- Joined
- Mar 31, 2010
- Messages
- 1
Hello, my name is the Stickman, I am into knives but more to the point; meat cleavers. Today, while out searching for antiques I picked up a meat cleaver. At first thought it looked like a nice cleaver, but nothing special.
After getting it home, and examining it, I realized it was forged, and probably older than I had realized (or that the antique dealer knew). After doing a little research with my room mate we think the knife was made by someone in the Beatty family, in the Delware/eastern PA region, in either the very late 18th century or early 19th century. This would correspond to where we bought the item, since it was for sale in an antique store in that general area.
The blade itself appears to have been forged, there is no marking on the blade itself. There is no stamp and it does appear to have a patina rather than rust surface. This leads me to believe it is not just steel.
The handle is hardwood, with engraved grooves going along the circumference of the handle to give a grip. The handle is not held together by two bolts or pegs the way some handles are, instead the blade is pressured into the wood with a brass ring collar holding it together.
The handle appears to have an inscription on it, running down the length. This starts with a "Jo" but the rest is quite hard to read because of all the use over the years.
In googling old meat cleavers, we were able to find several examples from the Beatty family that are in the same general style as this piece. Similar in both the blade shape, and handle construction. We know from both researching the family on the web, and using books digitized on google books that the Beatty family included at least two John Beatty's who were tool makers. William Beatty seems to be the most known of the Beatty tool makers, he had a brother named John. William also had a son named John C Beatty. At some point William brought John C Beatty into the company to start William Beatty & Son(s). The name changed again when William died. This leads us to conclude that our cleaver was made by the uncle, John Beatty (William's brother).
So the question: How do we figure out how old this is, and what a basic ballpark value would be.
After getting it home, and examining it, I realized it was forged, and probably older than I had realized (or that the antique dealer knew). After doing a little research with my room mate we think the knife was made by someone in the Beatty family, in the Delware/eastern PA region, in either the very late 18th century or early 19th century. This would correspond to where we bought the item, since it was for sale in an antique store in that general area.
The blade itself appears to have been forged, there is no marking on the blade itself. There is no stamp and it does appear to have a patina rather than rust surface. This leads me to believe it is not just steel.
The handle is hardwood, with engraved grooves going along the circumference of the handle to give a grip. The handle is not held together by two bolts or pegs the way some handles are, instead the blade is pressured into the wood with a brass ring collar holding it together.
The handle appears to have an inscription on it, running down the length. This starts with a "Jo" but the rest is quite hard to read because of all the use over the years.
In googling old meat cleavers, we were able to find several examples from the Beatty family that are in the same general style as this piece. Similar in both the blade shape, and handle construction. We know from both researching the family on the web, and using books digitized on google books that the Beatty family included at least two John Beatty's who were tool makers. William Beatty seems to be the most known of the Beatty tool makers, he had a brother named John. William also had a son named John C Beatty. At some point William brought John C Beatty into the company to start William Beatty & Son(s). The name changed again when William died. This leads us to conclude that our cleaver was made by the uncle, John Beatty (William's brother).
So the question: How do we figure out how old this is, and what a basic ballpark value would be.
