All About Pocket Knives

Hello
I recently came across this little pocket knife and wanted to see if someone can help me identify the make, model and production date on this knife. It looks to be some kind of jewelry knife set in a gold finish with 2 stainless blade and nail file. It looks like the knife has a tang stamp PTS Italy. I have pictures and will try to find a way to post them

Your knife is a "lobster" pattern which means the spring runs along the center of the knife and a blade or blades open on both top and bottom deck.
It is also a "skeleton" knife, meaning a knife manufacturer makes the knife but does not put handle pieces over the brass liners. These knives are then purchased by jewelry businesses who mount fancy handles often with engraving like "Happy Birthday Walter", etc. The finished knives are also bought in bulk by businesses to hand out to customers. These usually have the company name or logo on the handles, e.g. "Bayer"
And finally the handles on your knife are called "Toledo" style, named for a place in Spain. The Toledo style handles come in many different scroll work designs but basically look similar to yours.
Such knives are very common and usually are unused, people having been given or awarded such a knife, tuck it away to be discovered decades later. These knives have been made for many years but i don't know when the Toledo style lobster knives were first made. If anyone does, please post.
kj

kootenay joe wrote:Your knife is a "lobster" pattern which means the spring runs along the center of the knife and a blade or blades open on both top and bottom deck.
It is also a "skeleton" knife, meaning a knife manufacturer makes the knife but does not put handle pieces over the brass liners. These knives are then purchased by jewelry businesses who mount fancy handles often with engraving like "Happy Birthday Walter", etc. The finished knives are also bought in bulk by businesses to hand out to customers. These usually have the company name or logo on the handles, e.g. "Bayer"
And finally the handles on your knife are called "Toledo" style, named for a place in Spain. The Toledo style handles come in many different scroll work designs but basically look similar to yours.
Such knives are very common and usually are unused, people having been given or awarded such a knife, tuck it away to be discovered decades later. These knives have been made for many years but i don't know when the Toledo style lobster knives were first made. If anyone does, please post.
kj

The real question to me is 'how dey do dat' ? Hard for me to visualize how they make the handles.

Ray

Until recently there were many manufacturers of knife parts in Solingen and they supplied most of the knife manufacturers. This is why it can be difficult to ID a German knife manufacturer as many of them used identical parts.
There were (and are ?) manufacturers who specialize in making knife handles of all types. No doubt the Toledo style handles are made by one(or more) of the specialty handle manufacturers. Maybe someone here knows how you go from a flat piece of brass to a fancy Toledo handle ?
kj

Paladin wrote: The real question to me is 'how dey do dat' ? Hard for me to visualize how they make the handles.

Ray

The handles can be manufactured in a couple of ways. The most common is carving a die from tool steel in a large size(say 5 times the finished size)and then reducing it with a pantograph lathe similar to the ones they use to do the engraving on money plates.Then handles are then stamped out the softer brass(usually)or nickel silver and then sometimes gold plated. The black(and other)colors are enamel powder that has been set into the design and fired in a kiln to melt the powder and fuse it to the metal.
A second method is to make a mold and cast the handles.Usually when they do this there are a bunch of them connected to a "tree" or "sprue" and when the come out of the mold they are cut away from the tree and smoothed off by sanding. The coloring remains the same.
Some of the earlier Scandanavian knives so decorated actually had the handles acid etched to form the pattern and then a gold wash(usually using mercury heated)applied which stuck in the design and then the handles polished to remove the gold from the upper surfaces;leaving the designs in gold.The process is called "fire gilding" and was very popular for plating objects(mostly clocks)until it was realized just how toxic mercury was.

knife7knut wrote:

Paladin wrote: The real question to me is 'how dey do dat' ? Hard for me to visualize how they make the handles.

Ray

The handles can be manufactured in a couple of ways. The most common is carving a die from tool steel in a large size(say 5 times the finished size)and then reducing it with a pantograph lathe similar to the ones they use to do the engraving on money plates.Then handles are then stamped out the softer brass(usually)or nickel silver and then sometimes gold plated. The black(and other)colors are enamel powder that has been set into the design and fired in a kiln to melt the powder and fuse it to the metal.
A second method is to make a mold and cast the handles.Usually when they do this there are a bunch of them connected to a "tree" or "sprue" and when the come out of the mold they are cut away from the tree and smoothed off by sanding. The coloring remains the same.
Some of the earlier Scandanavian knives so decorated actually had the handles acid etched to form the pattern and then a gold wash(usually using mercury heated)applied which stuck in the design and then the handles polished to remove the gold from the upper surfaces;leaving the designs in gold.The process is called "fire gilding" and was very popular for plating objects(mostly clocks)until it was realized just how toxic mercury was.

Thanks, Ray. I had always assumed it was something like that but I had no clue as to the actuality of the process.

Ray

Thank you all for the help on this as an update I chemical tested the handles and they appear to be 10kt gold plated so Im wondering if this was apart of some sort of jewelry set.