specify a surface finish that we have to stay within. When we set up a finish for somebody and they say this is the mirror finish, or this is the type of finish that we need, we’ll take a profilometer reading. It gives us the microfinish for that particular blade. Some of it is visual, but we’ve also got a physical measurement in millionths of an inch, and if anybody wants to argue, we can prove that the finish is within tolerance. We measure on many different types of blades what the microfinish is, and how rough the grindis.

And, of course, many times when our people are having difficulty finishing blades out in the factory, the grinding foreman says, “I didn’t mess it up” and the polishing foreman says, “You did”. So, we put it on the profilometer and find out exactly what’s gone wrong.

Collins: Now that you have all of these parts and they meet your quality specs-how do we get a finished knife?

Mirando: Well, first a piece of raw steel goes into a combination blanking die. Following the blanking, it either goes through a straightening operation or into the heat treating department, depending on the condition of the blade when it comes out of the blanking. In the heat treating process the blade is hardened, drawn and the tang annealed-it’s three separate operations. Next the blade goes to the grindingdepartment, where we grind a right and a left side on a two-machine set-up. We then grind the swedge on the clip blade-on the two other blades there is no grinding of the swedge. The blade is sent up to be bunched and we shape the backs, the round ends, the back squares and the fronts.

After this, the blade goes into a barrel to be cut down and burnished. After burnishing it goes up to polishing, where we put a satin finish operation on it. The blade is then inspected for all various defects and the finished blades are washed and waxed and are ready for assembly. We also use a combination blanking die to blank the spring. Then it is flattened, goes to the heat treating department, then up to our dressing department where we bunch it and dress the inside.

Collins: What do you mean when you say bunch it?

Mirando: Well, we put them on a nail, fourteen to a bunch or eighteen to a bunch, depending on the thickness. This makes it handier for the operator who has to dress them from the inside. Now both the blades and the springs are ready for the assembly operation.

Collins: How about the handles?

Mirando: The bolsters for the knife are formed from 80% nickel silver. The linings are blanked out and again, we use a combination tool. This particular tool ‘adapts to making both the right and the left side so it can be used for either a right or a lift side part depending on which side we fasten the bolsters. Now the handle material is trimmed to match the bolster. After it’s trimmed we have to pierce three holes in it, then it is attached to the bolster scale. After both the right and the left sides are attached to the bolsters, we bunch them together and dress the front edges as a pair. Now the cover is ready to be assembled onto a knife.

All the blades that have been finished and the springs that have been finished will go to the first assemblyoperation, where we insert the two rivets on each end. That’s what we call keyhole construction riveting. In the second operation, we take the covers that we have dressed the front edges on, and we put the cover onto the skeleton by inserting the bolster onto the head of a rivet-on the bolster scale there is a keyhole slot and the head of that rivet fits into the keyhole. Then we insert the center rivet which holds the springs in place and holds the center of the knife together.

Next we go into various operations of lookover, to make sure that all the blades fall into the proper positions. We tap them or whatever to see that they fit properly, Now we dress the handle, the bolster, the springs-we do the back side of the knife, which makes it all uniform. The bolster is now glazed so that it blends in with the cover, and the knife is polished. In the final lookover operation we check the overall finish, oil the joints, check to be sure they’re clean and so forth. Then we Scotch-brite the back of the knife, re-clean it, and it is ready for packing. Collins: All of the technology you employ to make a simple pocketknife would certainly amaze your ancestors in the cutlery business. Mirando: Yes, this is how we have carried on the evolution of knives.

This company has actually made tremendous contributions to the industry in this country. We were first in many, many things. We were first in the-well, first in getting away from traditions-old traditions that were brought here from Sheffield, England. That is where the industry came from. It didn’t get here until about 1840 and there were a lot of traditions that went with cutlery making. We bent all of those traditions as we went along. We not onlychanged the methods of producing our knives, we also changed the methods of distribution.

Collins: Without ever losing the quality of the cutting.

Mirando: Right. And as we went along, what we eliminated doing by hand became better because we had a uniformity which did not exist previously. In other words, in the beginning when we hardened and tempered the blade or a spring of a pocketknife, we put it over a fire and used our own judgment, by looking at the color, as to whether it was ready or not. Then we picked up the pieces and quenched them. Now theywere good-they were hard because of the skill we had in doing it. But now, with the development of an automatically controlled furnace, there isn’t any question about the uniformity or the quenching. They have got to be alike, they have got to be the same. In other words, in addition to increasing the productivity fromwhat one man could do to what a machine can do, we have also created more uniformity.

Grinding the blade by hand-yes, it was a good blade. You had to have a lot of know-how. But with a machine to do this, everyblade is ground the same. Collins: And a machine doesn’t have a bad night, the night before. Mirando:No, no bad night the night before.

