The Glade 4.0 :: View topic - My new old knife

Author:

Stathol [ Thu Oct 27, 2011 1:11 pm ]

Post subject:

My new old knife

I just finished up my next little restoration project last night. This time it's my grandfather's vintage pocket knife.

It's a German Eye brand knife produced (at the time) by the Carl Schlieper family in Solingen, Germany. The shield and tang stamp configuration dates it to somewhere from the mid-70s to 1981. "Vintage" might be stretching it a bit, but hey. The blades are stainless steel and the handle is jigged bone (probably cow shin) stained a reddish-brown color. The bolster, liner, and bolster pins are nickel mixed with perhaps just a hint of brass. The pivots and backspacer are stainless steel.

This particular configuration is called a Stockman: a three-bladed knife having a clip-point main blade, a sheepsfoot blade, and a spay-point blade. It is thus named because of their usefulness to people who raise and care for livestock. The clip-point main blade is similar to a bowie knife, good for both slicing and piercing. The sheepsfoot blade is good for whittling and is designed for trimming hooves (hence the name). The spay point was designed for spaying animals. It also works well for skinning since the tip is unlikely to accidentally pierce.

Some history I've pieced together:

Spoiler:

Side-by-side before and after gallery: http://imgur.com/a/5MwWn
Full After gallery: http://imgur.com/a/SeYuI (includes a couple pictures not in the side-by-side)

Spoiler:

Author:	Stathol [ Thu Oct 27, 2011 1:51 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: My new old knife
Lots and lots of Blue Magic. It took at least a couple hours and many dozens of applications to get to this point. There's still a tiny bit of tarnish/rust left that you can't really see in the picture, but I'm not sure I'm motivated enough to go after it. The interior face of the backspacer is still in bad shape. Probably worse than the exterior. I have no idea how to fix that. It's in such a narrow crevasse that it's very difficult to reach anything down into it, let alone put a lot of elbow grease into it. I'm open to suggestions.

Author:	Stathol [ Thu Oct 27, 2011 3:59 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: My new old knife
It appears to be entirely rust. It looks very similar to the exterior surface of the backspacer in the "before" pictures. I'm hesitant to try electrolysis or any other kind of electrochemical removal in this case. I'm not knowledgeable enough (and probably not willing) to attempt a complete disassembly and reassembly of the knife. This presents a problem for any kind of dip process: One, I'm not certain how that might affect the bone scales (or their stain). I think the shield is also held in place by some kind of adhesive, but I'm not certain. Secondly, the knife is constructed from several different adjacent metals. The backspacers and blade tangs are both stainless steel, the liners appear to be brass, the bolsters and bolster pins are nickel. The worst case is at the ends of the knife where I've got a nickel, brass, steel, brass, steel, brass, nickel sandwich with the steel pivot pins running through the whole mess. I'm not sure I can predict how that's all going to interact, but I'm concerned about galvanic corrosion. I'm also a little wary about how it might affect the etching on the main blade, but that could probably be kept out of the solution. The problem I have is that the brass center divider (does this part have a technical name?) splits the interior compartment up into two sides that are both a bit narrower than a q-tip. But even using q-tips would be...extremely tedious. The thing about Blue Magic (and most metal polishes, I would think) is that you have to keep rotating to a fresh section of cloth if you want to make any progress. I ran across an intriguing old knife/gun cleaning trick that might work. Supposedly you can remove surface rust by applying a little oil and then rubbing it with a graphite pencil. This is heavier rusting than the trick is intended for, but from my experience with the other side of the backspacer I can say that it is just surface rust. Minimal, if any, pitting. It's worth a try, I guess.

Author:	shizuo [ Wed Sep 17, 2014 5:07 am ]
Post subject:	Re: My new old knife
Where did you bought that knife? It's actually cool I wanna have some old knife too.

