traditional knives in movies

[kamagong]

Thanks Barrett. I remember watching it as a kid as well. It's on D+ now, and I re-watched it last weekend with my daughter. She enjoyed it, though she didn't make any note of the knife. Kids these days...

 

[r8shell]

In The Rocketeer, the protagonist carries a slipjoint of some kind. It looks fairly distinctive -- celluloid, tip bolsters, squished hexagon shield, and dual springs. Can anyone identify it?

It looks to me like a KENT, made by Camillus for Woolworth's five & dime stores. Cheap knives, a lot with bright celluloid like that. Also with ugly faux stag like this one:

I know there's at least one thread about them here, with lots of pictures of tip bolsters and end-of-days-cell covers. (hopefully the pictures are still viewable)

 

[btb01]

In The Rocketeer, the protagonist carries a slipjoint of some kind. It looks fairly distinctive -- celluloid, tip bolsters, squished hexagon shield, and dual springs. Can anyone identify it?

It looks to me like a KENT, made by Camillus for Woolworth's five & dime stores. Cheap knives, a lot with bright celluloid like that. Also with ugly faux stag like this one:

I know there's at least one thread about them here, with lots of pictures of tip bolsters and end-of-days-cell covers. (hopefully the pictures are still viewable)

Good call, r8shell . The only Kent threads I could find here on BF are plagued by Tinypic and Photobucket errors, but I found this with a Google image search. The celluloid isn’t quite the same, but the shape, shield, tip bolsters and pin placement all look like it could be a match.

 

[kamagong]

It looks to me like a KENT, made by Camillus for Woolworth's five & dime stores. Cheap knives, a lot with bright celluloid like that. Also with ugly faux stag like this one:

I know there's at least one thread about them here, with lots of pictures of tip bolsters and end-of-days-cell covers. (hopefully the pictures are still viewable)

Good call, r8shell . The only Kent threads I could find here on BF are plagued by Tinypic and Photobucket errors, but I found this with a Google image search. The celluloid isn’t quite the same, but the shape, shield, tip bolsters and pin placement all look like it could be a match.

You two are good.

 

[r8shell]

You two are good.

I'm glad you're impressed, because I get nothing but eye rolls from my movie watching companions.

This is a fun thread.

 

[kamagong]

I don't think we'll be able to figure this one out as easily. Russell Crowe's knife from Cinderella Man.

 

[btb01]

You two are good.

Teamwork! (I hadn't even heard of Kent before; all I did was Google search! )

This is a fun thread.

I agree, one of my favorites! (Unfortunately, it's a difficult thread to keep very active, but I always enjoy finding something that means I can bring it back up to Page 1.)

I don't think we'll be able to figure this one out as easily. Russell Crowe's knife from Cinderella Man.

Alright, let's see... it has two blades......... ok, that's all I got.

 

[kamagong]

Not a movie, but the knife immediately made me sit up and pay attention in this old commercial.

 

[btb01]

Here are a few from the movie Bad Times at the El Royale.

Early in the film, there's a fixed blade knife sitting on small shelf in front of a two-way mirror in one of the hotel rooms at the El Royale. We first see the knife from behind the mirror:

And a bit later in the film, you get a closer look at it (although not the whole thing) from the other side of the mirror:

Now I'm pretty bad at recognizing/identifying fixed blade knives, but this one looks to me like it could be a Buck 119. The pommel and guard look about right, as do the blade shape, hollow grind and fuller. I could be wrong, but the knife does seem to have some distinct features, so even if I am, maybe someone else can identify it.

Here's an image of the 119 from Buck's website:

Another fixed blade knife that appears later in the film. You only get a brief look at it as one of the characters removes it from its sheath. I can't really tell much about it, other than it has white handles (maybe bone, or smooth stag?), and an extremely curved blade shape.

Chris Hemsworth's character, Billy Lee, carries a fixed blade knife in a belt sheath in several scenes, but this is the clearest shot I could find of it.

Looks to have stag handles and a metal pommel, but other than that, I don't know that you can tell too much about it. Later in the film you do get a very brief look at the blade (a clip point), but the screenshot is a little too gory to be Porch appropriate.

Finally, at one point in the film, Jeff Bridges' character can be seen opening a switchblade, but it's in the background of the scene and out of focus, so there's not much point in taking a screenshot. (While you can't see the knife clear enough to say for sure that it's a traditional switchblade, the film is set in 1969, so I'm gonna go ahead and assume it is.)

 

[r8shell]

Another fixed blade knife that appears later in the film. You only get a brief look at it as one of the characters removes it from its sheath. I can't really tell much about it, other than it has white handles (maybe bone, or smooth stag?), and an extremely curved blade shape.

