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sheffield trade knife

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windwalker_au

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got this in the post today its a J Nowill & sons 6-1/2"Sheffield trade knife,its very good value for $27 ozy carbon blade and shaving sharp,i took the sharp edges of the handle wood and gave it a few coats of oil its nice wood looks like oak.
Bernie :thumbsup:
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I have one of these and its a very good knife. It represents a fairly late pattern scalper of the 1840-60 period because of the straight back and full untapered tang. The pin pattern on it goes a bit earlier into the early 1800's. Its a great camp knife that I have used for everything from butchering game to chopping herbs and field dressing deer and elk to even dispatching a farm raised hog for the freezer. Its one of my favorite factory made knives. I'd like one of their butchers, but I've put off ordering one until the US dollar rebounds a bit.

Sean
 
You can also surf the net for Sheffield Knives, Jack Adams. I spoke to Jack Adams quite a bit about bringing out one of their 6" butcher knives with a double taper half tang but the set up made it impossible. Good guy. You can order over the net or call them overseas. They'll take a credit card and do the exchange rate for you.
 
Sean said:
I have one of these and its a very good knife. It represents a fairly late pattern scalper of the 1840-60 period because of the straight back and full untapered tang. The pin pattern on it goes a bit earlier into the early 1800's. Its a great camp knife that I have used for everything from butchering game to chopping herbs and field dressing deer and elk to even dispatching a farm raised hog for the freezer. Its one of my favorite factory made knives. I'd like one of their butchers, but I've put off ordering one until the US dollar rebounds a bit.

Sean

Sean i have talked with j nowill &sons as they have bin in around since 1700 they said that is the way they have always done the scalper trade knife with a full tang and straight back and they sent a lot out to america and australia in the 18th century.
bernie :thumbsup:
 
There are a few articles you can request from the Museum of the Fur Trade on the scalpers You can find them at www.furtrade.org. You can also look at the Fur Trade Cutlery Sketchbook. Look at Pichou's knife for a nice earlier example, upswept point, tapered tang, slotted hardwood haft pinned in place. These are the kind of knives you see dug from arch-sites at fur posts in the West. The 5&6" butchers they make are a pretty good representative of that type of knife through the 1840's if you discount the full tang. The longer ones with the choil date a bit later.

Sean
 
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windwalker_au said:
Sean i have talked with j nowill &sons as they have bin in around since 1700 they said that is the way they have always done the scalper trade knife with a full tang and straight back and they sent a lot out to america and australia in the 18th century.
bernie :thumbsup:

I don't want to rip on these dudes, or their trade knife, so I'll just say that, going over the details of their reproduction and all of the originals I have seen, the archeological record does not verify their statement, for the Mid-Continental U.S. and Canada.
:v
 
For what it's worth, Jack Adams told me the same thing. I originally got in touch with him because of a scalper found with crossed keys and a Crown and I was trying to ID the maker. He said it wasn't their mark. He did say the same thing, Nowill shipped lots of knives to North America. In any event when I asked for some details where the Nowill knives were shipped- to NW Co. ? HBC? The American Fur Company?- Jack didn't give me an answer.

An archivist in Sheffield told me that a lot of the knives were subcontracted products. Let me give an example.
Say H. Cutler is listed as a merchant. Say he obtained orders for knives to be shipped to the American Fur Company but the order is too large for him to complete. He therefore splits up the order and distributed the work among various Sheffield cutlers. All these different shops had stamps from the major firms, in this case the subcontractors would use the +/F stamp of H. Cutler. In many cases cutlers only made the blades which were then sent to half pressers for the handles. The firm of Jack Adams began as half pressers and they eventually bought out Nowill. Getting back to our example, all the subcontracted items were then collected by H. Cutler and shipped to North America. So, Nowill may well have been making scalpers and for a variety of middlemen. If he was making them for the NW Co/HBC he would have stamped them L/+, or if for H. Cutler. then +/F, etc. Or at least that's what I've been told.

On Scalpers, has anyone EVER found an original with a full tang?

On Butcher knives, has anyone EVER found an original with a full tang?

By "original" I mean pre-1840 recovered from a North American site and documented as such.

I have not found any original full tang knives although I am continually told full tangs were made. I don't doubt that they were, just never have found any.
 
