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Knife World
November 2010
WHUT IZZIT?
by Bernard Levine
www.knife-expert.com
Mr. Paul Florio asked for information on a
large double-end folding knife made by
Western Cutlery Co. of Colorado. The knife is
an equal-end that is 6 inches long closed. In
one end is a wide clip blade with two nail nicks.
In the other end is a tapering saw blade. The
handles are brown jigged Delrin plastic on
brass liners. It has no bolsters, but the pivot
rivets are reinforced with burrs (small washers
used with rivets). It came with a tan leather
belt sheath.
The clip blade is held open by a projecting
brass locking liner. This lock was patented in
1906 by William Franklin Watson, who
assigned half the rights (no, not to Sherlock
Holmes) to Roy Chadwick. Both men were residents of Tidioute, Pennsylvania, then home to
the Brown Brothers’ Union Razor Company,
which had taken over the Tidioute Cutlery
Company in 1902. According to the book
Tidioute Brand Pocket Knives by David L.
Anthony, William F. Watson was a cutler for
Brown Brothers in 1906, while Roy Chadwick
was a grinder there.
However the men licensed their invention to
a different rival firm about 70 miles away to
the northeast, Cattaraugus Cutlery Company
of Little Valley, New York. How that came
about has been forgotten, but as far as I know,
Cattaraugus was the only knife company to use
this lock until the patent expired in the early
1920s. Since then it has been used by many
companies on several types of knives: electricians’ knives mainly, but also fishing knives,
Cub Scout knives, and this big Western knife,
among others.
The primary virtue of this novel lock, as
Watson pointed out in the patent, is that it
requires no more parts than an ordinary folding knife, and no modification to the knife’s
mechanism, its blades and springs. All it needed was a different blanking profile for one of
the liners. Thus it cost little more to make than
a similar knife with no lock.
made 60,000 of them, Colonial probably even
more.
The military versions were stouter and
heavier than the Western, with a thick saberground knife blade. They have steel liners and
bolsters. All metal parts of the 1940s versions
were blued. They have checkered black plastic
handles secured to the liners by screws. The
Miller Brothers (William and George) of
Meriden, Connecticut, had had both a patent
and a trademark registration on this screw
construction -- the 1870 patent spanning the
1870s and 1880s, the trademark in effect until
the 1920s).
Western Cutlery Co. introduced its big double-end jack knife in the 1960s. It is not shown
in their 1960 catalog, but is shown in 1968... at
the very end of the catalog, and not listed as a
new product.
This No. 932K RANGER “KNIFE and SAW”
was sold as a set, in clear plastic box. The box
also held the sheath for the knife, a smaller
leather sheath holding a sharpening stone, and
a tube of lubricant.
The design of this knife was not exactly a
novelty. It was a light-weight modernized version of a knife that had been made during
World War II, developed as an emergency survival knife for U.S. Navy pilots. The Navy version had a bail, and came with a snap-flap cloth
sheath that fit into a pocket in the life vest. It
was made by Colonial Knife Company of
Providence, Rhode Island. An Army Air Force
version without bail or sheath was made both
by Colonial, and by United Machine Tool
Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan. United
Courtesy M. H. Cole
The two military versions of this big folding
knife were common on the surplus market
after World War II. The United was offered for
$2.95 apiece in 1946.
Eventually that surplus supply dried up.
Western hoped to fill ongoing demand for this
style of knife, by introducing its new RANGER
version.
Similarly Western introduced an updated
version of the Army Air Force tropical bail out
November 2010
Knife World
kit knife of 1934, in its W49 bowie knife. That
big fixed blade seems to have been more popular than the big RANGER folder; at least I see
many more of them around now.
*
Mr. Michael R. sent in photos of a damascussteel bladed dagger that he was offered as a
“bowie knife.” It is a very nice knife, but it is
not a bowie. It is a European hunting knife.
This means it is a hunting weapon used for
killing stag and boar, not a utility knife for
skinning or quartering.
Ignorant, over-eager, or unethical sellers
often offer hunting knives, along with all sorts
of exotic fixed blade knives, as “bowie knives.”
They are encouraged in their wicked ways by
novice or self-deluding buyers who respond
eagerly to such offerings. Buyers afflicted by
vanity are especially vulnerable to this sort of
misrepresentation, the folks who believe that a
knife becomes historical, important, and
American merely by virtue of their owning it.