That one looks to me like an Old Hickory type skinner. The handles could be a light colored wood, maybe just old and dried out.

 

[Henry Beige]

That one looks to me like an Old Hickory type skinner. The handles could be a light colored wood, maybe just old and dried out.

Good eye. I couldn’t even make out the shape of the blade until you described it. Some of the Green River skinners use a lighter-colored wood. Or it could be a Dexter white plastic handle.

 

[Hickory n steel]

Good catch, I'd guess Russell Green river but I'm not sure if they offer a skinner without a guard.

 

[btb01]

I couldn’t even make out the shape of the blade until you described it.

Sorry, it isn’t very clear in the screenshot, is it? It only appears for a brief second in the film.

That one looks to me like an Old Hickory type skinner. The handles could be a light colored wood, maybe just old and dried out.

I was originally thinking the blade was an upswept skinner like that (though my brain couldn’t come up with a term for it last night), but looking at it again now, I think the edge might actually be on the other side of the blade, like a big pruner.

Here’s a close-cropped portion of the screenshot showing the blade, with the exposure brightened up so you can see it a bit better. If you look at the tang, you can see a glint where the light catches the transition from the tang to the grind on the concave side of the blade. The edge also looks to be offset from the tang as well, which probably wouldn’t be the case if that were the spine of the blade.

 

[r8shell]

Sorry, it isn’t very clear in the screenshot, is it? It only appears for a brief second in the film.



I was originally thinking the blade was an upswept skinner like that (though my brain couldn’t come up with a term for it last night), but looking at it again now, I think the edge might actually be on the other side of the blade, like a big pruner.

Here’s a close-cropped portion of the screenshot showing the blade, with the exposure brightened up so you can see it a bit better. If you look at the tang, you can see a glint where the light catches the transition from the tang to the grind on the concave side of the blade. The edge also looks to be offset from the tang as well, which probably wouldn’t be the case if that were the spine of the blade.

Good eye, I think you're right. I'm still leaning toward some sort of agricultural knife like a hook pruner, but I could be totally off the mark.
Of course we always have to keep in mind that the movie's prop department might make or modify a knife for dramatic reasons. "That old farm knife looks boring, let's make it curvier and grind the edge on the other side...make it more weapony!"

 

[Henry Beige]

Sorry, it isn’t very clear in the screenshot, is it? It only appears for a brief second in the film.



I was originally thinking the blade was an upswept skinner like that (though my brain couldn’t come up with a term for it last night), but looking at it again now, I think the edge might actually be on the other side of the blade, like a big pruner.

Here’s a close-cropped portion of the screenshot showing the blade, with the exposure brightened up so you can see it a bit better. If you look at the tang, you can see a glint where the light catches the transition from the tang to the grind on the concave side of the blade. The edge also looks to be offset from the tang as well, which probably wouldn’t be the case if that were the spine of the blade.

I see what you are saying about the edge, but from your enlargement the blade profile looks even more that of a skinner, particularly the slightly clipped upper edge of the tip. That shape would tend to let vegetation slide off the end if you were cutting with the inner edge.

 

[TheChunk91]

I watched Silverado last night and noticed one of the main characters, Emmett, carried a pocket knife with a half stop. He used it a couple times throughout the movie but there is no good shot of it.

 

[JohnDF]

I'm pretty "geeked out" about this one!!!
Jean Luc was wearing a sheath knife on his vineyard, on the premier of Picard.
I'm trying to Google-Fu a better image, but I lightened this one enough to get a little glimpse of it.
As a Trekkie and a Knife Knut, I'd love to find more information about the knife. I'm sure it's French made.

 

[specgrade]

How about Jud's Buck 110 from the 1989 movie Pet Sematary

 

[btb01]

I'm pretty "geeked out" about this one!!!
Jean Luc was wearing a sheath knife on his vineyard, on the premier of Picard.
I'm trying to Google-Fu a better image, but I lightened this one enough to get a little glimpse of it.
As a Trekkie and a Knife Knut, I'd love to find more information about the knife. I'm sure it's French made.

Nice one, John! I am, admittedly, not a Trekkie. My dad was a fan (at least of The Next Generation, which I remember him watching regularly when I was a kid), but I never really got into it. That said, I have been following some of the goings-on leading up to the new Picard series, because one of the creators, Michael Chabon, is one of my favorite authors.

As for the knife, I don’t have any idea, but perhaps it just has the handle of a traditional knife, and inside the sheath it’s actually a small gardener’s-model lightsaber…

 

[JohnDF]

perhaps it just has the handle of a traditional knife, and inside the sheath it’s actually a small gardener’s-model lightsaber…

That's what I love about it, so much.
He's living way in the future, with extremely advanced technologies, and he brews tea in a pot and carries a traditional knife.