Knife Collecting

Japanese blades have enchanted and endured for centuries with no end in sight.

The lure of the Eastern style has captivated cutlery artisans for centuries, and interpretations of it remain alive and well, blending tradition seamlessly with modern techniques and materials while staying true to their roots in Japanese culture. While there is plenty of skill required and the artist’s eye lends its perspective, custom knifemakers continue to produce wonderful examples in fusions of blade, tsuka (handle) and furniture—and they are quick to explain the reasons why.

Denis Tyrell

“Japanese blades have both an elegance and a mystique to them,” said maker Denis Tyrell of Livermore, California. “They have subtle curves that really appeal to me. They are also very complex to build and get right—I’m still striving for a higher standard.”

Setting out on a creative path that brought modern and traditional methods together, Tyrell made great strides toward that standard in his Silver Moon katana. “I appreciate all the complex fittings on these swords, so I try to keep to that mix,” he noted. “The blade is where I step out a bit more into the modern, using damascus steel and other techniques to really show it off.”

The result of Tyrell’s effort succeeds in highlighting the 29-inch damascus blade and handle wrapped in faux leather. The fittings are silver, while the guard is mild steel with silver inlay. The blade presents something of a surprise with its damascus cladding over silver with a solid core of 80CrV2 carbon steel. To preserve the integrity of the damascus, the blade was not heat treated. The sword is 40 inches overall and the blade grind is convex.

“The melting point of silver is 1,763 degrees Fahrenheit,” Denis added, “so it’s challenging to forge that together with the damascus cladding and core without melting it. I also found getting the fittings perfect so a single pressure-fitted peg will hold it all together with no slack to be a challenge.” Denis said the Silver Moon sold for $9,500. The owner has invested in an authentic Japanese-style sword that not only exhibits great talent but also pays tribute to the historical appeal of those produced in the past.

Drew Lininger

Drew Lininger of Belgrade, Montana, honed his knifemaking skills further with his Tanto Kwaiken, a stylized version of the small, single-edged dagger carried by the Samurai for close self-defense.

“I love slimmer, more streamlined knives, and the Japanese style really appeals to me with its simple lines that make for a complex knife,” he related. “I also like how you can scale the designs easily. You can basically make the same knife in multiple sizes without having to change anything but the dimensions.”

The Tanto Kwaiken has a 4-inch blade and 8.25-inch overall length. Drew decided on AEB-L stainless blade steel complemented with a handle of jade-colored G-10, its fibers presenting a pleasant textured look approaching the ricasso. The guard is Grade 5 titanium. The most difficult aspect of the knife’s production was succeeding with the precision required for the numerous angles and lines to meet at the same apex without variation on all sides of the handle.

One departure from tradition is the blade grind. “It is a 6-inch hollow grind,” Drew commented, “definitely not standard for traditional kwaikens. I had originally seen the full hollow grind on some folding knives and wanted to try it on a kwaiken.”

Jim Perkins

Jim Perkins of Garden City, Kansas, built a superb wakizashi at 28.25 inches overall with a 19-inch damascus blade consisting of 1,724 layers of 1095 carbon and 15N20 nickel alloy steels. The stunning blade is accented with copper habaki (collar), seppa (spacer) and tsuba (guard), and a handle of gleaming Japanese maple. Jim’s price for a similar sword would be around $2,500, and he likely would relish the opportunity to take another stab at such a piece.

“For me, the appeal of the Japanese style is in the history and the flow of the traditional blades,” he offered, “along with challenging myself to make the symmetry of mine as aesthetically pleasing to the eye as possible. If you look at traditional Japanese blades, you see a natural beauty that has been a tradition of the master smiths who have made them. It is hard not to be inspired by their work.”

Giving a nod to his preference for modern materials, Jim also takes advantage of some conveniences in the shop. “Since I’m a bit older, the hydraulic press is invaluable,” he explained. “It saves my shoulder from the abuse hammering out the steel would inflict. That said, while I am working the steel I try to keep in my mind’s eye the process the masters might have used, and attempt to honor their traditions the best I can using modern materials and methods. Examples of this would be that I ‘bed’ the tang in the handle and my milgraining treatment to the tsuba.”

Jim describes the wakizashi as full takedown with the removal of the handle pin. He fits the tang to each side of the handle using a saya nomi, Japanese for scabbard chisel, made by Walter Sorrells. Afterward, Jim glues the handle sides together for fitting to the tang, applies petroleum jelly to the fittings and the tang, and fills the handle cavity with epoxy, which he allows to cure for approximately three hours.

