All About Pocket Knives

jerryd6818 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 5:19 pm So does that mean this is pre-1975 or that it is a Boker made Henckels? Looks awfully new to me. It's the only Henckels marked knife I own and I got it in 2011.

kootenay joe wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 3:29 am The very old Henckels, circa 1900 often had very thick stock for the master blade. At some point they began to use slightly thinner stock but still thicker than that used by other manufacturers. There was a third change to slightly slimmer blade stock and these knives have the Henckels pattern numbers stamped on the tang.
I have sold almost all my old Henckels knives so i cannot show this in pictures. For example i had 2 serpentine pen knives, both being the same Henckels pattern and both having Henckels bone for handles. There were identical except for 2 things: one had slightly thicker stock for the master blade and no pattern number. The other had slightly thinner blade stock and the rear tang was stamped with the Henckels pattern number.
Does anyone know when Henckels began marking their folding knives with the pattern number ?
I had thought these might have been early contract knives but Neal says that the Boker made 'Henckels' are Boker patterns.
The knives i am speaking about are Henckels patterns so therefore none are contract knives.
kj

jerryd6818 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 5:19 pm So does that mean this is pre-1975 or that it is a Boker made Henckels? Looks awfully new to me. It's the only Henckels marked knife I own and I got it in 2011.

kootenay joe wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 11:01 pm Just to be sure i understand correctly: the first "generation" of knives made by Boker for Henckels are Boker patterns, not the Henckels patterns. Correct ?
kj

knifeaholic wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 11:16 pm Interesting discussion of the Henckels brand on pocket knives.

In the early 1990's, I recall two things related to JA Henckels pocket knives.

Up to that time, I had not seen any new JA Henckels pocket knives for sale since maybe the early 70's when I started knife collecting.

Of course, their forged kitchen knives were widely sold.

About 1990 or 91, SMKW started selling JA Henckels pocket knives made by Boker in Solingen. These were very nice, high quality knives, made in the unmistakable Boker patterns but with short pattern numbers, like HK-1-B, HK-2-B, etc.

They were available with red bone and genuine stag handles, and some had "HAND FORGED" marked on the back tang, very unusual for pocket knives at that time.

I wanted to see if JA Henckels corporate was actually distributing these knives themselves, so I contacted them by phone at their US office in New York. They sent me a brochure, but the only pocket knives offered by JA Henckels corporate at that time were knives that resembled Swiss Army knives.

So based on that, my assumption was that SMKW licensed the JA Henckels brand and had Boker make them an exclusive line of pocket knives.

And I recently had a JA Henckels "Swiss Army" knife, the first one that I actually ever had in hand. Unmistakable - made by Victorinox, identical to their basic pattern.

Mason wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 11:11 pm

jerryd6818 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 5:19 pm So does that mean this is pre-1975 or that it is a Boker made Henckels? Looks awfully new to me. It's the only Henckels marked knife I own and I got it in 2011.

That's fine looking Boker-made folder for Henckels which dates to the late 1990s. Enclosed is a catalog illustration from 1997 showing the stag handled version with your jigged bone model described below.

Sharpnshinyknives wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 4:51 pm Thank you Neal for clearing this up for us. It’s nice to have this as a reference now for when this question comes up again as it does from time to time.
I try my best to label the Henckels I sell in my store as either from Boker or from Henckels so folks who purchase them will know.
I know the patterns for Boker are the same as the ones they made for Henckels, but I honestly think the Henckels made by Boker are made of higher quality material than Boker used on their own brand of knives, just my opinion. I have handled a lot of both over the years and have seen a difference in them that I can’t explain otherwise.

bestgear wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 11:45 pm This thread is EXACTLY why I support AAPK - thank you Neal for starting and all the contributions so far.

orvet wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 8:11 pm In the 1980s when managing a Cutlery store in Oregon my sales representative for Henckels was a gentleman named John Allison.
John had a hobby of repairing pocket knives. He was the first person I ever knew who did such a thing. He related to me a fascinating story; on one of his visits to the factory in Solingen one of the higher-ups at Henckels approached him and made him an offer. He said, "As you know Henckles has not made a pocket knife since 1960. In this room are all of the leftover parts for the knives when we discontinuing production in 1960. We understand that you repair pocket knives so we would like to make you an offer. We sold a lot of pocket knives in the United States over the last many years. We would like to service these customers but it's not feasible to have them send the knives Germany. If you will repair knives for our old Henckels customers and charge them a nominal fee for the repair we will give you all of the parts we have left in this room." (This is not a direct quote but it is as close as I remember have John told the story.)

John said I could not take all of the parts because I could not have gotten them all in my garage even without the cars. But Henckels shipped to him all of the parts he chose and shipped them at their expense.
John said there were parts for just about every knife that Henckles had ever made; full sets of replacement blades, back springs liners, handle material, from stag to Boeing, Pearl, ivory and even some tortoise shell. There were pins of all different sizes, bolsters, everything you would need to repair the old Henckels knives.
He showed me his favorite EDC, a small two blade Jack with tortoiseshell handles. He said he'd like tortoiseshell because it has a warm feel to it. I must admit it was the first time I had ever seen a knife with tortoiseshell handles, it was very nice!

I don't know what the books say about when Henckels stopped making pocket knives and if they space them out gradually or if they did it all at once. I am certainly not disagreeing with what anyone said here because I honestly don't know aside from what John told me. My assumption had been that the production was stopped pretty much all at once from what John said. They may have been selling off Old Stock years later as I know some of the American companies have done.

Whether Henckels cease production of the pocket knives at one time or gradually is not something I am prepared to argue one way or the other. I just thought some of you might enjoy hearing the story that John told me. The conversation took place in the 1980s, circa 1985 to the best of my recollection. Approximately 2010 I made some paring knives for Charlie Campagna. He gave me some stag to put on some of the handles and told me this tag had originally come from the Henckels Factory. I asked him if he had gotten the stag from
John Allison. He said he didn't know the gentleman this day came from as the deal was brokered by Bernard Levine. I asked Bernard if the stag had come from John Allison and he confirmed that it had.

I find history fascinating, not because of data, facts and dates but because of the interaction between people and how that interaction forms a story, the story of people. It also makes the connection between the past and the present. One of the reasons I like repairing heirloom knives and customizing knives for people is that these are often passed down to yet another generation. These become threads that weave objects belonging to previous generations into the tapestry of the present and future Generations lives.
When we stand back and look at the tapestry we begin to understand better than reason for existence.

Quick Steel wrote: ↑Sat Dec 04, 2021 2:00 am There is so much rich information provided here that I am simply making this entry to bring it forward. Giving it a bit more publicity.