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British army jack knife


Adrian Cook

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Hi chaps .brought 2 army jack knives -(sailors knives )today and  am having difficulty on finding who made it  and how old it might be .its slightly bigger than the others i have of this type and has some stamps on the marlin spike i have not seen before any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks

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Hi there .I can now answer the question i was asking myself .The knife at the top in the first photo was made in  India .slightly larger than british made knives of this type ,the main blade is different  and the slabs are duller than the british made knives .also they seem to be hand made and the slabs are actually chaqered after they have been riveted together.if you look closely the groves run through the rivets.i still dont know what the cross stands for on the marlin spike or the stamps on the underside of the spike are just appears to be an Manda W with a 2 under the W on the main blade tang .hope this maybe can help other knife collectors.

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Unfortunately, I can’t, presently, access my own copy but from memory, Ron Flook’s excellent  “BrItish and Commonwealth Knives” book, covers these personal  knives in detail. They were once very common...and almost given away by second- hand dealers ... though I don’t seem to see  so many these days.  
The variants were bewilderingly, many and varied....and in spite of what us probably just a nick name, of course, issue wasn’t confined to BrItish sailors.....the Army using very large numbers of them, in their various forms. The ‘chunky’  ones shown are the most commonly encountered though I’ve seen, handled  and actually owned,  some unusually large, relatively ‘flat  profile’ examples ...4inches (+) long. Some had fleam  (venipuncture) attachments suggesting veterinary ( equine) use.

I believe that issue started around WW1.... through WW2 and after (probably  until the patently inferior,  plain steel ones were introduced, I believe in the early 1950s, if not before...’floppy’ ( non-locking) blades and all! The more modern issue of similar, all steel design is better ..with the critical locking blade though nowhere near as good as the earlier ones in the photos. (Although law-makers would grow apoplectic, with today’s abuse of knife possession and use, the fact is, that locking blades ARE really  the only safe sort of pocket knives.. if the blades aren’t to fold up injuring the user.) However, these particular  vintage  clasp knives were so strong and tightly made that generally the accidental folding of the blades in use, was rarely an issue.
Many were Sheffield -made....though clearly not exclusively, as those Indian marks show.
Incredibly well made things which would  take a remarkable amount of hard use before sustaining damage ....and even then, regrinding the remains of broken blades to re create working knives was quite feasible....I’ve done it several times.

Great, long- lasting tools which came in many variants.

 

 

 

 

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