From there he removes the handle from the tang, cleans off the petroleum jelly, and resets the handle in the tang to allow final setup. Jim works the tsuba with a hammer from the center toward the edge, and hammers a design into the material with a small ball-pein hammer. In this particular case, he finalized a textured finish on the engraving bench with a milgrain tool.

“I allow the copper tsuba, seppa and habaki to patina naturally through handling as opposed to using a chemical application,” Jim said, “and I would be remiss not to mention the meticulous requirements of prepping the steel for each forging session. Keeping the steel as pristine as possible for the next forging session to eliminate any forge welding failures is tremendously important. The discipline required to do this increases as the layer count goes up, but it is an absolute necessity to avoid disappointment in myself or the final product.”

Kieren McNeilly

Capitalizing on available media such as books and YouTube videos while also talking with other makers, Kieren McNeilly of Warwick, Queensland, Australia, stepped into Japanese-style knifemaking with optimism. “I highly recommend anyone thinking about making one to just go out and do the same,” he smiled.

McNeilly’s work is a reflection of other aspects of his life. “My house has touches of Japanese art all around, from Samurai masks to antique tsuba and more things not related to knives,” he said. “Japanese knives are simple, well-thought-out designs, all built for a purpose. I’m also a big fan of a satin or polished finish on a blade with contrasting forged texture, which is another common thing you see in Japanese knives. Same for the swords. All parts of the katana serve a purpose, from differential heat treatment of the blade to the ray skin down to the mekugi [pin] that holds it all together.”

McNeilly’s traditional style tanto is 16.5 inches overall with an 11-inch blade forged from W2 tool steel. The saya (scabbard) is buffalo horn and the handle is raw stingray hide. The latter did not go through any dyeing or tanning process, which keeps the material hard and stiff.

“Three areas of this knife gave me issues,” he related. “The first was the heat treatment when the water quench failed. Luckily, I had no cracks. The blade didn’t fully harden, so as an easy fix I went back through my normalization cycles, clayed the blade again and then quenched it in oil.

“The second issue was the constant attention needed to get the width and diameter of the handle and saya to match as closely as possible when sheathed, with perfect fit-up and zero gaps. Lastly was working with the raw stingray hide. The calcium nodules are extremely hard and make cutting the material difficult. The hide also has to be soaked in water to take shape around the handle.”

To solve the problem of gaps developing as the raw stingray hide dried, McNeilly used masking tape to add mass to the handle and then removed the tape to allow the hide to shrink to the proper position. “It left just enough space for the hide to shrink that last little bit,” he remembered, “and this still took me a few attempts to get it right.”

Using a combination of Japanese and Western methods and materials, Kieren achieved magnificent results. “I have not used tamahagane, a precious bloomery steel, and if I were to, I would make a point to use all traditional materials and more traditional techniques,” he concluded. “Synthetic materials like G-10 and Micarta® work great as substitutes for more traditional materials like bone or horn, although I love how horn and bone can add a lot of character to a piece.”

• Knife Collecting Tips
• How to Collect Knives
• What is Knife Provenance?
• Knife Collector: What Personality Are You?

The company name stamped on the blade isn’t always the manufacturer’s name.

Who doesn’t like solving a good mystery? Remember the mystery game Clue, with its colorful game board depicting an old mansion, a stack of character cards, various miniature weapons, a detective’s notebook, a set of dice, and clue cards? The object of the game is to determine who murdered the victim, where the crime took place, and which weapon was used. Each player assumes the role of one of six suspects and attempts to solve the whodunnit by strategically moving around the game board that represents rooms of the mansion and collecting clues about the circumstances of the murder from other players. Clue is cited in several Top 10 lists as the fifth highest-selling board game of all time, with over 200 million copies sold.

Mysteries regarding knife production abound because thousands of cutlery manufacturers exist in the United States. Collecting vintage or antique knives inevitably turns up many examples with mysterious or unknown tang stamps and origins, even for seasoned collectors. To many knife enthusiasts, determining which factories produced specific models is unimportant. However, for serious and curious collectors interested in researching some recent finds, tracking down the origins of unknown tang stamps is akin to solving a cutlery history mystery.

In most cases, the finders of these unknown specimens can reference highly regarded publications with lists of knife manufacturers, descriptions of tang stamps, production dates, countries of origin, and sometimes even desirability ratings or collectible rankings.

Such books include those authored by John Goins and Bernard Levine. I use the references much like a history book since they are devoted explicitly to production knife history, perusing years, dates, details and fascinatingly unique information. Of course, there is also the Internet and its various search engines, which, if used correctly, can uncover published data on most little-known knife tang stamps. Keep in mind, however, that much of the Internet, especially forums, consists of a series of posts made by individuals, some experts, but many not. Most posts are simply an individual’s opinion and are not based on factual material such as military contracts or production knife company catalogs and ephemera.

