Taylors Eye Witness knives

A Sheffield England maker has roots 100 years or even more way back. Their Premier collection has very good knives, I used to own a Barlow good f&f , the knives have nice back spring file work, very good users. I think its good value for the money if you like this style.
Mike
 
The older Taylor Eye witness knives are great, I have owned many fixed blades, yet to find a neat old slippie-always looking-the modern ones...I am not too up on whether the original guys still make the knives or whether the name has been sold and manufactured by another firm?
 
They claim that each of the knives in their premier line is made by one craftsman. I'd love to see one, but they are not inexpensive.
 
They are made by a guy called Russell White He has worked for Taylors since leaving school and told me a while back that he had made around 400,000 knives in that time.

The Premier range are in my opinion very good value for money, obviously not in Todd Davidson class but never the less well made knives.

Here's a link. I will try and take more pics later this week and post them here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSKrH3NC_eA



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Thanks for the info Rick. 400,000 knives? That sounds like alot, without some sort of automation. Lets say he's been doing this 40 years, 365 days a year. That still comes more than 27 knives a day. That's quite a bit of experience. Thanks for the youtube link.

Q
 
Quy4n8 said:
Thanks for the info Rick. 400,000 knives? That sounds like alot, without some sort of automation. Lets say he's been doing this 40 years, 365 days a year. That still comes more than 27 knives a day. That's quite a bit of experience. Thanks for the youtube link.

Q
Click to expand...

400,000 knives / 40 year = 10,000 knives a year
10,000 knives / 365 days = about 27 knives

did he really that old?:p
 
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I have Russell White custom made SBJ very similar to Taylor's Premier collection, though the handles material and steel are better.
He is very talented guy and his knives are great. Here's some photos of the knife I own RWL34 steel and DIW scales.

IMGP2987.jpg

IMGP2990.jpg

RW1.jpg


Mike
 
richdkao said:
400,000 knives / 40 year = 10,000 knives a year
10,000 knives / 365 days = about 27 knives

did he really that old?:p
Click to expand...

Its not that many if you look at the knives and the production method. Blades and springs are blanked, punched and heat treated and ground in batches of about 3000. Bolster scales are done in batches of 500 or so at a time. To assemble and haft 50 of these for example http://www.premiercutlery.co.uk/ind_cat/pocket_knives/farmers_pocketknives takes about 4 1/2 hours, the wooden ones about 5 hours so 75 knives a day is pretty much the norm. Then there are our town and country range http://www.premiercutlery.co.uk/ind_cat/pocket_knives/town_country these are made using the same blades and springs and are jig assembled and finished by hand and the scales are fitted using a combination of bushes and glue. To assemble, glaze and fit scales to 100 of these takes about 4 hours so 200 a day is again pretty much the norm.

The premier range are made by a team of 6 of us but each one is made individually entirely by hand and times can vary from 2-6 hours each.

So 400,000 over 20 years is probably being a little conservative

Russell:)
 
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