All About Pocket Knives

If you have ever tried to scrape modern ink off of modern paper, you know it does not work. But for centuries prior to around the 1930s, both ink for pens and paper were different than from today. Ink from that era was thicker and actually sat on top of paper which also tended to be of a heavier weight. Because of this, ink applied by pen could be scrapped off the paper with a blade and more specifically, an ink eraser blade. With the advent of lighter inks which soaked into paper and chemical erasers, bladed ink erasers became obsolete around the 1930s. Shown below is an example of a "Miller Bros." ink eraser with sheath and a corresponding ad from 1920.

Like I said a few days ago, you learn something new most everyday on the AAPK site! Thanks, Mason for enlightening some of us. Treefarmer

Good stuff.

Who knew? I sure did not. Very interesting.

Nice old Ink Eraser

Here are a few more..............

Excellent post Mason. I consider myself lucky to have worked in an Architectural office, pre-computer days, where penmanship, and preparing manual drawings was an art. We used x-acto knives to remove technical pen ink from our mylar drawings (if you were really careful)...but we were really happy with the ink erasers, which were new technology

I can just picture working in an office in the '30's...using one of the steel ink erasers you posted, however you would have had to use one when you either made a mistake , or had to make a revision to a drawing (which everyone has hated for centuries )

great stuff...thanks for posting

Thanks guys, and nice examples M.B.

Here is one stamped on the handle "U.S. P.O. Dept." , I have also seen them stamped "U.S Navy".

Here's some from my collection:

I saw a large collection of these at the Cincinnati NKCA knife show years ago. They were collected and displayed by a lady that was quite elderly when I saw her.

She had some very nice erasers, many were very fancy. Even had a couple with cut crystal handles.

Charlie Noyes

Good post, Mason.
Also, I read somewhere that the eraser was used on vellum.
As usual, beautiful erasers shown here.

Thanks guys for the additional information and pictures.
I thought that K7K might have one or two or .....