All About Pocket Knives

Had a very good weekend at a flea market that I have found some old and rare ones before, came home with 7 vintage knives, most in nice condition and a couple of relics.
One of the relics is quite interesting, a large 4" Southington Cut Co bare head stag jack. main blade is a nice spear, reasonably full,stained black with use.
The pen has been broken off and reshaped, still usable if you could get it open, I had to use pliers, pull is a 10, the main is a pinchable firm 6, no play with solid half stops, bear trap snaps.
What really makes it interesting besides the stag which I don't think is all that common on early American knives is the tang stamps, the main blade has the straight line Southington stamp, I could not get the secondary blade open while looking at the knife so you can imagine my surprise when I finally got it open to see the Southington curved tang stamp.

The other interesting knife found is a EC Simmons Keen Kutter small 3" jack with a sheepsfoot blade, this one looks to have had little use. This is just a sweet little knife, don't think a vintage sheepsfoot jack is all that common.

Great finds. I especially like that Keen Kutter.

For those blades that are nail busters and difficult to open, try this. Cut yourself a strip of plastic milk carton and fold it in half. Insert the folded part into the blade well and slip it down until it's underneath the end of the knife blade. Pull up. Voila!

The front handle of the Southington appears to be bone.

Good work John. Some interesting finds. Dang Jerry, we didn't know you were that smart. We need to start paying more attention to you. ___Dave

Knice scores!!

djknife13 wrote:Good work John. Some interesting finds. Dang Jerry, we didn't know you were that smart. We need to start paying more attention to you. ___Dave

Sheesh. Try to help out a fellow AAPK'er and ya get it in the ribs.







[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuWhgyGWkgE[/youtube]

Cool finds John... ..

Southington is no doubt interesting especially to me... agree with Roger in that mark side looks like jigged bone but no doubt pile side is stag... can't tell but do pins look the same on both sides of knife - question is did it come out of Southington like that or was it rehandled long ago on pile side... if anything usually the mark side had the better of the 2 handle scales so quite interesting!! Cool that it has on straight line tang stamp and one curved tang stamp - the only 2 Southington stamp variations that I know of... Nice score!!! Simmons Keen Kutter is also a sweet score..... I wasn't aware until not very long ago that Winchester and Simmons were the same company at one time... wonder if that knife was Winchester made ... don't know much about Keen Kutter so maybe stamp is the clue ... nail nicks aren't as far forward as many Winchesters show but not sure that is the telling feature...

Congrats on 2 cool knives... gotta' love the hunt

Thanks all, Jerry thanks for the tip, much easier on the knife than using pliers.

Peanut, in was laying with the mark side out when I spotted it and the first thing I thought was nice bone, imagine my surprise when I picked it up and saw the other side. I have a few other English stag knives with stag that appears that way. Here is another pic, the color and texture of the material appear to match.

John, you can use whatever's handy. A business card works just as well. Even a scrap of paper folded in half to double it's thickness works just fine.

LongBlade, was typing when you posted,thanks for your input, pins look the same both sides. I think these pics may be slightly better. I agree, very interesting knife. Maybe the covers were put on that way to make the shield easier to mount?

Front handle is no doubt bone.You can see the blood pores in the photo you posted showing the bottom of the knife.Likely a old rehandled on the rear with the stag.If you notice the pen blade also had a new nail nick cut into the matchstrike pull.Rear handle may have been damaged when the pen blade was broken.Interesting old knife.

Both sides look like stag to me.I have a bunch of stag scaled knives and many of them are mismatched.This seems to hold true of a lot of English knives whereby they put a really pretty piece on the mark side and a not-so-pretty piece on the pile side.From the looks of it the age of that Southington(whom I believe employed a lot of expatriate English cutlers)would likely have had that done at the factory. Also when stag is ground down(or cut)sometimes you will see a lot of imperfections(layering;separation,etc)in the stag.
Here are some pics of stag scales side to side to illustrate.

John, I want to go to your flea market!

Nice finds!

Thanks again everyone, really appreciate everyones input.
Dale, thank you, this flea market has been a honey hole for the last couple years, yesterday was better than usual, couple pics of the whole haul,couple old 4 line Camillus knives, pruner and rope, relic Schrade barlow, couple single blade Schrade liner locks, Case Sodbuster Jr, not too bad for a C note for everything.
Also gives an idea of how large the Southington is and how small the KeenKutter.

JohnR, it was not unusual for knife makers to put the shield on a piece of stag or antler or bone that was not as rough. I have a Case XX trapper that is that way. So your knife could be all stag, anyway it's a nice find! Terry

Sadly, I live in an area where a good knife is seemingly worth its weight in gold, especialy if it's a Case or Boker USA. Of course, I'm a Schrade USA (particularly Old Timer) and Camillus USA fan, (but I still buy any cheap Case and Boker I come across, as they're both excellent knives) so it isn't that bad with what I buy

Great finds there! I really like the two Camillus knives! Hawkbills/pruners are a favorite of mine as a working knife, and so is anything with a sheepsfoot blade.

Some weekends they are cheap and plenty , other times it over priced and scarce.

It just a part of search.