Oryx knife,by F.Herder,made in Solingen

L

lonestar1979

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Mar 2, 2014
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Does anyone have this knife,it looks exactly like Okapi,but is made in Germany,carbon or stainless,and seem much better built than South African okapis???These knives are good looking,and am sure their carbon or stainless is pretty good.
 
Fancier than the Okapi, but with an attendant higher price. This one is walnut and carbon steel.

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Do these share the same kind of heritage as Okapi? I’ve been trying to pick up a few fore my South African wife and her family but I can’t tell the fakes apart from the real Okapis, but these look promising!
 
lonestar1979 said:
Where did you order yours from?im in Canada,and shipping costs more than knife...
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I got it from a local cutlery shop, sharpened professionally by them. A large part of the shop's business is actually sharpening kitchen knives for many local chefs and restaurants.

I've never seen the Oryx for sale in any of my usual online haunts.
 
kamagong said:
I got it from a local cutlery shop, sharpened professionally by them. A large part of the shop's business is actually sharpening kitchen knives for many local chefs and restaurants.

I've never seen the Oryx for sale in any of my usual online haunts.
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I had been eyeballing one of those F. Herders from a US dealer, but never pulled the trigger on it. It was a west-coast cutlery shop, so maybe the place you got yours.

AdamFuzzyballs said:
Do these share the same kind of heritage as Okapi? I’ve been trying to pick up a few fore my South African wife and her family but I can’t tell the fakes apart from the real Okapis, but these look promising!
Click to expand...
The real Okapis are chisel-ground, and the handles are 2 pieces of resin-impregnated wood pressed together. A now defunct SA knife forum used to have pictures of the process and the old machinery. The Bay is absolutely full of counterfeits of the ratcheting model, sometimes outright sold as “replicas”, and if you do stumble across an authentic one, it will cost way more than the $25 bucks or so they are actually worth.
calm said:
Nice.
I have seen ratchet opening knives from other European manufacturers too.
Okapi had a strong German connection in the past, according to Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org

Okapi (knife) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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I am a big Okapi fan, and have quite a few of them:
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I bought my first Okapi in East Africa around 1990, from a cardboard display much like this one (Image from this website: https://www.lecouteau.info/catalogues/okapi-vers-1945-49/ ) :
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I never carried it much, just keeping it as a sort of curiosity, until it was stolen in 2003. It was just stamped Okapi Carbon Steel, and I had no idea where it was made until much later - South Africa, because, although it was pretty soon after the move, it did not have “Germany” stamped on the blade.

I finally got another one maybe 6 years ago, and decided I liked it for EDC after all.

The brand has recently been acquired by Lasher Tools. They have reduced the catalog to just 3 models, and switched to stainless. The handles appear to be made on the same machinery, though.
https://lasher.co.za/lasher-is-keeping-local-alive-with-okapi-vicker-tools/
https://lasher.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Okapi-Full-Catalogue-2021-v6.pdf
 
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