Unfinished Knives! Why??

[waynorth]

Questions Abound!

We don't know why these knives are in the state they are in!!
Mark Zalesky got them from an estate, and offered them to me.
Irresistible! Intriguing! Ongoing Mystery!

The scissors are fancy, and work well. The temptation to finish the knives was great, but I am all about preservation, and you don't come about these often. So . . . .here they are for your viewing pleasure! CEing them is easy - CFing them is like handling porcupines!! Ouch!!

 

[Augie]

Charlie, pretty cool,if they are all German maybe WW2 GI bring backs from a bombed out knife factory? I think these type of finds are very interesting, we find finished complete knives all the time but how often do we find vintage knives that are unfinished, the Gardner I posted was the first one I had seen.

 

[Jack Black]

Very interesting Charlie, they look they came from a cutler's bench.

 

[Campbellclanman]

Augie, you took the words out of my mouth - there was a lot of History Factories etc lost during the war, this was also a loss of talent in Japan during and after the war when a lot of the Sword Makers who had such amasses of talent and knowledge were lost as well.

would it also be from a closing of the business, shifting of addresses which did happen a lot in the earlier Sheffield days as well - as well as the shifting or changing of the Owners etc

You raise good questions Charlie- as did Augie with his beautiful Gardners barlow, Jacks remark too has to be correct that most of these examples were straight from the Cutlers Bench - taken and stored for a private project perhaps never to have been?

 

[Stropping Young Lad]

This is really fascinating. Thanks for posting, Charlie!

 

[Ernie1980]

That is a great find! It would be so tempting to finish them but then again where would you ever find anything like that again...

 

[waynorth]

Three are marked Solingen, and one has no markings.
The Sailor Knife has a powerful spring that snaps the blade like a 'gator!
The scissors are nicely fitted, but the sack needle on the Harness/Farmer's knife needs adjustment. Unlike Augie's knife which is a few steps away from finishing (it seems), some of these look almost experimental.
Remember, these are observations from a non-cutler.
Still, it is fascinating to ogle these knives. They give you an idea of how hard it is to fit all these parts into a cohesive, functioning tool.

John, please post your knife in this thread! It will make some interesting comparisons!!

Thanks for the comments, Jack, Duncan, John, WK and Ernie!

 

[Augie]

Thanks Charlie, really don't know how many others are out there but in the few years I've been looking for vintage knives yours and the Gardner are the only ones I have seen. Anyone else have any in their collections?

As to why this Gardner was unfinished I do not know, there is a fairly deep knick in the blade so maybe it was a second but that would not have kept it from bring finished and used or sold at a discount. Maybe an employee took it home as a memento when the shop closed. We most likely will never know why these knives are like this.

 

[Jack Black]

Maybe an employee took it home as a memento when the shop closed.

In Sheffield, from what I know during my lifetime, there were nearly as many knives "being taken home" out of the back door of the cutlery factories, than there were being sold out of the front door!

 

[meako]

I have visions. I see Augies knife rising again as an sfo....
The vision...fading....I...see the the letters.....T...and.....no its gone.

 

[supratentorial]

Neat find, Charlie!

 

[waynorth]

I have visions. I see Augies knife rising again as an sfo....
The vision...fading....I...see the the letters.....T...and.....no its gone.

Ha ha!! I doubt that Bill would ever agree to do that one, Meako!
But looking at Augie's knife gives a little insight into the processes used to make those knives back then.
I have watched knives being made at Queen and at GEC. The subtle differences are interesting to me. GEC cuts the handle material much closer to the final fit than Queen for instance.
I have designed and built some machines to produce folding deck and yard funiture, and it is amazing how much time/labor can be saved in simple machine processes.

 

[brownshoe]

You could buy bags of knife parts at the old NAKC shows. People put together Frankenknives. Maybe the guy died and those were left unfinished.

Two weeks ago I bought a 3 blade senator "Remington" with excellent walk and talk but not a good enough fit to the backspring and too much room in the main blade pocket. All three blades ahad 1930s identcal tang stamps. A good working Frankenknife. It's my only "real Remington "

 

[ea42]

Charlie, they look like samples that were put together to make sure everything fit well. We did a lot like that, if you needed to 're-adjust something you could easily just knock the pins out to make an adjustment. Once everything was fitted it's just a matter of transferring the dimensions to some master jigs an you're off an running. That installed shield is a bit of a mystery though. Great find!!!

Eric

 

[Campbellclanman]

nice to see you posting Eric!

 

[marthinus]

Stunning find and thanks for sharing.

 

[btb01]

I was going to ask if this was one of those threads where Charlie shows us some old knives then reveals his newest SFO, but meako beat me to it.

Charlie, you don't think you could sell Bill on a #15 Unfinished Barlow?

 

[Jack Black]

Most of the knives produced in Sheffield today are still made like that, without jigs, and with the handle material put on as an unshaped slab. Stan Shaw recently told me that the Eggington Group had begun to use jigs for some of their knives, he described it with considerable disgust!

 

[meako]

Most of the knives produced in Sheffield today are still made like that, without jigs, and with the handle material put on as an unshaped slab. Stan Shaw recently told me that the Eggington Group had begun to use jigs for some of their knives, he described it with considerable disgust!

kind of like Turner describing paint by numbers?

 

[Jack Black]

kind of like Turner describing paint by numbers?

LOL! Yes, perhaps!