"Made in Sheffield" 1830-1930, A golden age ?

[rprocter]

Back to nuts. Walnuts: English, Carpathian and Persian are 3 common names for the same species. just depends where you live which name is used. Part of the grading of nuts is how easily they crack open, so selective breeding has been done for 100s of years towards easy crackers. a well bred Walnut is easy to crack.
Black Walnut is a different species and you need a hammer on these nuts. These trees are grown for the wood.
I bet they cracked Chestnuts (Castanea) for the horses too. Although i don't know anything about horses, i do have a lot of producing nut trees.
roland

 

[wellington]

I just had to repeat this photo, Mick..that is a fine knife-thank you for showing us these great knives of yours.

Pleased you liked the T.E.W sports Duncan, not a bad example, quite decent, looks unused, well put together, small and handy, but being made quiet late on, in the 1920s-30s, jigged bone has replaced stag, no shield, plainer bolsters, glazed drop stamped blades etc.

Mick

The middle liner of those sportsman knives protrudes above the bolsters. Did that serve a purpose?

Hi Tom, the extended liner, that protrudes from the bolsters, is a screwdriver (turn-screw), usually these are steel, not brass, and are sometimes thicker than the other liners.

Back to nuts. Walnuts: English, Carpathian and Persian are 3 common names for the same species. just depends where you live which name is used. Part of the grading of nuts is how easily they crack open, so selective breeding has been done for 100s of years towards easy crackers. a well bred Walnut is easy to crack.
Black Walnut is a different species and you need a hammer on these nuts. These trees are grown for the wood.
I bet they cracked Chestnuts (Castanea) for the horses too. Although i don't know anything about horses, i do have a lot of producing nut trees.
roland

Thanks for the info Roland, nuts is a subject I've not given much thought to, until now , apparently the mid Victorians had a much healthier diet than we do today, they used to eat a LOT of nuts, we need to know more ....

Mick

 

[Campbellclanman]

I do indeed more than like that knife Mick...

Please have a look at this Mick-this is the only photo I have-I have just bought this at this very minute-in our local market-these usually sell like hot cakes no matter what condition... I could see there was a tang stamp ...in a form of writing in a mouth shaped oval, condition is NOTHING like yours, but Im thinking neither was the price tag
The saw doesnt want to go in too far- and from what I can gather it looks to be ivory.
I havent seen "in the flesh", and for what I paid for it...worth a gamble

I will post this if you want when I recieve the knife....Im thinking it may be a tad rough for this thread ( although..i got to say...I cant wait to see it )
Take care folks
Duncan

 

[wellington]

Looks a very interesting knife Duncan, love to see some good pics of it from both sides, top and bottom. Just be careful opening too many blades out at once.

Cheers..Mick

 

[waynorth]

Hope it's a nice one Duncan!!

Thanks for the catalog pics, in the sticky thread, Mick.
It's a later knife alright, but there's something about it - it's "just right"!

 

[Campbellclanman]

Hope it's a nice one Duncan!!

Cheers on that Charlie, to be honest...I am expecting the worst-that way I will hopefully be pleased ( hows that for a totally insane approach ).

Seriously...from what I ( sorry-we all can ) see - its no minter, it will be interesting to see just how this knife turns out, I have its mineral oil bath ready!!
I will take photos of the knife before it goes swimming, and show you guys, this was cheap enough that the wait is worth the money I paid for it
I will give my lefty to bet that its Ivory from what I can see...will the mineral oil hurt this in any way?
I have bathing in mineral oil right now a very old Wraag, has ben soaking in 3mm deep oil for a few weeks now-doesnt matter with this ol' girlas this looks as though it was used as target practice for some time. ( Bernard seems to think it has fancy old bolsters though )
I will old off doing qnything to it untill I hear verification from "the " forum.

 

[Mike Robuck]

Not mine. Made sometime between 1891 and before WWI, according to the owner. 6 1/4 closed, a few spots away from being pristine mint (if there is such a thing). Kind of like two whittlers back to back with one being a lockback.

Mick knows way more about it than I do, so he can give us the rundown.

 

[wellington]

^^That's a very fine sportsman's knife Mike, in fabulous condition too, looks mint .

A great size, at 6 1/4" it's a BIG knife, think its blade measures 5 1/8" ? interesting construction, sort of like a whittler lockback, with the locking master blade at one end and the gaiter hook and saw/disgorger at the opposite. A good quality item.

One or two of the best London retailers inc Army & Navy (A&N.C.S.L) and S.W.Silver & Co sold knives that look identical to the one shown, the S W Silver ones that I've seen were blade etched "Colonial Knife", made by Wostenholm's ?.

Three of these knives, one looks identical to the one show above, the other two measure 5 1/4", are featured in the book "Sheffield Exhibition Knives" (Claussen, Watts, McMickle) under the heading Showpiece Fishing Knives.

