Mechanical pencil knives.........
Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2017 3:19 pm
Dave's post of his "holy Grail" mechanical pencil cum dip pen/knife got me to thinking about the one's I have and so I decided to post up some pictures with what little I know about them.
I'm not sure exactly when the first mechanical pencil was patented but I have an ivory handled pocket knife that has a master blade(sadly broken)on one end and a folding mechanical pencil on the other that was made by Unwin & Rogers. They were mostly known for making knife pistols and Goins lists them as being in business from 1848 to about 1867.
My first mechanical pencil knife was obtained about 35 years ago at a flea market as I recall. It was a flat piece of plastic with a small folding blade in the end marked Palmax Germany and hot stamped into the handle,"Souvenir of Havana" with a small mechanical pencil on the other end. It took a couple of days of looking at it before I realized it had a Stanhope viewer in the handle! I had never seen one before but had heard of them. Inside was a picture of a nude woman looking a lot like the early French postcards I used to sneak looks at when I was a kid.
Many years later I ran across a near identical one but with the tang stamp Neir Germany and the handle stamped in Spanish(Souvenir of Habana)and a different nude in the Stanhope.
Over the years I have come across several variations of regular mechanical pencils with knives in the end that were mostly made by B&B of Minneapolis MN. The blades of their knives seem to have patent #'s similar to the ones found on Imperial knives of the fifties which says to me that either Imperial supplied the blades for them or they made the knives for B&B.
B&B seems to have been a distributor of promotional items including many knives and letter openers. I have many stamped with their logo including a George Washington Bicentennial knife somewhat larger than the Camillus version.
That is about it as far as knowledge goes so if anyone has any further info please post it here as well as examples you might have.
Here are the pictures.
I'm not sure exactly when the first mechanical pencil was patented but I have an ivory handled pocket knife that has a master blade(sadly broken)on one end and a folding mechanical pencil on the other that was made by Unwin & Rogers. They were mostly known for making knife pistols and Goins lists them as being in business from 1848 to about 1867.
My first mechanical pencil knife was obtained about 35 years ago at a flea market as I recall. It was a flat piece of plastic with a small folding blade in the end marked Palmax Germany and hot stamped into the handle,"Souvenir of Havana" with a small mechanical pencil on the other end. It took a couple of days of looking at it before I realized it had a Stanhope viewer in the handle! I had never seen one before but had heard of them. Inside was a picture of a nude woman looking a lot like the early French postcards I used to sneak looks at when I was a kid.
Many years later I ran across a near identical one but with the tang stamp Neir Germany and the handle stamped in Spanish(Souvenir of Habana)and a different nude in the Stanhope.
Over the years I have come across several variations of regular mechanical pencils with knives in the end that were mostly made by B&B of Minneapolis MN. The blades of their knives seem to have patent #'s similar to the ones found on Imperial knives of the fifties which says to me that either Imperial supplied the blades for them or they made the knives for B&B.
B&B seems to have been a distributor of promotional items including many knives and letter openers. I have many stamped with their logo including a George Washington Bicentennial knife somewhat larger than the Camillus version.
That is about it as far as knowledge goes so if anyone has any further info please post it here as well as examples you might have.
Here are the pictures.
