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.
