Info needed on.................

[knife7knut]

This knife that I just received after winning on e-Bay.It is unmarked but is an advertisement for the Marietta Torpedo Company.The reason I bid on it was because of the unusual shape of the knife and I was curious about the name.

First the knife.The blade at first looked to be German or possibly English but the more I look at it the more it looks like an early Schrade.It hasn't been sharpened all that much so all I did to the blade was clean it off with some Mag Wheel Polish and run it over my diamond hone lightly to true the edge.

Upon trying to research it I came across several references to the Marietta Torpedo Company but none as to where they were located.There is a pdf about a lawsuit against the company but whenever I try to open pdf's my computer locks up.

What I did manage to find out is the companies(there were similar ones)made "torpedoes" for use in a process called,"well shooting".This consisted of lowering the torpedo(usually made of cast iron and filled with explosives)into a non functioning oil well to clear out the paraffin buildup in the bottom.The earliest ones used black powder and were eventually supplanted by ones filled with nitroglycerine. The process was outlawed soon after some rather unpleasant accidents.

An interesting side effect was that this was where the term,"moonlighting" was coined.According to the story,"moonlighters" were persons who mixed up the nitroglycerine during the day and then snuck out to the oil fields at night to detonate them.There is an interesting link to the story which IO will post later.

From what I can gather this company may have been located in Marietta Ohio and I will research this further.

Supposedly there are two companies still in existence today that perform this service only under much stricter conditions.Strangely enough one is located in Bradford PA(where have I heard THAT name before?).

I'm guessing that this knife judging from it's construction was probably made in the early 1900's. So here it is.

[jonet143]

http://www.hurherald.com/cgi-bin/db_scr ... les&id=776