All About Pocket Knives

“I happen to own the patent. Not the legal rights, the paperwork.”



That’s a really cool piece of cutlery history.

Thanks for the information fellas. And Jason, that is indeed a very nice historic document you have there.

___________
Mike

Don't know much about the original post knife. This original post sure
has generated a lot of discussion in a few 6 hours.

Bob

Jason I heard through the grapevine that you were going to wind up with that patent, congrats!!!

I forgot to mention in my post that the odd shiny area near the edge isn't from someone attempting to sharpen it, rather it's from the time of the "razor blade stainless" knives. They used to "strop" the sharpened blades on a high speed hard vented buffing wheel to produce a super sharp scalpel like edge. That line you see is actually a product of that buffing process. It's most prevalent on the satin finished blades. That method didn't last too long due to the dangers involved with running a sharpened blade against a buffing wheel that's spinning about a million miles per hour. A number of folks nearly lost digits and worse.

Eric

Very interesting and informative thread.

Wow! That's alot of information to take in. The old Soup Bone here is kinda overwhelmed at the moment!

Some Imperial knives with Wonda edges.
Click on the picture to ENLARGE.

ea42 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 6:56 pm Jason I heard through the grapevine that you were going to wind up with that patent, congrats!!!

I forgot to mention in my post that the odd shiny area near the edge isn't from someone attempting to sharpen it, rather it's from the time of the "razor blade stainless" knives. They used to "strop" the sharpened blades on a high speed hard vented buffing wheel to produce a super sharp scalpel like edge. That line you see is actually a product of that buffing process. It's most prevalent on the satin finished blades. That method didn't last too long due to the dangers involved with running a sharpened blade against a buffing wheel that's spinning about a million miles per hour. A number of folks nearly lost digits and worse.

Eric

Thanks - The one you're thinking of is an Imperial patent, this is the first one I got. The supporting docs that come with the patent is where the good stuff is. Enormous amounts of info and lots of blanks filled in to burning questions.

I know what you're talking about with the strop line. I have a a few 855s and probably some other patterns with it but I've never seen it on a wonda. I went thru quite a few of them today and actually found one I could easily see on an Ulster wonda.

jxr1197 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 8:53 pm

ea42 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 6:56 pm Jason I heard through the grapevine that you were going to wind up with that patent, congrats!!!

I forgot to mention in my post that the odd shiny area near the edge isn't from someone attempting to sharpen it, rather it's from the time of the "razor blade stainless" knives. They used to "strop" the sharpened blades on a high speed hard vented buffing wheel to produce a super sharp scalpel like edge. That line you see is actually a product of that buffing process. It's most prevalent on the satin finished blades. That method didn't last too long due to the dangers involved with running a sharpened blade against a buffing wheel that's spinning about a million miles per hour. A number of folks nearly lost digits and worse.

Eric

Thanks - The one you're thinking of is an Imperial patent, this is the first one I got. The supporting docs that come with the patent is where the good stuff is. Enormous amounts of info and lots of blanks filled in to burning questions.

I know what you're talking about with the strop line. I have a a few 855s and probably some other patterns with it but I've never seen it on a wonda. I went thru quite a few of them today and actually found one I could easily see on an Ulster wonda.

This was an interesting oversight

Eric

ea42 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 26, 2020 9:31 pmThis was an interesting oversight

When I first saw that I checked my knives to see if I had one - no such luck. Talk about a niche collectible!

One of the more interesting finds for me was this note from 1957 distributing copies of the patent details before it was awarded. The second man on there, Kachi, was Baer's man in Japan. He was stamping out flatware and exporting it to providence. I think that was all under the Kingston name.

Don't know where this fits in this discussion... I have an aquantense here on the west coast of Florida, his grandfather, I believe, was the driver for Mr. Schrade "in the day". Mr. Schrade very often would bring him a handful of knives. They were ideas he had putting different patterns together as experiments, so to speak. My friend has buckets of these knives. W ierd combos of blades, handles, etc. I don't know the exact era this included. I won't see him for a couple of months, but will talk to him and try to dial in the story a little better. Doesn't explain all the weirdness of that particular knife, but makes you think... Tom

Wow Tom, you definitely piqued my interest!
I would love to hear some of the stories and to see some pictures of those knives, that would be a real treat! I hope you can get some stories and pictures.

This is a gentleman I set up with at a gun show. I just reached out to get a number for him. To clarify, it was his uncle and he was a "designer" for Schrade and these were basically "prototypes". Once i get direct contact with him I'll repost. I remember seeing many with the Wonda blades, but it has been a couple of years. Should have more in a we
ek or so. Tom

I concur with Dale...I too would be interested in hearing about some of this history. Looking forward to your reply, and thanks for dropping in and sharing.

Interestingly enough, it seems Schrade wasn’t the only maker to use that Wonda-edge patent. I just saw an Ulster Wonda-edge sausage/melon tester on eBay. Out of curiosity I did an eBay search for “Wonda-edge knife”, which turned up several more Ulsters and some Imperials as well. Maybe y’all knew that already - I didn’t!

Ken
https://www.ebay.com/itm/vintage-Ulster ... Swp2xeX1oZ

I wonda why ?
In the time of 'Wonda', Schrade, Ulster & Imperial were all under the same ownership, Albert Baer, the owner of the patent.
kj

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