Special treatment for Stag?

J

jackknife

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Oct 2, 2004
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Something I've noticed for a long time, the India stag on English knives. To me it seems like the Sheffield makers always had a richer look to the stag they used, and very often alot more charater. Lots of popcorn and bark. I see this in alot of smiling-knifes photos as well as old knives I see at shows and just "around" .

My quetion is this; did the English cutlery makers in Sheffield have something they did to the stag that we yanks did not? A oil or wax finish that changed the way it ages or something?

I know they had storerooms of amazing amounts of stag, but it just looks better than the stuff even the Germans used. :confused:

Okay, this is where s-k shows us more of his stag pocket knives. I have my bib on.:D
 
Well, they had a few things that they did -- first is that they had guys that specialized in just cutting the raw scales - do something for a lifetime (and learn it all from a guy that has done the same) and you get pretty good at it. This wasn't just a thick slab of stag either - it was cut with little or no white border around the edges of the slabs (which we would think was more than ready to be used -- nope, nothing doing, ya bunch of lazy Yanks). Now they would take these stag scales and shape or "set" them to their final desired shape (they weren't shaping these generically either - they were selected and shaped with certain patterns in mind) -- this is also where they dyed them - by putting them in boiling water to which either red or brown logwood chips had been added, amongst other things I'm sure (logwood: Haematoxylum campechianum). Now after a suitable time (I have no idea what that might be) they would take the now dyed and softened scales out and put one end in a clamp (or "snap") mounted in a vise, then bend and twist the stag with pliers until it was just like they wanted. It was put aside to harden in it's new shape (again - no idea how long they let the stag set - I would think this may have been quite a while), then they would cut and flatten the backs of the scales once again - and NOW it was ready to be mounted on a knife. Now you know how they could have stag scales that were so thin and fit so precisely to the knife. The shaping process on top of extremely skilled selection and cutting allowed them to use quality stag that otherwise couldn't have been used by simple slabbing alone. (BTW, a lot of this comes from the Sheffield Exhibition Knives book.)
 
zerogee said:
Well, they had a few things that they did -- first is that they had guys that specialized in just cutting the raw scales - do something for a lifetime (and learn it all from a guy that has done the same) and you get pretty good at it. This wasn't just a thick slab of stag either - it was cut with little or no white border around the edges of the slabs (which we would think was more than ready to be used -- nope, nothing doing, ya bunch of lazy Yanks). Now they would take these stag scales and shape or "set" them to their final desired shape (they weren't shaping these generically either - they were selected and shaped with certain patterns in mind) -- this is also where they dyed them - by putting them in boiling water to which either red or brown logwood chips had been added, amongst other things I'm sure (logwood: Haematoxylum campechianum). Now after a suitable time (I have no idea what that might be) they would take the now dyed and softened scales out and put one end in a clamp (or "snap") mounted in a vise, then bend and twist the stag with pliers until it was just like they wanted. It was put aside to harden in it's new shape (again - no idea how long they let the stag set - I would think this may have been quite a while), then they would cut and flatten the backs of the scales once again - and NOW it was ready to be mounted on a knife. Now you know how they could have stag scales that were so thin and fit so precisely to the knife. The shaping process on top of extremely skilled selection and cutting allowed them to use quality stag that otherwise couldn't have been used by simple slabbing alone. (BTW, a lot of this comes from the Sheffield Exhibition Knives book.)
Click to expand...

Wow, thanks for the detailed explaination! I suspected there was something doing some kind of dye prosses, but I never heard of logwood chips. The Sheffield stag handled knives have that rich redish hue to the material that makes our American stag knives seem bland by comparison. And like you say, a lifetime of doing something makes one pretty darn good at it!
 
stag can be colored again using the potassium permagenate that is used on it to kill fungus and color it to begin with.
 
Thanks for the information zerogee. I knew about the boiling and shaping of stag but not the colouring.

jackknife said:
I know they had storerooms of amazing amounts of stag
Click to expand...


It was estimated that in the 1880s the Sheffield cutlery industry used 72,000 stag scales and handles a week. This is a photo from Joseph Rodgers stag stores at the Pond Hill Works.

024-1.jpg
 
Oh yeah Rob,I see it !
 
That sounds like a lost art working the stag like that, does anyone still do anything like that today?

Rusty1
 
smiling-knife said:
Thanks for the information zerogee. I knew about the boiling and shaping of stag but not the colouring.




It was estimated that in the 1880s the Sheffield cutlery industry used 72,000 stag scales and handles a week. This is a photo from Joseph Rodgers stag stores at the Pond Hill Works.

024-1.jpg
Click to expand...

WO,, That is a lot of dead Deer!
 
And lots and lots of little Indian kids run thru the forest and "harvest" them. That's why the Indian government has a ban on export right now -- so many were doing this so intrusively that it was screwing up the sambar deer -- after all, every deer wants a little privacy when they're "doing the deed". :rolleyes:
 
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