Just Curious

[LDF Knives]

The pocket knives they used in the Western days, 1870's to very early 1900's (like Gunsmoke on TV) what Company made them then? There were some trappers or folding hunters maybe stockman? Let's have some fun to learn of the good 'ol knives they had then!

[Gunsil]

Well, the barlow has been around in continuous use since the 1700s. I believe the stockman knives are newer patterns replacing the older cattle knives. Quill knives are another very old pattern, made for cutting feather quills to use as writing pens, and pen knives are descended from quill knives. There were then as today, hundreds of folding knife patterns made. There were also many manufacturers both here in the US and abroad with most of the US companies in the northeast like in CT, MA, and NY. New York Knife Co, Northfield, Thomaston, Russell, American Knife Co, are just a few of the companies making knives in that era in the US while Joseph Rodgers and George Wosenholm in England sold many here in the US. It would take a book to list all the patterns and makers from that era.

[Mumbleypeg]

Goins is full of cutleries that were founded in 1700s and 1800s, many were from Sheffield and exported knives to America. There are numerous American cutleries in business in the 1800s also.

Ken

[peanut740]

The Trapper as we know it with a clip and a long spey,is a ca.1920 pattern.

[knife7knut]

When watching some of the early western TV shows it is hard to discern exactly what they are using for a pocket knife.Seems to me I have seen a,"tickler" used by someone on the Gunsmoke series.Not sure if that pattern was even around at the time;continuity was not a big thing with shows back in the 1950's.A lot of the time you will see people with a fixed blade knife that usually looks like 1950's German made hunters. As I watch a lot of early Westerns(Gunsmoke;Big Valley;High Chaparral,etc.)I will keep an eye out.

[Steve Warden]

When watching some of the early western TV shows it is hard to discern exactly what they are using for a pocket knife.Seems to me I have seen a,"tickler" used by someone on the Gunsmoke series.Not sure if that pattern was even around at the time;continuity was not a big thing with shows back in the 1950's.A lot of the time you will see people with a fixed blade knife that usually looks like 1950's German made hunters. As I watch a lot of early Westerns(Gunsmoke;Big Valley;High Chaparral,etc.)I will keep an eye out.

Watching the Westerns is no guarantee you're seeing what was actually carried back in the late 1800s.
To my point, the holster rig you see on TV and the movies is called a Buscadero rig. It was designed for the Hollywood cowboy in the 1920s. Yes, James "Matt Dillon" Arness wore a buscadero for Gun Smoke.

[Gunsil]

I also watch the old western tv series and I always look at the knives. They never show any knives from the era, they didn't try to look that authentic. I see WW2 MK2 knives quite often for fixed blades and often single blade folders. The prop guys in charge of such items weren't concerned with authenticity, they just purchased what they could buy cheaply at the time.

[tongueriver]

I am guessing that very plain jack knives (the barlow being a type of jack knife) accounted for most of the pocket knives before 1900. The first several pages of the 1926 Schrade CutCo catalog were dedicated to jack knives for a reason. The early versions of what we call a folding hunter was a big cokebottle.