Hello and thank you for letting me join the forum.
I recently picked up a pocket knife that seems to be very well built and a bit unusual. It is a single blade knife that has one side of the blade grooved like a file or a flint striker.
The blade is marked :
Brandford Cutlery Co.
Patent June 23 or 28, 1890
I can't find anything online about the Brandford Cutlery Co. I can find Branford, Bratford etc but not Brandford.
All information would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to sell it, but if anyone has an idea of the value, that would be great to know also.
CandCRentAll wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 5:58 pm
Hello and thank you for letting me join the forum.
I recently picked up a pocket knife that seems to be very well built and a bit unusual. It is a single blade knife that has one side of the blade grooved like a file or a flint striker.
The blade is marked :
Brandford Cutlery Co.
Patent June 23 or 28, 1890
I can't find anything online about the Brandford Cutlery Co. I can find Branford, Bratford etc but not Brandford.
All information would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to sell it, but if anyone has an idea of the value, that would be great to know also.
Welcome here, CandCRentAll.
What a neat old knife. Quite the unique blade and still in good condition. Are the covers textured steel?
I know nothing about it but I hope you learn more.
Brantford Cut. Co. was a brand used around 1900 by Butler Brothers, a wholesaler from Chicago from c.1877-1940. That knife is very cool and probably made here because it shows a patent date. Butler Bros. also imported from Germany. I don't know who made it but it's a sweet piece, maybe a New England jobber. Northfield had the patent (#36321 ?) on cast iron handles, so it may be made by them ?????. I have a Brantford, rosewood handled hawk-bill pruner of excellent quality. No idea of value. It's probably rare but you'd have to find a specialty collector. Great knife. I'm jealous . Good luck with it. J.O'.
CCCR: I'm going to cast a small doubt on the knife after a close examination of your pics. The patent date looks more like 1870 which is ok but that knife looks awfully clean and crisp for potentially over 100 years old. The file edges are very sharp and the blade has pits almost like cast steel. It almost looks buffed but I would think that would show on the file. The stampings are not crisp which could be an attempt at "aging" it. The other flag is the company I'm talking about is Brantford, with a "T". None of my comments are meant to say it's a fake but I think it bears more research. Sadly there are lots of fakers out there who are pretty good at their unholy crafts. I'd like to know what others on this site or elsewhere think. Please keep us posted. I'm going to dig further myself. I sincerely hope I'm wrong. Good luck. J.O'.
When I first saw the title of the post, I also thought it might be BRANDTFORD, but it is not. A new one to me! I have a pull ball switchblade that has a similar blade treatment only the file is on both sides. The letter font looks mid-1800's English to me. JMHO.
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes it is Brandford, not Bratford or Bradford. I have found some other Brandford knives that have sold on Worthpoint. Nothing even moderately expensive. Like I said in my original post, I don't plan on selling it. It is built like a tank and I like it! With that in mind I did clean it up and polish it. Thanks for your further research. I certainly appreciate it. The file on the one side of the blade??? Any thoughts on that? I have never seen it before. Thanks again and have a great weekend.
David, I used to find a lot of things "hard to believe" but, sadly, not anymore. I have a few knives I'd rather forget about and I guess they've made me a skeptic. Like I said to the gentleman, I hope I'm wrong, just inquisitive.
Thanks Herb. That's good news.
Ridgegrass wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 9:09 pm
David, I used to find a lot of things "hard to believe" but, sadly, not anymore. I have a few knives I'd rather forget about and I guess they've made me a skeptic. Like I said to the gentleman, I hope I'm wrong, just inquisitive.
Thanks Herb. That's good news.
J.O'.
I totally understand, but I believe this knife to be legit.
