Hi,
I have recently found an interesting thread about the Randall NASA Mercury training knives made at the same time as the Astronauts knives.
I appreciate and respect the rule here about cross site posting from other forums, but could someone here copy it to this site? I guess the poster is not a member of this group or it probably would have been posted. It has a lot of good info and photos that I haven't seen before.
If it can't be posted here, because of the nature of the new photos and info, could I post a link to it here? If not, can those interested in seeing it PM me and I can give the link?
I wouldn't normally ask, but it's a good piece of Randall history. I wish he would have posted it here.
Thanks for the consideration.

Richard Freeman

Thanks for the information and the link.
This is an extensive and well researched article.
I need to check Mitchell's website to see if it has been posted there.

I agree David. I've never seen pictures of the hatch containers where the Randall Astro was stored, and I always thought the 20 nasa knives were made for survival training. But even according to Gordon Cooper in the astronauts book We Seven, he stated that the engineers wanted them for the capsules for the checkouts, and that nasa ordered 20 of the knives from Randall, separate from the 7 astronaut personal knives, to place in the 20 capsules ordered from McDonnell Aircraft for the checkouts.
Very interesting article.

Another interesting fact that I picked up from the piece, is that apparently Randall finished the 20 knives on July 7 1960 which I knew from Gaddis book, but NASA took delivery of the first Mercury capsule on July 23 1960 that was used for the 1st Redstone launch on Dec 19 1960. Wonder if the Randall knife was in that test flight?
Also that there were 20 of those knives made for the 20 capsules the McDonnell Aircraft made for NASA.
If you like the Astro and the early history, this article will fill in many missing facts.

I have spent a lot of time on knifetalk looking at all the information on all the different models offered by Randall. A ton of research has been done.
On one of the threads here about the astro, a poster said that they had not seen a solingen astro before. They seem to be rare. But here is one that looks to be early, and is claimed to be from one of the 1962 nasa batches. There is no sheath with it.




Another good picture of what looks like one of the 20 nasa trainers that has been plated and is pictured next to a survival pack. It has the same kind of thong as the Cooper knife in the Randall Museum.

I wonder who plated them with rhodium on a copper backing - Randall, someone commissioned by Randall, or inside NASA (in-house), or some contractors commissioned by NASA?

I have a rhodium plated fountain pen and it looks amazing. I wonder why they rhodium plated it? If the goal was to protect it from rust, they could have used cheaper chrome

I don't think they were plated by the shop, as there are pictures of Grissoms as an example without it. The knives were only plated if flown. So I think a NASA contractor probably.
I read somewhere that it was plated because of the pure oxygen atmosphere, the plating would prevent sparks if used inside the capsule.

Note: About plating.

From conversations with metallurgists along the way...

The Rhodium (and perhaps other finish coats) adheres better to copper than to steel.

I think that is also true for silver, maybe other finish coats.

Larry

That would make sense. I've not seen a astronaut knife close up to see how it's weathered over the years.

Another thing I didn't know about the Astronaut knives is that it looks like at least one astronaut had their knife modified before their flight.
Carpenter had thumb notches put on the spine of his knife. I wonder if he had it done at the Randall shop?