Sean said:
There are a few articles you can request from the Museum of the Fur Trade on the scalpers You can find them at www.furtrade.org. You can also look at the Fur Trade Cutlery Sketchbook. Look at Pichou's knife for a nice earlier example, upswept point, tapered tang, slotted hardwood haft pinned in place. These are the kind of knives you see dug from arch-sites at fur posts in the West. The 5&6" butchers they make are a pretty good representative of that type of knife through the 1840's if you discount the full tang. The longer ones with the choil date a bit later.
Sean

Amigo - not all included are as described - the English trade knives for Mexico and the Southwest were were full tanged, birdshead (pgs 38 and 42 of the Sketchbook have examples)...

2) While the artifact knives are important - how many have been dug and of that number how many are ascribed to Nowill? windwalker made his statement regarding Nowill and not other makers so basing opposition statements on other makers knives is a null argument...

all of the originals I have seen, the archeological record does not verify their statement
Not to be argumentative, but how many has that been? I'm willing to bet a fairly small number when - now consider what percentage that is of the total number shipped to America, which was in the thousands and by several different makers. FWIW - I've handled around 200 or so from various areas and eras and am unwilling to make any absolute statment...
What areas did they come from? as I noted above different styles were made and shipped to different areas -
Please I'm not saying ANY of the statments I quoted are wrong, but rather they are limited in scope (when one considers the thousands of trade knives shipped) and may also be limited in area i.e. basing ones knowledge of the entire trade on just one area and/or time period is a limited view.

Now - I've got a question - has anyone seen an example or had described what the buck handled trade knives (listed on various trade lists) looked like? They are usually
 
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The grind is didderent from originals, which exhibited a full "V" taper from back to edge. These are rectangular in cross section from the back to near the edge, then the V begins. OTher than that, fine looking knife but the grind matters as much to me as the tang, etc.
 
Amigo - not all included are as described - the English trade knives for Mexico and the Southwest were were full tanged, birdshead (pgs 38 and 42 of the Sketchbook have examples)...

Senor Labonte,

I understand what you're saying, but me thinks those are apples and oranges to the common scalper of the period that Nowill is talking about.

Sean

PS Sorry Rich. I clicked on the wrong post to reply to.
 
LaBonte, etal. I too have that book so lets review a bit.
Now I am open to all comments so what follows are just ideas.
p38. The full tang, birdhead. In re-reading the description it is unclear whether this type knife was from Europe or made by Mexican blacksmiths. It was my impression it was made by Mexican blacksmiths. The long parallel thickness also seems more like a knife from bar stock which doesn't make sense.
and there's more...Bernard Levine, the knife expert, gave me some tips on how to "READ" stuff. Watch out when you see words like "This style of knife is apparently" "It is very similar" "typical of knives made". What the author is telling you is the knife shown has no history. It could be a replica or date to the 1900's. What you want is,"this scalper was recovered along with many other artifacts from excavation work at Pine City Minnesota, a post of the NW Co. that operated from 1803 to 1805."
p 42. The top knife. These Sheffield knives are said to be made between 1821 and the 1850's. The drawing shows a stamp with the word Sheffield. Now, to me, when I see Sheffield in a stamp mark it screams 1891 or later because that's when the US law went into effect on requiring the country of manufacture to be shown. I realize this particular knife was for the Mexican market but the Sheffield in the stamp seems wrong.
The bottom knife, the bolster to me makes it more a cartouche rather than a scalper.
In any event, you are right about full tangs,they sure did exist. I am pretty much focused on butcher knives and scalpers sold on the northern plains by the American Fur Company and the HBC. When I said I had not yet seen any full tangs, it was of those styles I meant.
And... half tang butcher knives are shown in the 1930 Wilson catalog so just because a knife has a half tang doesn't necessarily mean it's pre-1840.
On the full tangs, as I said Jack Adams told me the same thing about the full tang and I once spoke to the company historian at Russell/Green River who said they from the start had both half and full tangs but once again when I pressed him on any extant full tangs I got zip.
Still, doesn't mean there weren't any, just I haven't seen one yet. Although the numbers of recovered scalpers are limited, it does seem odd that they are all (to my knowledge) half tangs. And, if they were forged and high carbon steel was hard to come by, a forged half tang would be a lot easier and cheaper to produce.
On the production issue Sean raised, if anyone does a lot of forging maybe they can answer this: can you work two or three blades at once? This could reduce the time you would otherwise waste waiting for a blade to get back up to forging temperature. If this is doable, how many blades could one man forge in a day?
 
Dave,

You're right about the documentation, but what you describe is rare and usually limited in application because it is degraded from being in the ground. On some things Ol' Charlie Hanson played it a little faster and loser than others on documentation and dating, but he's not alone in this. Museums and private collectors always seem to fudge their dates to the earliest side in order to maximize the value of their piece. Or maybe they are just being optimistic.

