Spoon knife

[lrv]

I was asked about this one and its beyond my library.
looking for info on this old beauty Thought to be from WW-1 times.

thanks

 

[coondog108]

I have seen this referred to as a "Red Cross" knife from WW I

 

[edbeau]

I guess you needed a separate carry fork to eat your meal. I guess if the fork was also attached it would be hard to use.

 

[Codger_64]

Hi,

Your knife is a Camillus Red Cross pattern. .... It was made during the first World War, apparently as a gift for soldiers.

There is a story that the original request was for knives and spoons, but the Red Cross director, (who was hard of hearing) thought that it was for a "knife with a spoon"). And so, your knife was born.

HTH.

...The problem with the Red Cross knives is that the knife and spoon do not separate, so they cannot be used at the same time. Many US cutlery firms made them for the Red Cross in 1917 and 1918. They were never made commercially, because no consumer would spend his own money to buy one to use. They were considered a joke in the industry at the time, but nobody complained, because the industry had orders for around a million of them, paid for by public donations to the Red Cross, while the US military was not buying pocketknives for soldiers or marines, only for Navy seamen.

A "Hobo" knife was originally (in the 1930s) a sheath knife with interchangeable blades (for hunting, fishing, and eating). But these are very rare, so collectors in recent years mistakenly applied the term to take-apart knife-fork and knife-fork-spoon folders, and the name seems to have stuck. The old name for these was "slot knives," because of the tab-and-slot arrangement that holds the parts together. Folding knife-fork(-spoon) sets that do not slot together were sometimes called canteen kits. But they were not called "hoboes" until recent years.

BRL...

Maybe this adds a little bit to the identification.

 

[CAMCO]

This is a model #9511 Red Cross item. Over 100,000 were made.

Tom Williams