The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Great addition to this thread HarryAnother Taylors Eye Witness belt knife was found :
Harry
Thank you Jack !!!!Great addition to this thread Harry
Coal-mines had Belt Crews, whose job was to repair, and extend, the conveyor belts, used to move coal from the coal face (and miners to and from the coal face - see photo below). Each member of the crew was issued with a knife, which I've seen referred to as a Belt Man's Knife or a Pit Belt Knife. Humphrey's Radiant made a shackled Pruner, with a checkered bone handle, for belt manufacturer Hayden Nilos, and these were widely issued to Belt Crews. TEW also made a large shackled Pruner, which is among those issued, (some of these also being marked Hayden Nilos on the blade), and the (British) National Coal Board also bought large orange-handled Pruners from Ibberson's (or Eggington, who use that name), which were part of their existing 'Action Knife' range, embossed on the handle with 'NCB'. Belt crews estimated that it took two men 90 minutes to two hours to splice in a new section of belt. Injuries from the knives also seem to have been fairly common. Eventually, cordless electric belt-cutters were introduced, which reduced splicing time down to 20-25 minutes, for one worker, but Belt Man's Knives continued to be issued and used, though the NCB eventually replaced them with box-cutter style utility knives.
I have had a lot of friends who were miners though, usually they lived in small South Yorkshire villages, where there wasn't really anything else by way of employment. Then they closed the mines! 
I have never been down a coal-mine though, when I was a boy, because mining was such a big thing where I lived, there was always a school trip to one. They wouldn't let the girls go underground though, just the boys, as they said it was bad luck for a woman to go 'down the pit' (must have been a pretty recent superstition!). The year our class was due to go, Britain passed an Equality Act, supposedly outlawing discrimination, and so the trip was cancelled 
I have been down other mines, though they were nowhere near as deep. I remember going down an old lead mine, where we were more or less free to wander around! 
Very young boys would carry ingots of lead, hundreds of feet up crude wooden ladders. I lifted up one of the lumps of lead, but it was very heavy, and would certainly have been so for an underfed 7 year old. My grandfather's brother, Frank, worked down the pit as a teenager. Because he was young, and swift on his feet, they used him to collapse worked-out seams, and he would have to run as the roof came down behind him!
That's a nice collection David, the Grafting Knife is particularly interesting
My first was an Oates (still haven't found a Lamb). The one without a stamp is by A. Wright 
Wow,I have come across those and not bought them as I thought they where broken.Here are a couple of unusual Sheffield patterns, which most posters here have probably never seen before.
The first is the Sheldon Knife, which is a traditional one-hand-opening friction folder. I last saw them on sale in the late 1970s, when they were sold as The Original One-handed Knife, and were popular with plumbers, electricians, and other workmen. You can see how the blade might lend itself to stripping wire or cutting through plastic or rubber hose.
The Sheldon Knife seemed to disappear from favour, or at least it stopped being manufactured. I can recall some years ago, discussing the pattern (the name of which I could not then remember), and nobody knew what I was talking about, not even our esteemed Sheffield experts. I was relieved when I eventually came across an example of the pattern made by Albert Oates, a firm which was last listed in directories in 1959. It was a simple knife, and must have been very inexpensive to manufacture.
Sometime later, I picked up a Wade & Butcher version. While very similar to the Oates knife, this was more nicely made, with the addition of brass liners. Wade & Butcher (or W. & S. Butcher Ltd) made stainless knives in the 1920s, but faded away in the 1940s (though the marks were still owned by razor manufacturer Durham-Duplex into the early 60s).
When I was visiting the Arthur Wright factory the other week, the gaffer there, John Maleham, showed me some Sheldon Knives, which were left over from a special order sometime before. I purchased a couple as I find the pattern interesting. The Wright knife has an etch on the blade, but does not have the stampings of the other two Sheldon Knives. Though in better condition, its similarity to the Wade & Butcher knife is striking.
Unfortunately, I havent yet been able to find a name for the unusual Pruner pattern below.
Sometime ago, ADEE posted these photos in Charlies Pruner thread:
There was more than a little scepticism that these Pruners by Taylors Eye Witness were anything other than badly-made or broken (over-bladed) knives. That was my own reaction when I saw the first knife ADEE found, (and indeed it was Stan Shaws reaction, when I showed him one of these knives yesterday). However, since posting in Charlies thread, ADEE has found other examples, also made by TEW, and a couple of weeks ago, I found this one in a York antique shop.
I think it should now be very clear that this is an actual pattern, possibly exclusive to TEW. Comet were a maker of equipment used in the mining industry, including conveyor belts, and the name also appears on older bone-handled knives I have seen online, such as these:
[/[/IMG]
I wonder if the knives might have been for cutting the mining belts in an emergency, or simply for when replacing them, but as yet I am still investigating. I might have to speak to some old miners
A lot of people think thatWow,I have come across those and not bought them as I thought they where broken.
You live and learn...
LOL!As long as I am not the only thicky.
It's one of the reasons they're usually cheap! 
Thank you Jack! Hope you find a Sheldon Lamb.That's a nice collection David, the Grafting Knife is particularly interesting
Thanks buddy, one dayThank you Jack! Hope you find a Sheldon Lamb.
I was going to get some made up, but...
Thank you Jack.Very nice David
The brass liners give it a little different feel and smoother action.
Definitely a superior knife DavidThank you Jack.
