All About Pocket Knives

Trail its a nice looking knife and its in the right thread. thats all i know
found a Kendal Winsted Conn. at the knife show. American knife Co. moved in 1947 to 118 lake street .CT. one year later changed name to Kendal Mfg. Co. and a few months later changed the name to Bukar Mfg. Co. and stood till 1955 until building was destroyed by a flood.

Here is a rare tang stamp I received in trade with Mike (vikingdog) the day before the OKCA show the 13th-15th of April. I have been so busy since then I have not had the time to do a proper posting of this SWEET old jack.

The tang reads PORTLAND/CUTLERY CO. As you can see it has rich brown jigged bone handles and very full blades. The kick appears to be full as well. It appears this knife has not been used much.

At the show I had a chance to show the knife to Bernard Levine. He knows the man who still owns the Portland Cutlery Company name. I believe they had a storefront until 3 or 4 years ago. This is a contract knife made for Portland Cut Co, (SFO). Bernard thought Walden Knife might have made it, or maybe New York Knife Co, or perhaps Ulster; but Walden Knife was his first choice. He said it was definitely from the Hudson Valley area.

For those of you who are not familiar with the history or the Walden New York area, it was sometimes difficult to tell when one company ceased to exist and a new company began. When you consider that each cutlers in those days usually specialized in 3 or 4 patterns, it is possible that a man making certain patterns could quit and go to work for one of the other knife companies in the area. Then the cutler would be producing his specialty patterns at the new company. As a result you could get knives from two companies that greatly resembled one another. Also when one company would go out of business another company would try to locate to that area because they had a trained work force ready and eager to work.

An example of this can be found in the failure of the co-operative formed in Ellenville, NY in 1871. It failed in 1872 & was reorganized as Ellenville Knife Co. It too had problems and in 1875 it was again reorganized but kept the same name. In 1876, Dwight Divine took over the company and renamed it Ulster Knife Company. So in essentially 5 years there were 4 companies making knives in Ellenville with essentially the same crew of cutlers. No wonder there are regional similarities in knives that Bernard alluded to the knife being from the Hudson Valley area.

Regardless who made this knife; it is a beauty. The knife is 3-5/8” closed, with steel bolsters and brass liners. There are three pins in the pile side handle plus the rocker pin. The mark side handle only has two visible handle in it plus the rocker pin, however a close inspection of the inside mark side liner with a bright light reveals the third handle pin is also the pin that holds the shield on. The brass pins are all hand peaned and do not have heads spun onto them. The only resemblance of a flaw I can find in the knife is a possible crack at the rear mark side pin. I say possible because it appears in some jigging and does not look like it goes all the way to the pin. It may be checking in the bone. Bernard dated the knife circa 1900 to 1910. I was grateful that Bernard knew so much about the company. It adds to the story of this nice old knife. I only hope I look that good at 100 plus years of age!



Thanks mike for the trade.
I hope you are as happy with the trade as I am.

Dale its a beauty ! great find.......

Dale,

That is a beautiful knife....

Here is one I have never seen before that I just got, Olympic Cut Co New York. Nice beefy jack.

There are some great knives here from you guys. Really nice stuff. I love this thread.
I'm glad that I can contribute once in a while.
If this thing aint old it sho' is obscure. Goins mentions it but shows no date.
I'm mighty glad to have it.
Summit Knife Co.
Snappy, like the turtle. 3 5/8". Brass pins and liners.

You guys are posting some I have never seen before, and they are all nice ones too!

Nice one Joe
Levines Guide 4 says see Pavian Cutlery Co.
Pavian (-Adams) Cutlery Co with a trademark of Summit in St. Paul, Mn. A wholsaler 1906 c1920 with no country of origin info.
Hope this helps.

Nice one Joe

Here is one you seldom see, O.S.T. Newark N.J. It still has the etch on the master blade

Made by A.F. Bannister.

DAYUMM D!!

That is VERY nice.!

I think that pattern of main blade is as rare as the maker. That is something special.

Thanks Willie

Robert, it is a razor blade

Yes, hard to find, I think I only have 3 in all the years of collecting

I've always thought that particular blade had a one-armed man application. The concave end could be hooked on the edge of one's pocket and thus opened. I don't know how a one-armed man would have opened the pen blade.