Like detective work, looking for clues is the key to solving most knife mysteries. Many knives can reveal clues to their history if one knows where to research and what to look for. Unfortunately, just when you think you’ve traced a particular knife back to its manufacturing origins, you inevitably discover that thousands of models were not even manufactured by the company indicated on the tang stamp, but were, in fact, made on contract by different factories. Those factories derived a significant portion of their business taking orders. In other words, the stamping on the blade, which generally indicates a manufacturer and city of origin, may not be the factory or the city where the knife was made.

Production knife companies can be divided into two categories. The first manufactures blades bearing their own stampings and makes few, if any, knives for other businesses. Remington Cutlery appears to be one of those manufacturers that produces only knives bearing the company’s full name. Remington did have a couple of production lines, one with knives stamped in a straight-line “Remington,” but it only produced its own blades and did not work with outside contracts.

The second are those that not only produced knives bearing the official company name but also accepted contracts to make models for any of several major retail outlets needing factory-fixed blades and folders. For many manufacturers in the second category, making knives for retailers or putting other companies’ brand names on tang stamps equated to a significant source of revenue.

Knives On Contract

Some production knife companies made blades on contract to spread their knives throughout the United States. This was particularly important for manufacturers like the Western States Cutlery of Boulder, Colorado, which had difficulty selling its knives east of the Great Plains. Other companies include industry giants like Camillus, Colonial, Western Cutlery and Kinfolks. Some outlets contracting with Western Cutlery to make knives for them included Sears, Montgomery Wards, Coast Hardware, Western Auto, Spiegel and Shapleigh Hardware.

Camillus is perhaps the best example of a production knife company known for copyrighting dozens of tang stamps, yet the manufacturer made all the blades. The list of those stampings takes up pages but includes Kingston, Clover, Sta-Sharp, Dunlap, Kwik-Kut, Streamline, OVB (Our Very Best), High Carbon Steel, Keen Kutter, Kent, Sword Brand, Tip Top and Buck. While most stampings are contract-made knives (like Keen Kutter and Buck), others are merely Camillus Cutlery’s sub-brands.

With the data well documented regarding the practice of knife manufacturers producing contract brands, a look at specific examples is in order. The origins of many of the tang stamps started as mysteries that were eventually solved through clues inherent to the knives.

Western Cutlery knives hold some specific clues, which, once recognized, can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were made by the company even when stamped with another name. The first and most obvious clue lies in the aluminum pommels that Western used on its various hunting knives. Unlike the rounded, mushroom-shaped or ovoid pommels of other knife manufacturers, Western employed a bird’s-beak pommel.

The aluminum pommel extends smoothly from the last series of colorful handle spacers to form a bird’s beak and head. The top of the pommel is not flat, as most others, but slanted like a bird’s head, sloping down at an angle toward its back. Recognizing this obvious clue, it becomes easy to put a hunting knife stamped “Western” next to those stamped “Craftsman,” “Western Field,” and “Hawthorne” and recognize that Western Cutlery made them all, and those featuring alternative tang stamps were built under contract for Sears and Montgomery Ward.

A second clue to whether Western Cutlery manufactured specific knives is those stamped with a unique patent number, 1,967,479. The number refers to a patent by Harlow Platts described as a “novel and simple method of forming a handle for a tool which is durable, strong and which cannot be displaced or loosened.” The patent refers to Western’s double-tang handle configuration, which is two flattened steel rods that run from the blade to the pommel and between which fiber and leather spacers are stacked to form a handle that does not move.

Since only Western knives incorporated the patented handle design, it becomes a simple matter to look at a typical hunting knife from that era to see whether the steel tangs are visible on both sides of the handle, with the spacers lying between the two—Western most certainly made knives with this design feature.

Round Leather Spacers

Most other hunting knife handles from the time were made with a single round rod extending from the base of the blade to the pommel. Round leather handle spacers with holes in the middle are stacked tightly, with the rod running through them, for the length of the handle between the blade and pommel. Generally, the rod is threaded so that a round, usually brass nut can be tightened to sandwich and secure the handle spacers between the blade and pommel, making a durable handle. On these knives, the top ends of the aluminum pommels have round indentations where threaded nuts are seated. Marble’s knives are examples of this handle construction.

Over several months, I accumulated four hunting knives with a wide-blade style known as a “woodcraft” pattern popularized by the Marble Arms Company. The knives had four different tang stamps, one reading JEAN CASE CUT. CO., a second, BELNAP, LOUISVILLE, the third, HOLLINGER, and the fourth was stamped KINFOLKS, INC. I was already familiar with the Kinfolks stamp, as I have always favored this wide-blade style. I also knew Kinfolks had a knife factory built in the 1930s but did not realize that the manufacturer was potentially involved in contracts with other companies to produce their knives.

