All About Pocket Knives

FOR SALE!!
ORIGINAL CASE XX USA yellow celluloid scales from a 3299 1/2 jack.




Only used once!!

After I took 'em off the knife, I set 'em out on the back porch. Three weeks of sunshine and this is what's left. I was kind of neat to watch them decompose.

Oh well. That stuff was NOT one of Case's better ideas.

Tryin ot figure out a way to put 'em on Mr B's next COON CHAT GIVEAWAY KNIFE! ROTF!

Owd Wullie; Thank You for the imperical evidence. This is like forensic photography! Great pics by the way. Have you sent a copy of them to Case? Not that it would matter to their bottom line dept.. I'm sure glad you posted it here for our benefit . AAPK = valuable education.

wonder what the sun out west would do to those scales?

toss that knife on a parked cars dash and watch it self ignite?

Reckon why it's not decaying evenly??

gringo wrote:wonder what the sun out west would do to those scales?

toss that knife on a parked cars dash and watch it self ignite?

Little late in the year for that around here. I can only imagine what they'd have done on dash in mid summer.

As to why they didn't fall apart uniformly is a mystery to me too. When I pulled them off the knife, it stunk to high heaven of really acrid chemical stink and the brass liners and back sides of the scales were wet ( and VERY green) pretty much in relation to the area of the scale that turned brown and fell apart in those pics.

I do believe sunlight sped up the process.
Here's what they looked like when I yanked 'em off. You can see where the liner is turning green in the pics. As well as how much they had already shrunk.

It appears to me the handle material was reacting to the brass liners.

You can see the green verdigris forming underneath and around the edges of the scales.

Much in the same way leather forms verdigris around brass guards on sheath knives.

It is the Tanic acid used in the tanning process of the hydes.

Whatever chemical they used in the manufacture of that yellow handle material, it is leaching out/venting and damaging the brass and everything else around it.



Lousy stuff!

KNIVES ONLY HAVE TWO ENEMIES; RUST AND POLITICIANS

May have to add CASE's yellow Celluloid to that list too.

Does ANYONE have a Case knife from the 40's, 50's or 60's that had these yellow cell handles that are still in one piece?

The other Case I had that had those horrid things on it did not fare as well as that jack. It got hammered pretty bad by the fumes as well as getting a hole eaten in one of the liners.

Well, Wullie, I'd say that you saved that knife from a horrible death. Reborn and ready to cut again. Your re-handle on that puppy is wonderful.

tjmurphy wrote:Well, Wullie, I'd say that you saved that knife from a horrible death. Reborn and ready to cut again. Your re-handle on that puppy is wonderful.

Thanks TJ.

My good friend "Tank" Fisher aka TBARK44 did the work on it.

Nitric acid is one of the decomposition byproducts! Eats almost all metals. Don't get it in your eyes, and don't pick your nose after handling it!! Don't laugh!!

Wullie;
What's the Buy-It-Now price on those used scales?
Charlie Noyes

Hey Charlie,
I don't think I could take less the exorbitant sum of 2 cents for it, but the shipping of hazardous waste is pretty pricey these days..

I did try to burn a piece of it and it won't burn, so using it for pyrotechnic displays is out of the question.

Here's a couple of 10-dot, 1970 yellows. The material was still bad in the dot era. The 3318 is quite a bit worse than the 3254, but material still hasn't attacked the bolsters or blades.

Interesting. Pretty much the same as mine was doing.

I'll bet money it is eating the brass.

I'm sure your right Wullie. They both came off my 10-dot, 32 knife counter display board. I've talked to Case about both. They said they would replace the handles, hopefully with the original pinned shields, and even send me new wire to put them back on the display. I just have to get around to doing it. That 3318 even melted the paint on the board.

Here's my little XX disaster. This is the one I recently mailed back to the Case repair center. They told me the problem was not covered under warranty and that I would have to pay for the replacement of the handles.................

When pigs fly!


Phil

Yesterday or the day before, someone sold on ebay a Case Tested pre war fishing knife with two blades, one being a hook disgorger/scaler. It had the yellow celluloid scales with the white lining which Knifeaholic describes thoroughly in his new book. The celluloid was absolutely perfect, and was at least seventy years old. Go figure!

One thing I do know about early Celluloid is that it's stability is directly related to it's post-forming heat-treat. Basically, they have to "cure" at the perfect temperature to impart some level of stability to the mixture. To much heat = BOOM... to little heat = unstable handle that eventually outgasses. Just slightly to much heat won't explode it, but it will again make an unstable handle. It's an exact science compared to the later handle materials like Derlin, which were basically indestructible once dried.

Here's a supply yeller handles for you all.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Case-XX-YELLOW-SYNT ... 4cec3611c6

One month later than the last pic.


Been out in the rain and sun since the first pic.

I pitched 'em out in the grass. I'll see if it kills the lawn....

did the handles change by the mid 70,s ? i have a yellow handle 1975 birdseye stockman that seems ok ?

One of the best articles on celluloid is on the Oregon Knife Collectors Assoc (OKCA) website. This excellent article is written by Dennis Ellingston, (ibdennis) and appeared in the Knife World in 1999.

There really does not seem to be any “safe” or “good” celluloid. Celluloid is what it is; a close relative of nitrocellulose and you can’t change the nature of the stuff and make it safe. There are other colorful materials that have been substituted for celluloid, yet none seem to have the beauty, versatility and appeal of celluloid. But within the molecular structure of celluloid there seems to be a ticking time bomb and no one knows when it is set to go off.

There has been celluloid imported for use on knives in recent years and there have been knives imported that have celluloid handles, but even some of the newer knives have self-destructed. Read through AAPK and you will see some of these mentioned. I believe Bulldog knives had a problem with this, IIRC.

Here are pics of a Case XX that I repaired for a customer. The celluloid had destroyed the liners causing them to crack, rendering them useless. The gas given off from the decomposing celluloid had even pitted the nickel silver bolsters. I had to find a used frame with worn down blades to repair the knife. Essentially, I put new handles on a used frame and moved his blades into the new frame.


This is the knife before I started:

After removing the handle and scraping off some of the crud, here is what it looked like:

This is the pile side of the knife:

This is the pile side after the handle was removed. Note the crack to the left of the rocker pin.
The crack extended more than half way from the bottom of the liner toward the top of the liner.
This knife was so badly damaged that the knife essentially fell apart in my hands while taking the blades out.



I know one collector who had some knives in an enclosed brief case. He had not opened the case for a month or so. When he opened it, one of the celluloid knives had begun to off-gas and had damaged other knives in his collection. Though all of the knives were not totally destroyed, most were damaged. Since some were high dollar knives, he figured he lost about $1500 in value of the knives in this brief case. Needless to say, he is no longer a fan of celluloid.

I do have some celluloid in my collection, but I try to keep them in the open on a shelf so that air can circulate around the knife. This prevents the gas from being held around the knife, thus accelerating the process and causing more damage.

Is a knife repairman, one of the most frequent repairs I do is to replace celluloid handles for customers.

Dale

I have posted pictures before of celluloid handled knives that I have that self destructed.Here is one I haven't posted:a Novelty Cutlery Co. letter opener knife exactly as I received it from e-bay.The seller was very forthright about it's condition so I knew what I was getting.
One side has the celluloid scale with the USN pre-flight school logo on it in relatively good condition;the other side not only is there no scale but the brass liner was almost completely eaten away.The remaining scale shows no evidence whatsoever of deterioration.It has since been repaired by fitting a thin sheet of brass to the remainder of the original liner and adding a clear scale made of Lexan.