This knife has a 10-1/4 inch long blade, 1-1/8
inches wide at the ricasso. Overall length is
about 15 inches. The blade is double edged,
with narrow central fullers (grooves). The
blade was forged of a straightforward folded
damascus steel, the type that Jean-Jacques
Perret of Paris described how to make back in
1771, in his book The Art of the Cutler.
http://www.knife-expert.com/p29-dama.txt
The handle is a solid chunk of stag, with
attractive dark brown bark, and not a single
bald spot (white places where the bark was
ground away by a lazy or careless knifemaker).
Only the sharp points of the bark were
smoothed down, where they might hurt the
user’s hand.
The mounts are nickel silver, both the
recurved guard and the thick flat butt plate.
The butt plate was profiled to fit the stag,
rather than the stag being fitted to a standard
round pommel.
The scabbard body is wood, covered with
leather stitched up the center of one side. The
scabbard throat and its long frog stud appear
to be nickel plated or even painted steel (they
have areas of what looks like brown rust). The
scabbard tip is missing.
Both sides of the ricasso are marked. On one
side is a logo of a crown over a five-armed cross.
It appears to represent a military or civic
medal. The French Legion of Honor medal
established by Napoleon has exactly this shape
of cross.
The other side is marked, horizontally, CH.
GUERRE / A LANGRES. The name on the
blade, Ch. Guerre, is presumably of the cutlery
manufacturer who made the knife. Guerre
worked in the town of Langres, one of the oldest cutlery centers in France. Ch. Guerre might
have been a merchant in Langres, rather than
a manufacturer, but the evidence I found
online seems to favor his being a maker.
I did a Google search using this exact string:
"ch. guerre" a langres
This search turned up a few other cutlery
items that Ch. Guerre sold. Notable is a boxed
set of table knives, silver plated or possibly
even silver bladed.
The recurved blade shape of these knives
was first used in the United States circa 1911.
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Very likely it was used earlier in France, but
probably not a lot earlier. In the United States
this shape was the original “steak knife.” At
least that is what it was called in catalogs
before World War I. Now it is our standard
table knife shape.
This set would put Ch. Guerre within about
50 years of 1910 -- although conceivably the
business of that name might have been around
even longer.
That search found another Ch. Guerre set
that was retailed by a merchant in Paris, suggesting that Guerre was indeed a manufacturer.
I would date this set later than the other,
after World War I. Its auction listing says the
handles are ebony, but I think they are black
plastic. The technique of molding plastic handles onto ornate die-cut escutcheons dates to
circa 1892, but was not widely used until circa
1920. See the discussion of August Pauls of
New York and his Gebruder Pauls VULCAN
brand pen knives in the November 2007 column.
Google Books search yielded a couple of
additional data points, including precise dates.
The town of Langres is in the Champagne
region of France. In 1876, Volume 3 of the journal of the Société d’horticulture et de viticulture
d’Epernay, included a press release touting the
high quality cutlery sold by Ch Guerre of
Langres. In 1893, Volume 5 of the Bulletin de
la Société historique et archeologique de
Langres included a similar favorable mention.
I would guesstimate the Ch. Guerre damascus hunting dagger to date circa 1880, but it
could be as much as a generation older or
newer. Newer is more likely than older.
It is a nice hunting knife if you like that sort
of thing. It is very well made and detailed.
However the design seems kind of clunky to my
jaded eye, especially as compared to that graceful 1930s German hunting knife we saw back
in the July 2010 column. And alas, no amount
of wishing or hoping or paying (let alone praying) will turn it into a bowie knife.
*
As always I am happy to be corrected when
I am wrong. Otherwise I would never learn
anything. If you catch me in an error, please do
me the favor of letting me know. Just be sure of
your facts before you do.
Please send me an email to [email protected], or mail paper correspondence to
Whut Izzit, c/o Knife World, Box 3395,
Knoxville TN 37927. Be sure to enclose either
an email address, or a long self-addressed
stamped envelope with your letter, and also a
flatbed scan, photocopy, or photograph (on
plain LIGHT GRAY or WHITE background
please) of your knife. Do not write directly on
the picture. Indicate the knife’s handle material and its length (length CLOSED if it is a folder). Make enlarged images of all markings and
indicate where they appear. Because of the
large backlog, it usually takes me at least six
months to answer a letter to the column.