Lierenaar - a knife from the belgian/german border

Humppa

Humppa

Joined
Jul 25, 2010
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Hi guys & gals!

Some time ago I read on a german knife magazine, that there´s a traditional knife from the german/belgium border area. It´s called a Lierenaar. I was interessted immediatelly, as usual ;) I ordered one for a small prize on a big dealer in Germany. I must say, I´m a little impressed by it functional design and its simple construction.

A little history first (which I got out of this magazine):
This knife was first shown up in the 18th century. Propably the town of Lier (Belgium). That´s all about its history ;)

It has a centered tip blade; a little like a leafshape blade. The handles are beech and are completelly untreated with any wax or whatever.

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Robert Herder, Solingen is the cutlery that makes this nice knife.

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The special design is a friction-backlock-folder. Here is the knife opened

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... and here closed (as you can hopefully see, there´s a little "notch" on the blade which is closing the knife on the two "wings" with the hole in it) A simple, but very very useful lock. The Lockbar is tank of spring which need two hands to get deployed.

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As you can see here, the "spring" is just pinned on the handle and doesn´t do anything else than let the lockbar on the notch of the blade

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The F&F isn´t the best and a little coarse, but I think it´s a nice friction folder to carry around for heavy cutting tasks. The blade is of carbon steel C75. It weighs roundabout 80 grams.
The untreated wood handles leave a lot of space for modification... I´ll see, I´ll see.... :D

Comments are always welcome; positive as well as negative.
 
Thank You for this review of another fine regional knife Andi. I really like this simple design. Lots of handle there for its blade size too! Looks to me like it was, and still is today, a well thought out design for a hard working knife...
 
Ow... I got one of these from my grandmother a while ago. It belonged to her father. He worked at the docks in the port of Antwerp early 20th century and had a small example of these things to protect himself.
The lock doesn't open up easily, but it works. I never new something like this was actually still produced. Really cool to see this type of lock on a recent knife.
Thing is, I live about 20 minutes by car from the city of Lier. It's really cool how this is coming together.
Here are some pics I posted in another thread on BF some time ago:

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Could you inform me (by e-mail or PM) on where you got that? My grandmother might like a surprise like this :-)
 
sitflyer said:
Thank You for this review of another fine regional knife Andi. I really like this simple design. Lots of handle there for its blade size too! Looks to me like it was, and still is today, a well thought out design for a hard working knife...
Click to expand...

Thanks, Duane! Just to add to my blabbling above - the knife has no liners and each of the handles is roundabout 7 milimetres thick which makes a pretty thick handle. So yes, it seems to be the perfect working knife for pretty big hands.

kvaughn said:
Neat BIG knife! Does it come in any other size like an Opinel?--KV
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I don´t know exactely, but I don´t think so. I´ve just seen this knife as one of the few folding knives Robert Herder makes nowadays. I think they specialised on kitchen knives now. But as I told above - It gives a lot of possibility to modifie it.

bwperdue said:
I like the simple, external locking mechanism on that. Cool!
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This was one of the reasons why I got it. It seems pretty unique - and like something like this ;)
 
Galeocerdoshark said:
Ow... I got one of these from my grandmother a while ago. It belonged to her father. He worked at the docks in the port of Antwerp early 20th century and had a small example of these things to protect himself.
The lock doesn't open up easily, but it works. I never new something like this was actually still produced. Really cool to see this type of lock on a recent knife.
Thing is, I live about 20 minutes by car from the city of Lier. It's really cool how this is coming together.
Here are some pics I posted in another thread on BF some time ago:

Could you inform me (by e-mail or PM) on where you got that? My grandmother might like a surprise like this :-)
Click to expand...

Great pics, Sir. Thanks for the story as well :) I really appreciate this. I got this knife brand new just on this week. But it´s not offered in any other size like the one I´ve shown up. Maybe Herder themself make another size of it. Yours one is really pretty cool looking :) Congratz on that treasure!

I gonna send you a VM, where I bought it. I´m pretty sure your grandmother would like to see it.
 
That's a neat design -- I was interested to see that the lock requires you to work the spring by hand to unlock or lock the knife. Which makes perfect sense with you saying how strong the spring is -- if you didn't need the lock, you'd just use it as a friction folder, and you'd only bother to use the lock if you really needed it. (Which matches how I use my Opinel, even though its lock is very easy to use.)

Thanks for posting -- one of the nice things about this forum, you learn something new every day.
 
Interesting how on the old one, the lockbar sits in a channel, while on the new one, it sits on top.
 
rune - I think you got me a little wrong (bad english skills - sorry). The knife doesn´t need a hand to get locked. The blade slips into the backspring easily and then it keeps the blade like a tank. To unlock you definitelly need your hand. Not just one finger, mostly three. The spring has a great tension.

I need to excuse that this description cause some misunderstandment. Sorry, guys & gals!
 
Ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch verstehen, so I went googling "auf Deutsch" for some details. The blade is supposed to be 8.5 cm long, and the handle 20.5 cm long.
The text that went along with the knife said it was "suitable for large male hands". :cheerful:
 
Humppa said:
rune - I think you got me a little wrong (bad english skills - sorry). The knife doesn´t need a hand to get locked. The blade slips into the backspring easily and then it keeps the blade like a tank. To unlock you definitelly need your hand. Not just one finger, mostly three. The spring has a great tension.

I need to excuse that this description cause some misunderstandment. Sorry, guys & gals!
Click to expand...

Oh, not at all! I was saying that based on the pictures -- because the back of the blade is squared off, I assumed it wouldn't lift the lock-bar by itself. The mistake is mine.
 
Wow! That is a strange beast Andi.

It's an ugly brute of a folder. Certainly very interesting to see.

Perhaps not something I'll be rushing to track down though....I don't think I have the pockets for it!
 
Just a little update. I called with my grandmother, and when I said the word "Lierenaar", she remembered that it was indeed called that way.
Back in the day when she was young, pretty much everyone had a pocket knife in their pockets around here. Most of 'em looked like that she said.
People from the region I'm from were sometimes condescendingly called the "knifefighters", pointing to frequent incidents where drunken people fought on fairs and in bars and often took out their knives in order to defend them selves. She said similar knives cost the lives of a few in this region, but she assured that the one I've got was "clean":thumbup:.

It does strike me that there's such a difference in length. The handle on my original Lierenaar is about 5cm long perhaps. This one has a handle length of 12 cm :D
 
This is why I love this place!! So interesting with international traditional history. Thanks, Andi!
 
Great Post, Andi. It's a real working knife, a little crude but it does it's job :thumbup:
Back in the day folks didn't need the latest and greatest super steel construction etc to work with a knife, we could learn a lot from them.

@Galeocerdoshark: Great post also, we can learn a lot from our elders, we just need to listen to them !
 
Thanks a lot for the kind replies, folks! :) Really very much appreciated.

I love this, when other members from other parts of the world are showing their regional traditional knives. So I gonna torture you guys & gals with more traditional european, espcially german traditional knives if I can find unique patterns. :D
 
Being German (with familyin Belgium) myself, I find this knife every interesting. I think I'll get one for myself. I would love to see some traditional folders, especially from Germany!

Thanks a lot Andi and... wait I can do this... GALEOCERDOSHARK! (hell yeah)
 
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