Collins: How did you personally feel about knife quality when you were beginning to make knives?

Mirando: In other words, what was our feeling about what a knife should do?

Collins: Not only that, but you know there are different kinds of quality. The actual goodness of the product in so far as being able to do what it is supposed to do. And then there’s the added workmanship that makes it a thing of beauty and art as well as a thing of utility.

Mirando: Right. This is existent way back even in the very beginning. As a matter of fact, there was always a great rivalry between makers of knives as to who could make the better knife-how well the knife was ground, how well it was hardened and tempered, how well it “walked and talked” in opening and closing, and how good it looked in finishing. We always looked for new changes, new ideas in shapes and sizes, in the appearance of the knife and how well it felt in the hand. You know, I think it was a phrase that my brother once used to us, that sums it up, “A knife in a man’s hand is as precious as a diamond necklace on a woman’s neck”.
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I hope this interview has been of interest to some here. Mirando, and Collins himself, were industry giants well worth remembering.

Codger
 
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thank you for the insight history. very neat reading. i love reading history and this was perfect reading.
 
It points in a major way to the evolution in American cutlery making. Going from the early English methods where a cutler drew his supplies and set about making knives from scratch, to the improved German methods where cutleries were divided into departments, from hydro power to turn belts to steam engines turning belts to electric power and finally hydraulics used in many presses. Camillus underwent a similar metamorphosis as did Schrade Cutlery Co. and Ulster. In less than a hundred years we went from being net importers of knives to being the world's largest cutlery producers. I love reading about this history. It makes me appreciate both my early and recent knives all that much more.
 
Great stuff Michael...you are to be commended for your research which invariably puts you in a position to make informed comment based on factual research, and not unhelpful wishful speculation to fill in their knowledge gaps, as we have seen demonstrated previously.......
I particularly liked the quote on the history of the 'Waldemar' knives.....Quote: 'the first knives made were skeletons and were sold to the jewellery industry in Attleboro who put sterling silver, gold filled, and solid gold handles on them...we used to call them Waldemar knives made with a bale at the end so a gentleman could attach to his watch chain'....

My late 1930's solid gold 14Kt handle Schrade Cut Co perpetual Calendar knife no doubt is one of those Waldemar's....it would have required extensive jewellery craftsmanship to create the Perpetual Calendar solid gold 14Kt face with sliding bar over the days of the week, and also the days of the month on the front...no doubt expensive relative to the period including its Alligator skin soft purse/pouch <confirmed genuine by member Paul/Sheathmaker from Texas>....created for the rich/well heeled to hide their gold holding at a time when the Government made it illegal to hold gold in private ownership...gold lighters and knives etc..
With reference to my solid gold 'Fortune Magazine' Schrade Walden Gentlemans knife set made in 1947....and could only be purchased by prior order for $100 which was mighty expensive immediate Post War11...do you believe it would have been made 'in house' by Schrade Walden, or the Waldemar skeleton sent to one of the Prov. RI Jewellery houses for the gold finishing?....and your gold filled? gentlemans' with the attached gold pen....would that have originally been a Waldemar skeleton as well, finished at a Jewellery House?...what makers name is on the tang stamp?.....
Some folk tend to think of Schrade as mass produced knives, however it would have to have been one of the most innovative designers/manufacturers through the years with its speciality knives, SFO's, Scrimshaws, and Collector Sets like the Quincenntenial and the WW2 Commemoration Sets, plus the Collaboration sets/knives with noted knifemakers including the late Bob Loveless etc......
Great informative articles, please keep them coming.....Hoo Roo
 
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I am fairly confident, knowing what I know, that the 1947 Gentlemen's knives were skeletons covered by a jewelry concern, quite possibly right there in or around Imperial Place in Providence. By that time, the Baers and Mirandos/Fazzanos were well acquainted having joined their companies in association some years prior. What cutler would know intimately who were the best Goldsmiths to do a production run like that? Of course the Schrades were on the board of directors of Schrade Walden and knew the knife skeleton business, and their prior contacts in the jewelry industry as well. So I have little doubt that the gold cover manufacture and assembly was outsourced. Though most likely as well, the design work was done inhouse. For instance compare the Gentleman's knife to cover designs in the SCC catalogs prior to the war. My gold knife may well have been a jeweler's own design though. Useing the Schrade brothers skeletons. The finished product then belonging to the design assembly company (Cartier?), for distribution to upscale jewely firms for retail sales. Afterall, we are talking about the mid 1920's through mid-1930's with those, not post-war as with the gentlemen's knives. $100? How many servicemen returned home with backpay in their pockets? I know that my father had enough saved up to buy and build a hotrod, get married and buy a dry cleaning business.
 