I know that Case applied the RAZ to their pattern numbers for those type knives and then Jim Parker came along and put what truly looked like a straight razor blade in some of his knves and continued the pattern as a Case product when he owned the company.

Nice knife, MB. What did O.S.T. stand for?

Charlie Noyes

RobesonsRme.com wrote:Nice knife, MB. What did O.S.T. stand for?

Thanks, I don`t have any other information on this one Charlie

If someone has one with this mark, I would like to see it

Thanks for the compliments, guys.
Edgy, thanks for that Pavian connection.

MB, that is a fantastic knife!

I agree... it is awesome!!!

I couldn't pass up this B&B, St. Paul MN. I found some good information on Brown & Bigelow at a website specializing in letterhead, billheads, receipts and other business paper:

http://billheads.blogspot.com/2011/02/b ... ul-mn.html

"Michael Treacy was born in 1844 at Massachusetts. He moved to St. Paul in 1856 and worked for TM Newson in 1859. He soon learned the trade of job printer with the job department of the Pioneer Press and worked for them for twenty-two years when in 1882 he went into business for himself with partners under the firm name Brown, Treacy & Howard. His brother John also worked for the Pioneer Press and eventually joined the firm. In 1894, the firm became Brown, Treacy & Co. with Hiram Brown, Treacy and Dennis Sperry as partners.

"In 1896, the firm invested money with Herbert H. Bigelow to print and sell calendars. That firm was known as Brown & Bigelow. In December, 1900 the firm of Brown, Treacy & Co. was dissolved due to the death of Michael Treacy. In 1905 Brown died.

"In 1924, Bigelow was sentenced to two years in Leavenworth prison for income tax evasion. At Leavenworth he was befriended by Charles Ward who was serving a sentence for narcotics. Ward grew up in poverty and became a vagabond, mined gold and was a mercenary with Pancho Villa in 1919. He was arrested on a narcotics charge in El Paso. After Ward was released in 1924 he began working for Bigelow.

"Ward soon rose to vice president of the firm Brown & Bigelow. In 1933, Bigelow drowned at his cabin. When his will was filed, it was known that he left Ward one-third of his estate of $1,000,000. Ward took over as president of the firm and Brown & Bigelow grew under Ward. Ward encouraged unionization, widened production into playing cards, pens & pencils, and cigarette lighters. He soon hired the top commercial art talent (Norman Rockwell, Maxwell Parrish) for B & B calendars. B & B became the biggest calendar producer in the world. All this started from Brown, Treacy & Co.’s initial investment into Brown & Bigelow."

Evidently Ward never forgot his prison days, because another web site notes that Brown & Bigelow was noteworthy for hiring hundreds of ex-convicts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_%26_Bigelow

Brown & Bigelow continues in business today, selling promotional products. http://www.brownandbigelow.com/

In addition to calendars, pens and cigarette lighters, Brown & Bigelow evidently sold pocket knives. The clip blade on my example is very close to the one on my Colonial barlow, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that Colonial made the knife. On the other hand, I have Imperials that are similar as well.

I wondered if Brown & Bigelow might be related to Bigelow & Dowse. Paulsvintage posted a Bigelow & Dowse a few pages back. Turns out that Bigelow & Dowse was a big Boston hardware wholesaler, completely different company.

That is interesting and colorful history. Not the norm for a successful business of the time. (getting caught at least)

Dang, some georgious old knives being shown here. Id say this easy opener is at least obscure and probbably old....Ive never seen this tang stamp before....anyone else ever seen it?


Bob

Here is one
1941 CLOVER BRAND SYRACUSE N.Y.
Trade mark used by Kastor & Brothers in 1941
I never saw handles like these before, they are really cool!

Gino,

Very cool handles on that one!!

Sweet knife, gino!

Speaking of Syracuse, I picked up this Federal Knife Company, Syracuse, NY easy opener teardrop jack at auction recently for $2.75! Couldn't believe I won it at that price. The blades are fair but the handle material (jigged delrin or rough black?) is near perfect. It has a decent weight to it as well, half stops on both blades too.

Great knives, guys.

Gino, those scales are really cool.

nice finds Gino & Redrider