Author:	Diamondeye [ Wed Sep 17, 2014 9:17 am ]
Post subject:	Re: My new old knife
Same, my first thought was "Stathol found that knife I dropped back in 1987!". Very impressive work, though, that's a nice piece.

Author:	Stathol [ Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:15 am ]
Post subject:	Re:
shuyung wrote: Um...that's a three year old thread. I'm guessing it's another spam account. The thought has certainly crossed my mind, but I could be wrong about that. Unless and until spam actually happens, I'm going to run with it.

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Author:	Kaffis Mark V [ Thu Oct 27, 2011 1:26 pm ]
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Wow. That's an impressive difference on the backspacer there. What'd you use?

Author:	Midgen [ Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:04 pm ]
Post subject:
Is the metal just dirty/gunky? Or is it rust and pitting? If it's rust, you can use electrolysis to remove it without abrasion. Search around the web and you can find lots of tutorials on it. I buy old stanley planes on ebay and recondition them. Some I re-sell, others I keep as collectibles, or because they are just damn fine tools once restored. I use electrolysis to remove rust and such from them before I start straightening and reconditioning them.

Author:	Shelgeyr [ Wed Sep 17, 2014 8:37 am ]
Post subject:
OMG, this thread makes me feel old. I and roughly half of the other kids in my neighborhood had one of those when I was in my early teens (1983-1985 ish).

Author:	shuyung [ Wed Sep 17, 2014 10:57 am ]
Post subject:
Um...that's a three year old thread. I'm guessing it's another spam account.

Author:	Stathol [ Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:10 am ]
Post subject:
This thread makes me feel old because it's three years old :p shizuo wrote: Where did you bought that knife? It's actually cool I wanna have some old knife too. I don't know exactly where it was acquired. It was among my grandfather's belongings when my grandmother died about 3 years ago. He passed away in 1990, if memory serves. The information from the first post is still all I know about its origins: Stathol wrote: This knife is a German Eye brand, and was produced in the knife-happy town of Solingen, Germany by the Carl Schlieper family. The brand still exists, but AFAIK the Schlieper family is no longer involved. The original company was liquidated in 1993, and new real German Eyes are produced by the Friedrich Olbertz factory in Solingen. Apparently quite a few new knives claiming to be German Eye brand are actually knock-offs. Anyway, back in the 50s, a man by the name of Forest Cruse in Austin, TX began importing Schlieper knives to the U.S. He was basically the only importer of their knives. Today their only U.S. importer (at least supposedly) is Clarence Risner of Ohio. Schliper made several lines of knives for Cruse, including El Gallo, Bowie, and Fan. German Eye was their top line. The German Eye knives might not have quite the best fit and finish in Solingen, but the quality of their blades are generally highly regarded, due to being one of the only Solingen makers that still produced hammer-forged rather than stamped blades. Due to the main (sole?) U.S. importer being located in Austin, German Eye knives became quite popular in Texas, particularly among ranchers. If you run some searches on ebay for "german eye vintage stockman", you usually find one or two similar/identical knives at any given time. For instance: http://www.ebay.com/itm/German-Eye-Three-Eye-Bone-Small-Stainless-Stockman-Knife-N-M-/311089564594?pt=Collectible_Knives&hash=item486e620bb2 http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-GERMAN-EYE-SOLINGEN-3-BLADE-STOCKMAN-KNIFE-RHETT-STIDHAM-ESTATE-/171418788713?pt=Collectible_Knives&hash=item27e95b2369 That second knife is in better condition than mine (mostly in regard to the etching on the main blade), but $360 is insane. This knife is worth about $60-80 depending on condition. Maaaaaybe as much as $100 if it were thoroughly mint condition, but certainly not $360.

Author:	Shelgeyr [ Sun Sep 21, 2014 6:32 am ]
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Didn't even notice the dates. I also owned, briefly, one of these: Eventually decided it was just plain silly and ... I don't remember what I did with it, just that I stopped carrying it around.

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