What Makes a Good, Traditional Barlow?

burnside said:
Great shots P!
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Thanks!

Can you please take a photo of it with the Pen blade fully open and the Sheepsfoot blade closed?
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Nah, I'm done.






I keed, I keed. :D

I was thinking of this last night, that pen-open shots would be helpful. Thanks for the prompt. :)

Here we go, a couple different backgrounds so you can hopefully see the full spine profile, and again with a spear-main barlow for a known-quantity comparison:

IMG_0809.jpg~original


IMG_0827.jpg~original


IMG_0816.jpg~original


IMG_0825.jpg~original


This of course isn't how I hold the knife for reals, but the picture wasn't as good with my fingers in the way-- they wrap right around:
IMG_0830a.jpg~original

(Bonus morning PopTart crumbs.)

~ P.
 
I've really come to like these traditional Barlow's - especially the Tidioute version. Just skimming through this thread this morning, and find out about the GEC rendezvous only to find that today is the last day, and I live only 2 hours from Tideoute!

Arghhhhh!!! I could take off this afternoon but afraid that getting there on the last afternoon only a couple hours before the end I will miss some of the vendors - especially the ones with the Tidiout Barlows.
 
scruffuk said:
^^ Don't stress meako, he's away at the GEC get together these past/next few days. If they don't snap all his beauties up there, you should be okay.


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Thanks scruffuk.I thought as much.Cheers.
 
Sarah, throughout this whole Thread of Charlies - you have been an amazing help to us folk with your input, Thank you so much, great photo's!
 
neeman said:
What is the plural of sheepfoot?
Sheepfeet?
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I don't know official protocol, but I find it less cumbersome to add "blades," plural, like so:

sheepsfoot blades.

Campbellclanman said:
Sarah, throughout this whole Thread of Charlies - you have been an amazing help to us folk with your input, Thank you so much, great photo's!

MerryMadMonk said:
+1 :thumbup:
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Jack Black said:
Yep :thumbup:
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paulhilborn said:
I'll third that!!!

Thanks Sarah,

Paul
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Thanks, guys. I appreciate the encouragement. I gain so much from others' posts and participation here, I'm grateful if my contributions are helpful in turn.


~~ // ~~


Further observation and information regarding the height of the sheepsfoot blades:

I pointed out my sample-of-two observation to Charlie, that the sheepsfoot mains on the two-blade barlows appeared to ride lower than the sheepsfoot-only blades.

We looked at some more knives together, and this further (if very small!) sampling seemed to bear this out. We then asked Bill Howard about it, and







You'll have to pardon me, I kind of got stuck at the part where I was pawing over barlows with Charlie, asking Bill Howard for input and further information. A great stopping place, I'd say!

Where were we? Ah yes, the sheepsfoot height(s).

According to Bill, any height variation between the blades on different knives is completely due to "normal human beings" holding up each blade in turn for "hollowing" (the step in which the inner curve of the tang up to and including the kick is smoothed), and not a planned difference between the one- and two-blade versions. Some blades may receive just a little more, or a little less, smoothing at this point in the process, and little differences tell. As we looked further, we could see that the "two-blader sheepsfoot blades are lower" did not hold up as a general rule.

One of my takeaways from this is that, should any of the sheepsfoot mains on a two-bladed knife ride higher than that on the knife I selected and pictured above, one could carefully remove a scant oonch of material from the kick to lower it without harming form or function. (All disclaimers apply, and if it goes badly, pretend I didn't say anything.)

Charlie, of course correct and add to the above if I'm mischaracterizing Bill's information.

~ P.
 
Those look great Sarah! thanks for taking them and posting! I opted for the single blade, I'm getting more into just having the knife and the handle shape as intended, so I've been getting some knives that just have single blades or like the ones you posted, they rest close to the frame so they look like they wouldn't interfere when holding.

Here's my recent purchase, from Charlie himself while at the GEC weekend, such a great time, glad I was able to make the drive down on Saturday and meet some wonderful folks AND to get this nice first run spear point TC barlow too !!

TC-barlow.jpg


GEC-TC-Barlow.jpg


And while I'm at it and since this thread was started by Charlie aka Waynorth, here's a photo I took while he was at GEC this weekend, sharing his immense knowledge of Barlow lore to all that would pause and listen, and there were MANY that visited him and were better for it I might add ;)

IMG_1672.jpg


And at the time Charlie didn't have the original tube that the knife came in, he said he will see if he can find it when he gets home, in the mean time a very kind lady at GEC Chris Tucker heard my tale of woe and immediately set out to get me a sterile tube and even wrapped up the knife in that great brown paper we all love so well. And Charlie took the time to sign the tube also, I meant to ask you what your words meant;

Nice N.O.S. !
Use it in Good Health G2 !
signed
Charlie Waynorth

And this is a great knife, just love it!
Thanks again Charlie!
G2
 
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You seem to have come back from the GEC bash with even more interesting and insightful posts than ever P :thumbup:

Great pics (again) Gary :thumbup:
 
This is my first post since I got back late last night.
I have 109 emails requesting Barlows or info, so please be patient everyone!!
They will be shipped to me and other dealers on Tuesday and Wednesday. Only one dealer came to the show to get his directly, and it's not fair to mention him here.
We'll all have them right after August 1st!!
Gary, I was surprised that THAT Barlow didn't sell before you got there. It is a PPP original run knife from last year, ca. Dec. 1st. I didn't have a tube for it, and it was on my display table, but no-one asked for it until you came along!
NOS means New-Old Stock! I found it hidden in a drawer - don't even know how it got there - so I brought it along! You lucked out.
Sarah, thanks for helping me out at the show! (She looked after my display when I had to run some short errands, and started up some insightful conversations with GEC people, that led to me learning a whole bunch of new stuff!)
I am enjoying the conversation here immensely! Thanks to everyone for all the interest and comments. I will be able to add more pics etc. pretty soon!
 
Thanks, Sheila!! It was great, but it's nice to be back!!
 
waynorth said:
This is my first post since I got back late last night.
I have 109 emails requesting Barlows or info, so please be patient everyone!!
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I am also looking to get one of the beautiful Barlows from you, but figured you would be swamped with emails after your trip. Going to wait a couple days then I'll shoot you an email.
 
Charlie, I sent an email before I checked out this thread. Get some rest, crack a few, and try to forget the word barlow.

Hmmm, I can't do it, didn't even last 5 seconds before I started thinking about them.

:D
 
waynorth said:
This is my first post since I got back late last night.
I have 109 emails requesting Barlows or info, so please be patient everyone!!
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No worries, Charlie - I figured as much!


waynorth said:
They will be shipped to me and other dealers on Tuesday and Wednesday. Only one dealer came to the show to get his directly, and it's not fair to mention him here.
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Wait - other dealers?!?
 
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