In Memoriam

Strange But True- Deadly cutlery- Or how to get the last piece of roast or serving of taters~~~

by John McCain

Jun 25, 2015

The story-- I stumbled across this original photo of a  circa 1715 flintlock/ butter knife that fired a .25 caliber round, strangely from the butt end of the handle which oddly enough would be aimed at the wielder of the butter knife. - Thinking it an oddity and perhaps designed by a madman, me, being one myself, investigated further.The original photo I found was marked F.X. Richter and In Reicheberg. BTW, that single butter knife / flintlock sold for $3750 in 2011. However, further investigation revealed that apparently combat ready serving pieces were quite the rage in the 1700's???-Eventually, someone upped the game and designed a double barrel version, which had a couple of major improvements, now with 2 barrels and actually had the barrel facing toward any pork chop thief who so dared-- BTW, if you can't afford the $3750 for a single piece, there are working, though non-firing repros available for about $70 on the web--I wonder what the original thought process was for this design??

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    Jan Carter

    John,

    Your just going to love the response I received in asking for some help on this one!  Seems there are some books out there that may have them in it and a few museums, but info is indeed scarce around here.

    They are European and quite old. This sort of thing never really existed in America, they were gone before this country  came along. I think the idea was something along these lines... the rounded point table knives come from a time in which everybody carried pointed knives and would use them for eating as well as everything else. However, with eating and drinking sometimes came fighting, so if I remember correctly hosts started providing rounded point knives for their guests and taking away their pointed knives so no stabbings occurred at the dinner party. Maybe these were made in response to that.

    Jun 27, 2015

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    In Memoriam

    John McCain

    Jan,  I strive to be informative when I can- Sometimes, though,  I just have to present a knife puzzle and try to be, at the very least, entertaining. Hopefully, this has made more than a few folks scratch their heads. I know these pieces of history have made me scratch mine!!

    Jun 27, 2015

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    In Memoriam

    John McCain

    Jan-- Apparently this is the IKC version of "Stump the Band". BTW, that is an older folks' TV reference- You young'ns probably won't get the joke.LOL

    Jun 27, 2015