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

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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Permalink Reply by Jan Carter on June 25, 2015 at 20:04

lol, even a loaded spoon

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FeaturedPermalink Reply by Charles Sample on June 25, 2015 at 20:05

Wow, that is interesting!

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In MemoriamPermalink Reply by D ale on June 25, 2015 at 20:57

Now those would be some unique pieces to have !!!

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Permalink Reply by Michael Squier on June 26, 2015 at 13:27

I be seen an aful lot of antique firearms in the past 50 years but ibe never seen loaded table kni es, a gun/ bowie yes, but carving set no. Maybe it was for inns, to make sure they were paid.

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Permalink Reply by Jan Carter on June 26, 2015 at 18:57

I agree, very unique and the only history I can find on them is that they are in a few pirate Museums.

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Permalink Reply by John Bamford on June 27, 2015 at 4:55

Barking mad I think , you would carve that meat in a very gentle manner !

Just the thing for upsetting the anti knife people in the UK though .

Interesting pieces great to see them .

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Permalink Reply by Jan Carter on June 27, 2015 at 17:22

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.

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In MemoriamPermalink Reply by John McCain on June 27, 2015 at 18:46

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!!