David
"Glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife" Meat Loaf
It's a legit knife and one of the many names Alfred Field and Co put on their imported knives. This is a pretty long section (but not nearly as long as the original) from the Congressional Record of Jan 19, 1889. The discussion had to do with the enormous number of faux cutlery company names used on imported German knives:
Senator VEST - Mr. President, I did not expect this schedule to come up, and therefore I am not able to present consecutively what I had to
say, but I will try to get the facts out before I am through. In the
testimony that was taken before the Senator from North Carolina and myself, the Senator from North Carolina said to the witness, Mr. Saxton, who represents the firm of Alfred Field & Co.:
Senator VANCE. It is stated here that the bulk of the cheap German knives are sold here as American knives.
Mr. SAXTON. That is not true.
Senator VANCE. I thought perhaps if there was no brand upon it, that was the reason. Is American cutlery esteemed to be any better than foreign cutlery?
Senator KORN. I believe the average of foreign cutlery is the best.
Senator VANCE. ·what reason would men have for passing off these foreign knives as American knives?
Senator KORN. They like to have some well-sounding names, because they are easier to remember, easier to talk to the people of than anything foreign which
they can not speak. For instance, there was in New York the concern of Friedmann & Lauterjung, importers. They made as high a grade of cutlery as anybody did, but nobody ever could pronounce their name; no American could
call it. Persons do not like to have such a name on their goods. ·When an American merchant wants to buy goods made on a special brand, he likes to have a name that he and his traveling man can pronounce, and not something he can not pronounce; for it is a great deal easier to put down a name with which everybody is familiar-that everybody can speak. But American goods have been made as poorly in this country as they ever have been made
in England or Germany. There have been just as poor goods made in America. Really, there have been very few good goods made in America so far as
cutlery is concerned.
Mr. SAXTON. The system of special branding goods has grown up in the last
fifteen years. It has come about from the fact that competition has been growing keener and keener among jobbers all the time. If a man had the same brand of knife, the same pattern in the same city, it would cut his profits to pieces; but
if he has the same knife under different brands, then he can maintain his profits.
That is the reason why there have been so many special brands of cutlery. We merchants, who stand between the jobber and the manufacturer, very much prefer to have our own brands, and to get our reputation on our brands, because we can not possibly put on the brands of the makers.
If an order comes in for $10,000 worth of pocket-knives we probably buy them from fifty or sixty or seventy different manufacturers, and it would be impossible to get every man's name on them. We mix them all up, and do not know where they are. We take half a dozen manufactures of a certain lot and put that up of one quality, and another batch of another quality, and so on. We grade the goods into qualities and strike brands for each grade. Here is our own brand [exhibiting]. On the best grade of goods we put our own name. We get them made. Probably the knives that come under that brand are from fifteen or twenty different manufacturers, but we grade them that way and brand them.
On the next grade we put on that brand [exhibiting], Continental Cutlery Company, the Continental brand. On the next grade we put Alexander, Fraser & Co., simply a fictitious name that distinguishes a certain quality of goods.
Then we have our German goods. Here [exhibiting] is H. Cromwell Criterion Cutlery. That is part of the name of one of our partners. H. Cromwell Field is his name. The next grade is the Brandford Cutlery Company. What these
people complain about is that they are sold as American goods. They are not sold as American goods. "
Knife is legit, I have one marked Henry Sears. They also made them in a fixed blade model.
It's used as a band cutter, for cutting the straw bands encircling the sheaves of grain when they are laid on the table of a threshing machine. Also it can be used for cutting twine around hay bales, etcetera.
MB and Eric, Great posts. Glad it got cleared up. Funny, Levine or Price had no mention of it.
C.C.: I go back to my original post, "Great knife" ! J.O'.
Thank you all so much. You are truly amazing! I probably won't be cutting any twine on bales of grain, but it will be nice to know that if I ever need to, I can! Thanks again for all the incredible information!
If I could bother you all for one more piece of advice? My intentions were to carry this knife in my pocket. After reading your posts, I have to wonder if this knife would be better suited to be a part of someone's Collection? It seems rare. If anyone who has posted is interested in it, please let me know. Thanks again.
. Good luck with it. J.O'.
J.O'.