A forgotten, but useful, craft knife.

FortyTwoBlades

FortyTwoBlades

Baryonyx walkeri
Dealer / Materials Provider
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Mar 8, 2008
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Historically most often called a "steel eraser", I find a lot of use for these pen-like knives with their double-edged leaf shaped blades. They used to be commonly found in any office or school, and work great for scraping a page to remove ink, cutting stencils or templates, sharpening pencils, and a wide variety of other tasks pertaining to paper, office, or crafting work. When I found need of one a few years ago I had to buy vintage because new ones weren't available in the USA at the time and I ended up with a plastic-handled Sabatier with a fatter blade. Luckily, Otter Messer of Germany (best known for the famous "Mercator" knife) still makes one, and I like it much better. You'll often find antique ones misidentified as scalpels.

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A vintage catalog depiction of some different models by IXL/Wostenholm

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Interesting. I can see why/how they could be misidentified. Although you would think the non-sterile handles would be a clue.
 
From what I understand it drives collectors of vintage medical equipment crazy. :D
 
Cool knife. So how exactly is it better than an ordinary pocket knife? I'm having trouble seeing what it can do that any pocket knife with a good point and modest belly can't already do.

I just tried scraping the ink off a notepad with my big Benchmade Rukus, and it worked pretty well. The ink is completely gone and the paper is still intact.

But that was on writing done with a ballpoint pen. Didn't people back in the day use fountain pens? I'd think that ink would soak in and be difficult to impossible to "erase."
 
Twindog said:
Cool knife. So how exactly is it better than an ordinary pocket knife? I'm having trouble seeing what it can do that any pocket knife with a good point and modest belly can't already do.

I just tried scraping the ink off a notepad with my big Benchmade Rukus, and it worked pretty well. The ink is completely gone and the paper is still intact.

But that was on writing done with a ballpoint pen. Didn't people back in the day use fountain pens? I'd think that ink would soak in and be difficult to impossible to "erase."
Click to expand...

The curve, short blade, and long handle allow for very precise scraping. Precision and fine detail are the name of the game here.
 
Nice !
Been a while since I scraped some ink off some fine art paper.
I love working with ink.
Now I know what was missing from my life back then.
I might try and track one of those down.
I still use fountain pens but rarely india ink.
 
They're often misidentified as fleams. While it may be used for that purpose, no historical evidence exists that they were. I did a bit of research and asking around here after seeing one that was my grandfathers (Sheffield with "French ivory" handles). I've seen one at at an antique fair shop labeled as a pipe cleaner (shoulda bought it).
 
They're one of those tools that you question how handy it'd be at a distance, but then once you have one you find all sorts of uses that it's just the ticket for. Pretty much anything involving paper and/or ink it's just dandy with. I find the sweep of the edge is great for navigating under adhesive labels when I'm trying to lift them, when I want to trim something from a piece of paper, when I need to remove a smudge or error from something either written or typed, etc. etc. and they work great for roll-cutting tight or intricate curves where you lay the belly along the line near the termination point and apply pressure while rocking the blade until the tip contacts the desired end point. While you can get craft knife blades with a belly to them that are able to do so, a standard X-Acto blade isn't able to perform that little trick. The tip is so designed that the edge lays flat or just lifted from flat for about 1cm of the tip on the main blade side, and a slightly higher angle hold on the partial "half-heart" blade on the back.
 
Hahaha--funny that the thread starter's screan name is Fortytwo, no less! :D
 
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