An examination of the four hunting knives laid side by side clearly showed that they were almost identical in blade length, had the same highly polished chrome-vanadium blades, and identical aluminum guards and pommels with brass centering nuts.

If I needed yet another piece of evidence to prove that Kinfolks made the four knives, the spacer pattern proved a strong clue. The knives had identical stacked leather handles ending near the guards with alternating black and white spacers—five black spacers separated by three white spacers. Finally, looking at the sheaths was the icing on the cake. Although all four hunting knives had sheaths of the same length and width, with identical rivet spacing, one was patterned differently from previously known Kinfolks examples. Wondering if this last leather sheath with a unique stamping was original to the knife and produced by Kinfolks, I turned to a book by Dean Elliot Case titled Kinfolks Knives, a History of Cutlery and Cousins.

Looking at the illustrations of various Kinfolks knives in the book, I came across a picture of a sheath identical to that which housed the Jean Case woodcraft knife. The mystery was solved, and all four hunting knives were made by Kinfolks, even though they had different stampings.

A unique hunting knife appeared recently in an Internet auction. Being attracted to colored hunting knife handles from days gone by, I bid on it. My winning bid soon arrived, and opening the package revealed a hunting knife and a leather sheath with the word “Ideal” embossed in script lettering. The blade tang was also etched “Ideal.” The mystery was in what production knife company made it. I noticed that, at the top of the leather sheath, were two snaps, one on each side of the pommel. Those snaps led me to rustle through my collection of hunting knives, explicitly looking for knife/axe combination sets. I found just the set, made by Kinfolks, with the same two snaps on the knife sheath and an identical set on the hatchet sheath. Taking the newly purchased Ideal hunting knife, I aligned the snaps on that sheath to the Kinfolks knife/axe combination set. “Snap, snap,” a perfect match.

Examining the leather embossing on the Ideal hunting knife sheath proved to be a perfect match to the Kinfolks sheath for the knife/axe combination set. My investigation solved which company made the Ideal hunting knife with red handle slabs. It was a part of a Kinfolks hunting knife set with an Ideal stamping. I am sure a matching hatchet with an Ideal stamp and a red handle is somewhere.

Different Handle Material

One of Western’s most interesting knife styles was a wide-bladed pattern with a different handle material from what it usually used. Western Cutlery was generally known for its stacked-leather knife handles. The H-shaped leather washers are stacked together with various patterns of fiber spacers along the company’s patented double-tang handle, all held in place by an aluminum pommel that is double-pinned to two steel tang sections.

The knives I acquired are stamped “West-Cut,” indicating Western’s less expensive line of knives, most of which incorporate stacked-leather handles. Each of these knives, however, enlists a thin aluminum guard and a shiny, molded handle, which narrows at the butt to form a quasi-shaped pommel. The handles are plastic, deep brown with specks and swirls of lighter browns.

Finding several other examples, which I assumed to be West-Cut’s as well, I was struck by the stamping on the blades, which included Shapleigh’s, Colonial, Providence, Viking, New York, and yet another with an arched line reading “The Coast Cutlery, Portland, Oregon.” The Viking example had an aluminum handle. The Colonial was bright orange, and the Coast Cutlery (not pictured) model featured a relatively thick aluminum guard with a red spacer between two aluminum pieces.

Once again, the mystery lies in which productive factory made the hunting knives. Colonial Cutlery of Providence, RI, was known for making thousands of knife styles with colored handle materials. Living in Colorado, I have located a half-dozen examples of these molded, brown-handled knives.

Also, I know that Coast Cutlery of Portland, OR, had extensive contracts with Western for producing small red and white bird-and-trout knives, reinforcing Western’s status as the maker of the molded-handle knives. The “Shapleigh’s St. Louis” example is a monkey wrench in the works, as is the “Viking, New York.” Both are located quite far from Boulder, and Western Cutlery generally had few contracts to make knives east of the Mississippi River. Colonial Cutlery in Providence is even farther away.

Since Western has been out of business since 1992, and all company records are available to collectors and researchers, the idea that Western produced all these knives is up in the air. A letter to current Providence Cutlery owners was also a dead end. Who made these colored, molded-handle knives? That’s a mystery yet to be solved.

Solving cutlery’s history mysteries involves following the clues, comparing examples, looking at knife construction, examining the sheaths, reading company histories, talking to other collectors, and formulating educated guesses.

• Knife Collecting Tips
• How to Collect Knives
• What is Knife Provenance?
• Knife Collector: What Personality Are You?