Here's a scan of an early 1900s A&N catalogue page....a vary similar knife is shown top/center

Thanks for showing...

Mick

 

[Mike Robuck]

Mick, thanks for the info and scan.

 

[wellington]

Here's another knife made with the angler in mind, marked G IBBERSON & Co, SHEFFIELD measures 4" closed, made C1900, this fisherman's knife has a spear point master blade, pen blade and disgorger, a gaiter hook included between the other two minor articles, which is a little unusual and situated under the scales there are five inserts. Lovely stag scales.

The scissors fit under the mark side scale, on the pile side are a pair of tweezers and a picker with a larger than normal head, under which in their own slot are a bodkin and a dispatching needle.

Thanks for looking ..Mick

 

[black mamba]

Here's another knife made with the angler in mind, . . . . Lovely stag scales.

You must have a doctorate in understatement. That stag is phenomenal! Especially for over 100 years age.

 

[zerogee]

You must have a doctorate in understatement. That stag is phenomenal! Especially for over 100 years age.

The sad truth is that normally you only ever *get* stag that nice on knives over a hundred years old. It's a pretty solid way to recognize the really old Sheffield knives -- the one Mike shows and Mick's are a reminder of how good stag once could be. (Personally, I think this level of stag was only found in a few isolated herds - perhaps even a subspecies - that went away a long time ago.)

 

[black mamba]

I've never before seen such uniform "popcorn" pebbling . . . now I understand why.

 

[Mike Robuck]

Yup, that stag is pretty special, as is the rest of Mick's knife. Back then it was bark stag all the way to the edge.

 

[wellington]

Interesting comment's guys, I don't quite know where the stag for the scales on the Ibberson fisherman's came from, they are perfect, extremely hard, quite unlike any others I've seen, not Sambar, but as Dwight suggests from another species of deer ?.

Edit, just had another good look at the Ibberson's scales, they could be made from the same type of stag as those on the Wosty Mike shows.



It's all a mystery...

Mick

 

[Yaro5]

I think they had a lot to choose from. This is the Rodger's stag store. I'm sure all the big manufacturers had something similar.

Joe

 

[zerogee]

I think they had a lot to choose from. This is the Rodger's stag store. I'm sure all the big manufacturers had something similar.

Joe

They did have a lot to choose from - and with the British presence in India and all, they no doubt had guys there to sort out the best stag before shipment. They also had guys that had spent a lifetime learning the skills to cut and shape stag to get the most out of what they had. What the old Sheffield cutlers would consider simply "good" stag would be better than just about anything available today. But what they considered Exhibition/presentation/premium quality stag was in a class all of its own -- and it's a class that seems to have ended about 1900, give or take a handful of years and whatever they happened to have stashed back. The supplies of stag were still coming, the stocks still there, but the supply of the ultimate grade stag - like you see in Mike's IXL and Mick's Ibberson and even more in the Greenhough whittler below (an older knife) - had ceased to exist. (The image of the Greenhough comes from an offering for sale of the John Blyde Exhibition knives collection. Not mine, I'm very sorry to say.)

 

[wellington]

^^That's a gorgeous whittler Dwight, very special, as are some of the other knives in that Blade collection, I believe there may have originally been a large exhibition knife center piece as well, that once accompanied the other knives, does anyone know ?, be interested in finding out.

Ok, the Stears whittler's battered and worn having had a tough life, but it's interesting to compare it to the Greenhough, both the same size 4 1/2", serpentine, the Stears made earlier at a guess (it's pen and coping blades are 100% full). It's stag scales are perhaps not quite the same quality.

Mick

 

[zerogee]

That Stears is nice! Birdseye rivets too - I'd guess maybe 30 years older than the Greenhough? The stag is not quite up to the Greenhough, but certainly in the same ballpark. Really fine true penknife-sized secondary blades too. With its length, I'd expect the Stears to be hardly wedge shaped at all - with both secondary blades plus dividing liner adding up to very little more than just the thickness of the main blade.

It used to confuse me when I saw a lot of old catalogs list their jigged bone as "imitation stag". While I could understand that "imitation stag" might have been a better sales spin than "bone" at the time, what I couldn't understand was how they thought their jigged bone in any way looked like stag -- until you see stag like on these knives, and you begin to understand what sort of stag they were originally trying to imitate.

 

[wagglebee]

Here's another knife made with the angler in mind, marked G IBBERSON & Co, SHEFFIELD measures 4" closed, made C1900, this fisherman's knife has a spear point master blade, pen blade and disgorger, a gaiter hook included between the other two minor articles, which is a little unusual and situated under the scales there are five inserts. Lovely stag scales.

The scissors fit under the mark side scale, on the pile side are a pair of tweezers and a picker with a larger than normal head, under which in their own slot are a bodkin and a dispatching needle.

Thanks for looking ..Mick

That is just amazing Mick!