The Secret Heat Treatment of Frank J. Richtig

[Alberta Ed]

Sounds like the temper was close to a cold chisel.

 

[gadgetgeek]

Penn Jilette has talked in the past of knowing a lot of carny folks, including knife salesmen. He became very interested in the knife sellers once he realized how closely their act followed the path of a magician's act, including patter, provers, and an impossible feat. The tomato slicing and such is all user skill, in essence, the magic part of the act. I'm going off memory, but I think he said the better salesmen could cut very thin slices out of a tomato with almost anything thin and resilient, butter knives and the like. I think its possible that for some of these "impossible" knife feats the user has more skill or talent than they realize, a steady and sure hand would go a long way to reducing lateral forces, and as long as your forces were clean, that would go a long way to protecting the knife.

 

[tltt]

Isn't that a Buck?

Buck subcontracted most traditional non locking knives to Camillus up through 90's. Schrade made them late 60's, Camillus 70's - 1985. Camillus and Buck 85 - 2000, and all Buck 2000 - . .

 

[Larrin]

Buck subcontracted most traditional non locking knives to Camillus up through 90's. Schrade made them late 60's, Camillus 70's - 1985. Camillus and Buck 85 - 2000, and all Buck 2000 - . .

Interesting.

 

[Brules1]

An enjoyable read. I've been in the "Richtig was a genius--a genius salesman" camp for a long time.

It's not that hard to think of a modern equivalent, where someone takes their certainly excellent-performing but totally not mystical knife-making to the next level by injecting a salesman's dash of mystery. I'd say who I'm thinking of, but the rabid fanboys would become infinitely enraged at me if I did.

I would agree with you 100%. I don't buy into some of the crazy claims.