Please see more info about the knife below, at the bottom of the pictures.
By the way, i you have interest in adding this very nice and somewhat rare knife to your personal collection, shoot me a PM email and I'll get back with you.
- King of the Woods Part Open Back.jpg (46.32 KiB) Viewed 3585 times
- King of the Woods Tang Back.jpg (43.62 KiB) Viewed 3585 times
- King of the Woods Shield Detail.jpg (41.95 KiB) Viewed 3585 times
MY RESEARCH ON THE “KING OF THE WOODS” FOLDING HUNTING KNIVES (Please feel free to correct any "misinformation" in my research...I appreciate any info you have that adds to this information).
The “KING OF THE WOODS” hunting knife was introduced as pattern number 12819, which contained no blade-locking device. The scales were made of jigged bone, thus the “9” at the end of the pattern number which designates Cattaraugus jigged bone scales. All of the “KING OF THE WOODS” knives were etched on the blade, but very few remain with the original delicate “KING OF THE WOODS” etching intact.
At some point, Cattaraugus installed a brass blade-locking device in the liner, and reissued the knife as the 12829. This transition may have initiated in the early 1930’s when Tint Champlin of Cattaraugus Cutlery filed a patent for a lock-back device on March 3, 1931, described as a “blade locking device” with drawings and description of the liner-lock that we see on the 12829 pattern. The patent and drawings were approved on April 5, 1932 (patent #1,852,400 - Here is a link to that patent:
http://www.google.fr/patents?id=IQ5aAAA ... &q&f=false
For some reason, the 12829’s are marked Patented July 2, 1906 on the liner release, yet I’m unable to find a patent or patent filing for this date. The redesign feature added a little more heft to the knife, and it was reported that far less hunters were losing fingers with the new lock-back feature
) The last of the “KING OF THE WOODS” knives was the 12839 pattern, where the manufacturer created a swing-guard attached to the blade by a pin passing through a hole in the tang, and they also moved the blade lock from the liner to the back of the knife.
Interestingly, this exact design of a blade locking device on a pocket knife was patented by John Case in 1906 (here is a link to that patent:
http://www.google.fr/patents?id=kQ5RAA ... &q&f=false
WHY THIS EBONY VERSION LOCK-BACK KNIFE IS "HARD-TO-FIND"
This may likely be quite a one-of-a-kind EBONY “KING OF THE WOODS”. Like the 12829, there is no swing guard, and it does not have a pin-hole where the swing-guard of the 12839 does. Yet it DOES have the style of the blade lock on the back of the knife just like the 12839 pattern. It also was fitted by Cattaraugus craftsman with solid EBONY scales. All the patterns for the King of the Woods that I've seen have jigged bone scales...execpt this one and one other I saw a picture of that has the swing-guard. There is NOT a pattern number anywhere on this knife. So how did this unique knife possibly come to exist?
Cattaraugus experts and collectors that I have consulted with concur that this is an authentic Cattaraugus “KING OF THE WOODS” in EBONY. The most likely speculation is that of the many skilled knife-makers (known as cutlers) employed at the Cattaraugus factory, some occasionally chose to customize personal knives for themselves or their friends using parts from the manufacturing supplies. If there were a pattern designation for this Ebony scale knife, it likely would have been "12826" or an early (possibly a prototype) "12836"
Note: Here’s how the Cattaraugus pattern numbering system works --- the “1” designates one blade, the “2” designates two bolsters, the two-digit model number would be “82” or “83” and the scales designated as “6” to indicate scales made of EBONY --- whereas the number “9” designates jigged bone scales.
Below is a link to information and pictures of the code numbers and the types of handle materials that Cattaraugus Cutlery manufactured their knives with:
https://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/ca ... terial.php
SOME DETAILS ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR POCKET KNIFE
This knife is about 9.3 inches long fully open, indicating that a professional polishing that a previous owner completed took the blade-length down a fraction of an inch. It absolutely gleams from shiny tip to tip, and the almost perfect EBONY scales have no cracks or hairlines. The shield emblem is superb. Snap is excellent. It has an almost imperceptible wobble that’s just about not worth mentioning. There are some tiny scratches and minimal light pitting on the blade, with some deeper scratches on the stamped tang of the blade than elsewhere…the tang was likely left less polished to preserve the Cattaraugus stamp, which is nicely legible except that a few letters that are worn off. Brass liner, clean as a whistle, with nickel silver bolsters. Hole was factory-drilled in the base of the blade for a ring or thong. When closed, the blade sits a little toward the left side of the center of the liner…and it opens and closes very nicely. The liner is really clean, no rust anywhere on the knife that I can see. The blade locks in tight as a drum. An expert pointed out that the “kick” on the tang appears ground a tiny bit to enable the blade to seat more properly in the case.
Several Cattaraugus collectors expressed to me how much they would like to own this knife...when I first showed it to my wife, she said, "Wow, it's heavy!"
Note: Because there appears to be no documentation in any knife collecting book about this unique pattern of knife, I am relying heavily on the speculation and conjecture of Cattaraugus knife experts that have graciously shared their opinions with me; I am a novice collector/researcher and probably know much less about knives than you do. I’m not an authority on Cattaraugus, yet consensus is that this knife is beautiful, and “the Real McCoy.”
Hope my research is accurate, and looking forward to hearing from you.
