Tony says many of the old knife companies made these handy little tools for the ladies or for people that had bad finger nails. They are about as long as your index finger and the end is shaped to emulate a finger nail. Tony made these from D-2 and heat treated them the same as a knife blade. The pulls pictured left to right are old Rogers jigged bone, Stag, and the last two are mammoth ivory.

I was on my pc at work and noticed the first pic was a bit dark so here is another copy of it lightened up a bit. BTW, my daughter made the doily they are laying on.

Those look nice. They would look good with a little leather pouch too

These are too sweet! I've never seen any that I can remember. I've always had a delima or could probably call it an aggrivation. When you try to build a knife and make everything fit into place with just enough room so the blades don't rub and everything is working just the way it's supposed to, no rubbing, scratching or anything and you take it to a show and someone picks them up and not paying attention, pushes there fingernail in so hard that they push one of the blades into one of the other ones and open it and for the rest of the show that knife looks mard. I haven't really ever heard any collectors talk about this. Does it bother anyone else as much as it does me or am I just being anal? Dwayne

P.S. Tony, if you're out there reading would you mind if I make some of these pulls? I love the idea!

Oh yea...Tony told me when I was preparing to take pictures of the Ivory Lockback Whittler in an earlier post that there is a correct way to open multiblade knives so that you don't scratch them. Obviously it is bad form, to say the least, to scratch up someones hard work. I don't think it's anal at all.

This is the fancy nose pic..not the carver..yikes..that would hurt Another nice pic Kerry!

These are wonderful. One of the coolest old tyme knife pulls I've ever seen was a PocketEze shielded version made by Robeson -- they used the body of a dolphin lobster pattern with French ivory scales and candlestick tip bolsters (with brass liners) to form the handle of the pull.

I've tried my hand at making slipjoints from knife kits and have done an ok job, but not too long ago I had a scrap liner and some handle material so I made my own knife opener. Let me know what you think. The handle is red dyed burl maple and the liner was brass so it's softer than steel so it should leave marks on the knife. I made is so both ends could be used, one more pointy and one a little wider for those long french nail nicks.



Thanks,
-Troy

Looks good, Troy. I've always thought these things were neat and I know people who have nice collections of old ones. Something else they did in the past was make cutlery Co post cards, I have been thinking about doing that. Anybody interested?

Would love to see some