You're also right about the Sheffield stamp on the Mexican trade knife. I think its important to realize that the patterns of the scalper, butcher and to a lesser extent the cartouche knife were developed with and for the fur companies. These patterns changed a little over time in details, but followed generally the basic pattern. Away from the fur fields there is documented evidence that Sheffield makers like Cutler tried to exploit markets like Mexico by the 1830's and would produce different patterns to suit that market.

On the shops, I believe Chuck has the right idea. The big work was done in shops with trip hammers, dies and shear patterns as well as water powered grinding wheels, not by little guys with a hammer and anvil. You aren't going to find a lot of guys today who can tell you about production on a trip hammer. Anyway, then the forged and ground results likely went out to piece-workers to finish just like J.J. Henry's cast rifle mountings went next door to File Town to be worked over by the German immigrants who lived there in their shoddy little, dark apartments. The English of Sheffield, Birmingham, and London developed and perfected that model of production. The numbers that Chuck sites of 30,000 workers in Sheffield might well be 'back of the napkin' numbers that include forgers, grinders, finishers, as well as other support people like wood millers, foundry people, charcoal makers, etc.

Sean
 
As far as Sheffield marketing, I will additionally point out how quickly they exploited the "Bowie" market. Despite current popular modern terminology, many of these "Bowies" were marked "ARKANSAS TOOTHPICK."

I'm still curious about the origin of the "Brass inlaid" cartouche knife handles. The blade is just a common variant of a table knife, but where did that handle come from?????? :hmm:

In this topic or the other, someone asked about half tang butchers. The early butchers I see have whittle or rat-tail tangs.
:v
 
Sean: what I was talking about is more than fudge. I wanted to duplicate the Spanish locking knife shown on page 244 on George Neumann's Swords & Blades of the American Revolution. This would be the knife at the top of the page. A similar type locking knife is shown on p 9 of James A. Hanson's Fur Trade cutlery sketchbook. The afore-mentioned Sheffield Knife book on p 192 has an ad of Saml. Hancock & Sons with Spanish lock knives listed. These locking knives are some what similar to the Opaki but the original style is different. Why did I want to do this? Wyeth was supposed to have issued his men Spanish locking knives with 5 1/2" blades (Carl P. Russell). In any event Bernard says that knife in the Neumann book is Italian and it was made in 1920. Whoa! That's a lot different than the Neumann book with "circa 1760-1850". Well says BL what's the book SAY?
Well...the book says "This excavated blade STYLE is COMMONLY recovered from... It was a TYPE.......was USUALLY..., they usually..." There is also shown a rusted blade described as "Excavated" but nothing like that is said of the nice looking knife with the handle. In other words Neumann didn't say the knife was an original, it was a style that was... but if you're not careful it's sure easy to think you are looking at original stuff.

Charles Hanson, I think we need to remember he was sort of a pioneer so he needs to be cut some slack. Either Gail Potter or James told me that Charles went up to Manitoba and went through the HBC archives where the NW Co. papers are held (BTW the NW Co. papers are in the employee records of the HBC -this misfiling makes them hard to find) In any event there was correspondence to Fenton (the cutler that supplied the scalpers)to use the "old +/L mark" and CH thought the mark was a trade mark of the NWCo. not Fenton. Fenton registered the +/L in his name right after the NWCo./HBC merger so in truth CH may have been right or the mark may have always been that of Fenton. In any event the notation in the sketchbook on the +/L mark could be wrong or right but that's a matter of interpretation.

On the blade grinding- how fine a finish is possible? Would there be grinding marks? A silversmith at Colonial Williamsburg told me he hammered out teapots absolutely smooth, is it possible to forge a blade that smooth? It seems the scale would still have to be taken off after heat treating but then the scalpers may have been sold with sort of rough finished blades.

Pichou- James Hanson says p 12 of the Sketchbook the scales are cast brass with thin horn plates pressed into them. The book shows a cross section where the material is really thin 1/16 or less. I've always wondered if you can cast that thin??? Seems a forged part is more plausible
The butchers with the rat tail tangs. By "butcher" I think of a really thin knife like the Russell Green Rivers. It seems a stick tang would snap off. Do you remember where you saw them? Were they French? I think the French knives were thicker.
 
I've seen those scales. Yes, they are cast. Those apprenticeships weren't for nuthin back then. They had talent.

Forgot to mention, rat tail and forged bolster. :surrender:
 
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