What is Pick Bone?

[bonehead]

bonehead,
that is the very thing that confuses me about knife identification via jigged scales.
Apparently there are guys who can identify knives by looking at the scales. I don't doubt that. Although they can't be 100% accurate. ( I guess not anyway)
As a new guy on the forum I would read posts where folks would surmise or declare one knife or the other as being this brand or that. I was pretty impressed with that and still am. You have to handle a lot of knives to be able to do that with any certainty, but as Bob, aka Elvis, said, when it comes to jigging by hand everyone does it a little bit differently. I guess some operations had a certain look they were after and the men who did the jigging tried to stay with that trend.
I hope some of the big guns see this thread and offer some instruction, and pictures.

By the way, what kind of knife is it that you posted in your pictures of those great looking jigged scales? Thanks.

Joe, Perhaps we will never know? I still have a difficult time with Rogers jigging, just too many to follow. With whatever is on my knife, somehow it seems fitting as pick bone? as it appears so random in direction, I thought that because this style was so obviously different than most jigging it would be an easy answer, I suppose not.

The knife I posted is an NYKC Sunfish pattern, quite a lot of picking/jigging

This has turned out to be a very interesting thread.......

Bonehead

[FRJ]

bonehead, I agree. Very interesting. I am still intrigued with the hand jigging technique.
I want to call it pick bone.

[knives-are-quiet]

Has anyone here who does restore work ever tried to reproduce this type of "pick bone pattern" I would think it couldn't be too hard.
I'm sure the old time craftsmen used some sort of small chisel and a hammer to get this affect.
I may just take a crack at it myself.
J W

Good luck and please let us know how it turns out. I've done a knife or two a few years ago using a small carbide bit in a Dremel and it didn't look half bad (we won't talk about the other half). If you have a Dremel or a Foredom, maybe give it a shot first with different bits and see what you think. I had fun doing it, but it was time consuming enough and the results were nowhere near as nice as what I can order from knifehandles.com.

I'll post pictures of the process whenever I find time to do it.
I also have to figure out what type of chisel to use to get that small type of pattern.
I did hand jigg this coke bottle knife using a small spoon shaped chisel like tool from one of my hobby making kits. I could have used my dremel but I wanted to see what it was like along time ago. Trust me it wasn't easy. The tool I used was sort of an exacto cutting kit with an assortment of different type interchangeable blades. Worked pretty good. But you have to jigg right after soaking in gasoline which makes the bone somewhat softer and easier to work with .
I could experiment with a much smaller blade tips to see if I can get that "pick bone" effect.
We'll see how it goes.

J W

[paulsvintage]

JW very nice ! i a'm here to learn . so are we saying picked bone was done buy hand ? company's still use the term a lot . just noticed the other day the box labeling on a Schrade, GEC made for them. don;t know why it didn't say pick bone. looks liked jigging to me

[msteele6]

One of the definitions of the word "jig" is "To machine with the aid of a jig" another definition is "a device for guiding a tool or for holding machine work in place". I used to work in steel fabrication and a jig is simply a set up whereby pieces can be held and then processed the same way over and over. Now, if the term "jigging" as applied to a knife handle is related to this concept then the jigging was applied using a standard set-up and that would account for its regularity between manufacturers and for its name.

As PigSticker said, it is all but impossible that the manufacturers would jig each piece individually.

[Miller Bro's]

What is red pick bone? Or, what is pick bone?

The simple answer is that it is cow shin bone that has been "Gouged" out, either by hand using a variety of tools or it was done mechanically by a machine.

Picked or Jigged same effect just a different term used by different people. I have never seen an old catalog describe it as picked bone only jigged bone.

Below is a picture of a tool invented in 1880 to hand jig bone for knife handles. Note the changeable blade at the bottom for making different patterns in the bone, simple yet effective.

The only problem is, it was a slow process. To speed things up a machine was needed. There is a machine that was patented as early as the 1860`s in Germany, but I don`t have the picture or exact date handy.

George Schrade invented a machine to do the same job, here below is a picture of that machine. All you had to do was feed the slabs in and out came a nicely jigged handle. After the jigging they were dyed to the desired color.

All this machinery lost to time, what a shame

[FRJ]

Good post Dimitri. Thanks.

[johnnierotten]

Great info!!

[TripleF]

Great info. Miller Bros. - thanks.

[Miller Bro's]

Thanks everyone, hope you find the information useful

[paulsvintage]

[ringergary]

Hi all, Just reading this thread again and again. I was wondering if the jigging was so called as it is the same action
you use when jigging your cork when fishing.
You know when your line bobs up and down in random spots.


Just a thought, don't have many of em.


cheers Gary.

[vikingdog]

[quote.
I may just take a crack at it myself.

To tell you the truth, I thought of getting stew meat on the bone at the store and boiling it up and clean the bone and drying it for a good while and putting it in a vice and having a go at it my self. I aint afeard.

Joe, I hope you give this a try. I think you'd find a way to do a great job with it. If you do please post some photos?

Very good thread.

[woseyjales]

Thanks Dimitri for the clamification as well as
the fine illustrations of olde timey cutler toolery.

Not sure how long I been so far off track but to me
'pick bone' was simply what was on the knife that I
pointed at as I told the clerk "I'll take that one".

I also got some pick wood and pick stag handled ones.

[tjmurphy]

I wouldn't swear to it and am certainly no expert, but I think that this is an example of "pick" bone handles, in that the jigging is kind of eratic and non-uniform.

[PigSticker]

Jigged-Picked what ever you want to call it was for hidding inperfections in the bone and hiding the sins of the people puttin the scales on--just my opinion

[FRJ]

Jigged-Picked what ever you want to call it was for hidding inperfections in the bone and hiding the sins of the people puttin the scales on--just my opinion

Sorta like popcorn ceilings??????????? ..........could be.......only I think there was more to it than that.
Texture for grip and a certain asthetic. No?

[PigSticker]

Maybe--think maybe just imitation stag look too

[knives-are-quiet]

It's all about being able to keep a tight grip on your knife without it slipping out of your hand.
They weren't thinking about making a knife look pretty back then.
Just an every day tool that could be used safely.

J W

[PigSticker]

Gotta disagree JW they've been imbelishing knife handles for ever weather for fightin or working--now back to why certain handles are referred to as pick bone i still think it's just a certain maker or makers description or way of texturing a bone handled knife-a technic or name they hung on a job in the plant--again just my opinion