All About Pocket Knives

I bought this knife for a few dollars to practice cleaning bone handles before touching a 'good' knife. It was so heavily coated in filth that I didn't know the brand until after I cleaned it. So now I have a 3-1/4" barehead jack that I'd like to know a little about. Only the pocket blade is stamped on the mark side and it is simply all caps: BOKER - Goins lists all sorts of trees and pelicans but whatever etch may have once been there is long gone. A curious detail is there are 5 pins on the front but only 4 on the pile side. I don't believe the knife has ever been apart/repaired. So my questions here are is this made in Germany or the US and what era is it from? I appreciate any input I get here! Thanks -

Not sure what's going on with that extra pin, but the block BOKER stamp , without USA underneath, is from the 1930s.
Nice old knife!

rangerbluedog wrote:Not sure what's going on with that extra pin, but the block BOKER stamp , without USA underneath, is from the 1930s.
Nice old knife!

Thanks rangerbluedog

Good looking knife!!!

I'm with you BWT, it is a great looking knife. And mysterious.

BWT wrote:Good looking knife!!!

doglegg wrote:I'm with you BWT, it is a great looking knife. And mysterious.

Thanks - I've been carrying it for the last few days. It's a solid knife and it's serving a greater good..I used it to experiment with ways to strip out the old wax and dirt from the divots in the bone handles. It worked out great. After removing all that hard residue and throwing on a few coats of ren wax I gotta say the old girl cleaned up pretty nice

That does look good. Good job.

that's a real beauty there jxr! did you do anything out of the ordinary to clean the bone? any tricks? I've never gone beyond soap/water/scrungy/retired toothbrush.

Cletus Awreetus wrote:that's a real beauty there jxr! did you do anything out of the ordinary to clean the bone? any tricks? I've never gone beyond soap/water/scrungy/retired toothbrush.

I was doing the soap and water routine on other knives and kept getting frustrated with how long it takes to get old wax and dirt off. I wanted to try alcohol but not on a knife I cared about because I wasn't sure if it would affect the dye - that's why I bought this severely neglected bone handled knife to experiment on. Most isopropyl is 70% (typical rubbing alcohol) but my supermarket store brand was 91% so I went with that. After trying a few methods I zeroed in on a winner. I used a q-tip to liberally coat the handle (starts evaporating fast) and then scrubbed it with a blue scotch brite pad. You only get about a 10 second window before the alcohol needs to be re-applied but after 4-5 cycles that handle was completely stripped - and the dye was not effected at all. After that a few coats of ren wax had the handles looking brand new.

This morning I filed both kicks and now with the blades sitting right I think I'll shine up the bolsters a bit and mark this one 'complete.'

'

Crushed it!

And now you've got a beautiful old bone Boker to carry.

[quote="Tsar Bomba"]Crushed it!
word!! a fine job indeed!

and count me another big fan of Ren Wax. that stuff is for real, believe the hype.

Tsar Bomba wrote:Crushed it!

And now you've got a beautiful old bone Boker to carry.

Cleetus Awreetus wrote:word!! a fine job indeed!

and count me another big fan of Ren Wax. that stuff is for real, believe the hype.

Thanks for the kind words. This was a fun project and I learned some good stuff along the way. I don't have much experience cleaning up/trying to restore knives. I have a pile of them to attack now!

Final pic - I sanded the bolsters up to 2000 and consider this one done now

Great job, looks better than ever

nice knife ,good job