All About Pocket Knives

I picked up a knife at a Boot Sale, aka Flea Market, while I was in the UK. It has "KAYE HULL" tang stamp. Anyone know anything about these knives? Only information I could find was in Goins' and all it said was "KAYE HULL SHEFFIELD MAKE". Even google search turned up with nothing? Also any ideas on the scales? They look like maybe bone or ivory to me. I don't think they are celluloid because if you look close it appears to be porous with a wavy grain.

Scales do appear to be ivory. I have no idea on the stamp.

Could be a promotional knife for these people, a Yorkshire tool company that went out of business in '82 --

TS Kaye Hull
"The firm was declared bankrupt in 1982, seven years after my father's death. Many of Kayes' big industrial customers had gone, the ship-building and repairing industry had slowly died a death, along with the Hull trawler fleet, and the business was in no fit state to compete with the massive out-of-town national 'retail outlets' catering to the DIY and trade markets."

Thanks for the info Xyphos. I didn't think about that but when I did a google search there were several types of tools that came up in reference to T.S. Kaye & Sons Tool Merchants. That's a good lead I'll keep searching still haven't seen any more knives like it though.

peanut740 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 27, 2020 9:13 pm Scales do appear to be ivory. I have no idea on the stamp.

I was leaning toward ivory too but I'm still kind of new in the knife world. Have any pointers on how I can be fairly sure of what it is? My dad loved collecting knives and I got started by inheriting his collection now I'm hooked.

It appears that T.S. Kaye & Sons was a MAJOR tool making company back in the 40's in the UK. At the link below, if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can download a PDF file of their catalogue and see all the tools they made. (I downloaded the pdf file, scanned it with my antivirus program and it came up clean. Your choice though...)

T.S. Kaye & Sons DID make knives (see page 52 of the catalogue); however, unfortunately, your knife is not shown on any of the pages. But that does not mean they didn't make a folding knife. They had the means and the wherewithal to do it back in their day. I would assume that; Kaye DID make this knife and what you have is a vintage knife made by their company. IMHO...you have a very nice knife with historical meaning and provenance.

https://tskayeandsons.weebly.com/kayes- ... logue.html

Here's a bit more information on the company itself...including the excerpt that has already been posted.

https://tskayeandsons.weebly.com/and-now.html

Thanks KLJ77, appreciate the info

That knife does seem to be a rare bird I haven't found anything like it yet. Sure there has to be some more out there somewhere.

Well, I know that they made at least two of these large (4") sleeveboard pen knives. I have this one dated to the 1890's, don''t remember where I got this date. This one appears to have ivory handles:

Well, well, well look at that it looks just like the one I have. Where did you get yours from?