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There's a patent number on the smaller of the blades near the hinge (2037943) that led me to a US patent from 1936 but it didn't tell me a lot about this particular knife. Any information on time period, brand, model, cleaning/restoring, etc is helpful. Thanks!
Additional notes:
- I cleaned off a decent amount of rust with some soap and WD-40 but the inner workings are still pretty messy
- The yellow layer on the handles is peeling off at the ends
Update: thank you all so much for the information! I've gotten a lot of information and leads on the knife. Still nothing definite on brand but you're probably right that it's a carbon steel blade with an ivory handle from about the 1950s. I'll be tending to it properly with your information on proper cleaning and sharpening of a knife like this. I'll post another update if I find anything more definite on brand/origin. Thanks again!
The patent has a bit of detail.
The patent is from German company of Solingen.
My guess is it is a german made pocket knife from Solingen.
Here is their current website.
Hm interesting. Looking up "1940s solingen pocket knife" gives me some results with either similar profiles or similar grips to the one I have. Nothing identical but it's a good start. Thank you!
So building on this I did some light perusing on the internet and got a little hyperfixated, but found some tiny things.
This was the closest Solingen I could find, but the caps on the end don't match and I doubt the little rivets would be completely hidden by the patina, so that's probably not it.
Then on Etsy I found this posting That has one that looks identical but with no further information on it and listed as "Richards" (Richards, Sheffeild). And This one that just doesn't have the smaller blade but is listed as Solingen.
I went to try and double check that patent number and I'm not finding what they did, but I also don't know what I'm doing. The German patent office has 2 companies with that patent number, one for Naproxen and one for the moving blades on hair trimmers.
But then I found This guy with the exact same patent number on it but marked as Hammer brand. It's very similar but has 3 blades instead of 2.
This leads me to believe that the patent is not for the whole knife but the blade specifically that was made by Solingen and sold to other knife manufacturers who affixed them to their own pocket-knife-pieces. With all this in mind, I'm starting to think it's likely from Richards, so I refined my search again and found this guy as the best bet: knife. But instead of the patent number on the tang they have their own stamp. So my best guess, after a tiny bit of research, is that Richards probably made it, but it's not their top of the line stuff with their branding but something akin to a "store brand" where they used their typical parts but used the blades from Solingen. I'm still assuming it's Richards because they were the only brand I could find that made knives with all the parts (Same end caps, 2 blades, pearl handle with no rivets showing, shape) together. Other brands seemed to have some, but not all parts combined. But with the tang stamp being off, I can only assume it wasn't an "official" Richards brand but put together by them and sold by another party as a cheaper alternative.
If you're still curious, that All About Pocket Knives site seems to have active forums with knowledgeable people who could probably (almost definitely) find or know more than me. I don't know anything about any of this and was just a bit bored this morning while drinking my coffee, so I definitely suggest asking them for legit advice.
Wow, that's a lot! Thanks so much for the path through the jungle of old pocket knives! I'm gonna take a look at some of these points and see what else I can find.