Michael - Fantastic find on the article!! :applouse:

I drive thru Providence on Interstate 95 a good bit - went thru just yesterday. Good to confirm my guess for the ex-Imperial facility was correct.
Also, I grew up in the "Jewelry City" Attleboro, MA. Balfour and Jostens were a couple of the more well known of the many jewelry concerns.

Thanks again for further enhancing our hobby collecting from Imperial Schrade and associated companies!!!

-- Howie
 
I thought I would bump this tome about Michael Mirando this morning by adding the recollections of him by AMB, as those around Albert referred to him. I have posted this before, but thought it would do to add to the information about Michael from another perspective, that of a cohort in the industry. What follows is an excerpt from Albery Baer's unpublishe memoires.

MICHAEL MIRANDO

Felix's brother, Mike, was the first to come to the United States of the Mirando family. As the older brother, the family scrounged enough passage money ($24.00) to let him go to the New World where one could save a few dollars and not just exist, no matter how hard one worked in Italy. It was not long before the $2.00 each month that Mike sent home began to accumulate.

Mike and Felix's father, Cosmo, sold the knives the family made and kept just enough to buy the pasta and vino and a little goat's milk cheese. Mike didn't like America for he couldn't get a job in a knife shop, and worked in a textile mill. So he pulled up stakes, and went home to Italy. It wasn't long before he was back in America, this time with a job in Winsted, Connecticut, in the factory of the Empire Knife Company. He liked America better now, for he was at home" in a knife shop.

Mike would fondle a pocket knife as though it were a woman. In fact, he liked to say, "A knife in my hand is like a piece of jewelry in the hands of a girl.&#8221; He was an expert in making knives by hand, himself, and he could make them in all combinations, shapes, forms and sizes -even down to tiny miniature ones.

Mike was a natural born mechanic, but not an engineer (he was smart enough to hire mechanical engineers for his business) and though he would fight with them day and night and told his brother, Felix, how terrible they were, he knew he needed them and he tolerated them, particularly with a hard boiled, hard headed Dutchman named Vossler.

It was Vossler who probably saw one of Gerling's Jackmaster-type knives and made up the model that was the first big money-maker for Imperial. It was Vossler, who convinced Mike that they should mechanize and buy tooling and German presses. Ant it was Vossler who nearly drove Mike crazy. He took it for the sake of the cause. Every day Mike would inspect a board of 36 pocket knives to see how the production was running, and most days he would go running out into the factory, toss the board on the floor - knives and all - and berate everyone for the quality that was being produced.

Mike made me a duplicate of the stainless 3-7/8" Army Knife that was my first contact with Imperial, a 4-blade Scout-type knife, only this duplicate was less than 1/2" long and it worked perfectly. The blades and springs were hardened and you could actually cut and use the knife. I still wear it on my watch chain, and have for over 30 years.

Mike had a routine that only Felix could explain. At 6:49, not 6:45 or 6:50 in the morning, his car would drive up in his driveway. Ten minutes later it would appear at the factory on Imperial Place. The elevator had to be down stairs waiting for Mike. Up he would go to his office until Noon. Back into the waiting elevator to his car, on to his "Shinty" (a place in the country), a few miles from Providence where he would sit and meditate, admire his live pheasants in cages, cook a little pasta, then entertain his friends with a "Roman Feast."

Our sales meetings were held in the Shinty, the food catered from the outside, starting with mounds of lobsters, moving to chicken, ravioli, spaghetti, steaks, salad, globs of all the fanciest desserts imaginable, and ending with everyone feeling terribly drunk and sentimental, and lovey-dovey, and ready to go back to their territory to do their "a/l" for Uncle Mike, Felix, Domenic and the Baers.

Mike gave Felix a cigar on his birthday every year that they were in the United States. When he reached 70, he got 70 cigars. Mike designed a float for the parade inaugurating the N.R.A. The float was a 24' long pocket knife with blades, springs and all, pulled on a series of wagons by half the employees at the factory. Mike couldn't see (so he said) but he could still make a tiny pocket knife. (He could see as well as anyone.) He couldn't hear, but just make a quiet remark against Imperial and see what could happen! He couldn't eat, but all you had to do was come to the house and see what was left over after he started a meal! He couldn't sleep, but you had to shake him to wake him up! Whatever he couldn't do, he did with a vengeance and he did it beautifully.

My last time with Mike was when we attended the funeral of Irene, Felix's wife, and he saw me. He ran out into the street, hugged me and kissed me so often that I was embarrassed. But Mike wasn't, for he expressed his appreciation for the beautiful association that I had with Michael A. Mirando, in front of everyone.
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