All About Pocket Knives

Jacknife Ben, those are some great ones! Thanks for showing them. It is a very small point but interesting, I think, that there is a difference between stockman and cattle knives? I suspect mostly in the serpentinuousness or lack of it, and the tending towards clip or spear masters? Ah... but what's in a name? A rose by any other would smell as sweet.

Here's an old Winchester cattle knife, it's been cleaned and the master is down slightly, but it's still in pretty good shape.

msteele, those Winchester handles are to die for! Thanks for sharing!

I found another knife for this thread. I haven't sharpened or carried this knife and I have had it for a while.
I'll be packing it soon. It's a great old knife. A New York Hammer. Thanks.

This Keen Kutter is the only version of a Cattle Knife that I own. It has blade snap so that if you weren't familiar with the knife, I do believe it would leave you with a reminder for the rest of your life .It's a keeper in my personal collection. There are some great looking Cattle Knives on this thread! Dale

H. Boker & Co's Improved Cutlery with French ivory celluloid handles. It's sort of hard to see but on the reverse of the tangs, the tree stamps are also stamped trade mark. This is the only H. Boker I've ever seen stamped this way. I THINK it's probably a very early knife that was produced shortly after Boker started using tree stamps on their knives in 1867.

W.r.case & sons
Wyeth's Waranteed
John Primble Belknap Hdw

What qualifies as a cattle knife? I'm not sure if this one does or not ::shrug::PS; those are purty rigwelder

According to BRL (From page 284 of Levines 4th Edition) here is the definition of a cattle knife. And then some. Good reading.

CATTLE KNIVES

THE CATTLE KNIFE is a heavy duty three-bladed pocketknife, ordinarily 3 5/8 inches or 3 3/4 inches long. Some are junior sized, as small as 3 1 /4 inches. Others are as large as 4 1/2 inches (such as the Case 94s). A very few cattle knives have four blades, and those are the most popular with collectors.

As the name suggests, the cattle knife was designed for work on and around livestock. The type seems to have been introduced in about the 1870s.

The Standard Cattle Knife has the same round-ended equal end shape as the equal-end jack, and was probably derived from that Common Jack Knife shape. At least 90% of cattle knives are standard equal-ends, but a few have been made in other shapes.

These include:
the "Premier" or serpentine;
the "Eureka," or swell-center serpentine;
the "Balloon" or straight swell-center.
the "Jumbo" or heavy sleeveboard;
the "Canoe," which looks like its namesake;
the "Surveyor," sort of a swell-center canoe;

Two-bladed versions of these knives are found in Jack Knives and in Double-End Jack Knives.

The master blade of a cattle knife is most often a spear blade, although many, including most Case cattle knives, have clip master blades. A few have sheepfoot master blades.

The second blade is usually a spey, while the third can be a sheepfoot, a pen, or a punch.

An uncommon version of the cattle knife is the three spring, with a separate spring for each blade. Most of these are swell-center serpentine "Eurekas" Three-spring cattle knives, especially junior-sized ones, are sometimes misnamed "three-spring whittlers," a contradiction in terms.

The "premier" or equal-end serpentine cattle knife was the ancestor of the more slender Premium Stock Knife, introduced in the 1890s. Premier Cattle Knives have spear master blades.

Stock Knives have clip master blades. Some transitional cattle knives are slender like stock knives but have spear master blades. During the First World War both Camillus and Simmons Hardware sold 4 1/4-inch wood-handled equal-end cattle knives to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. In World War H, Camillus made a hone-handled equal-end cattle knife as a "utility knife" for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Plain celluloid and bone stag are the commonest handle materials on cattle knives. Fancy ones were made with patterned celluloid, or sometimes even pearl. Neither wood nor genuine stag handles seem to have been used on cattle knives after about 1930.


3 5/8" Cattle Knife


3 3/8" Cattle Knife

Here's an example of a three backspring cattle knife made by H. Boker & Co's Improved Cutlery.

This old Utica 3 back spring whittler made alot of farm animals nervous, looks like the spey blade was the only blade ever used.

Catt cattle with etch.

I'm really liking that collection of cattle and premium stock's you've got there rigwelder. That Wyeth's Waranteed has some nice looking bone. The three spring Utica of yours Jacknifeben is fantastic, it has some good looking slant bolsters. Here is an Excelsior cattle knife made by Northfield Knife Co, it has been posted elsewhere but belongs here.

Here is a Wards I picked up.

H. Boker & Co's Improved Cutlery.

H. Boker & Co's Improved Cutlery.

Very nice. Show us the other side of that great clip master blade.

Charlie Noyes

Thanks Charlie. I added a picture of the other side for you to the previous post.

Keep 'em coming Gulo, another K-nice pick up

Great knife Greedy! Was it it designed and sold as a lefty?

WB

TJ: Thanks, I appreciate it. Glad you liked it.

WB: Thanks. As for your good question, I don't know if it was or not.

Nice knife Roger,as usual. I don't remember seeing a master as such.

He has the kind of knives they write about in "Knife World".

http://www.boker.de/pdf/knifeworld.pdf

I have several Robeson four blade knives that have the nail nick on the back side of the master.

I don't think it has anything to do with left handedness. I think it's just not putting both nail nicks on the same side. The secondary blades are done the same.

Charlie Noyes

Very nice old knife

Sweet knives everyone, and one of my favorite patterns.