what sort of folder should Huckleberry Finn and tom sawyer should have had?

@Primble I love when you post pictures like that! Drool worthy! Some day I'll find one like in an antique store and jump on it with both feet!
 
Brian.Evans said:
@Primble I love when you post pictures like that! Drool worthy! Some day I'll find one like it in an antique store and jump on it with both feet!
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Thank you Brian and I certainly hope you do, but, careful, don't crack the handles ! :thumbup::D:D:D
 
(a) A sharp one. ( you know how kids are, dull blades abound)
The book says Tom had a Barlow, maybe his bud, Huck, had a Sunfish.
 
knarfeng said:
On a more historical note, in 1856, a steamboat named the Arabia was traveling up the Missouri River. It sank and was buried in river mud near what today is Kansas City. It was carrying 200 tons of freight. Over the decades the river changed course and the wreck's resting place became a field. The resting place was discovered in 1988 and is now a museum. I say all this because amongst the freight was a shipment of pocket knives.

So historically, here are some of the types of knives to which Tom and friends might have had access.

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Always interesting to see that pic Frank, there are some beautiful knives there :thumbup: I think the Barlows pictured with scratted bone handles were made by Luke Oates of Stannington, Sheffield.

scrteened porch said:
This passage makes me wonder if "Barlow" meant pocket knife at the time.
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knarfeng said:
I doubt it. The "Barlow" pattern was a reasonably specific pattern and dated from much much earlier. Up till the 1900's it was an inexpensive, strongly built folder.
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I'm more inclined to agree with Frank, Barlows are mentioned in both books. The only other knives referred to are "case" knives - case as in sheath, rather than in Case :thumbup:

Dadpool said:
The article that turned me on to Barlows (and, soon after, sent me down the wonderful rabbit hole that is traditional knives!), The First Mass Produced EDC Knife: A Short History of the Barlow, makes the case that Barlows were more or less ubiquitous. Whether or not that's true, it's an interesting read.
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Sadly, there's a fair bit of rubbish in that piece in my opinion, but at least it served a good purpose :thumbup:

The earliest Barlow knives (which were not just made by the Barlow family) looked like this, rather than the pattern we know today, bolsters were intergral and double, and covers were likely to be wood, leather, or bone.

 
Jack Black said:
The earliest Barlow knives (which were not just made by the Barlow family) looked like this, rather than the pattern we know today, bolsters were intergral and double, and covers were likely to be wood, leather, or bone.
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That matches what Levine says. A roughly made inexpensive knife with bolsters which were integral to the frame. The integral bolsters made it very strong.

(And why in heaven's name am I still awake talking knives when I have to get up for work in about 5 hours. Oh, that's right. I love knives.)
 
knarfeng said:
That matches what Levine says. A roughly made inexpensive knife with bolsters which were integral to the frame. The integral bolsters made it very strong.
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Also, relatively inexpensive to manufacture I would think Frank. The design was also popular because it could be 'inlaid' with other materials. They seem to have been hugely popular, and produced by many Sheffield cutlers in the form above.
 
knarfeng said:
(And why in heaven's name am I still awake talking knives when I have to get up for work in about 5 hours. Oh, that's right. I love knives.)
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LOL! At least I have the excuse that I'm supposed to be working! :D Good night Frank :thumbup:
 
As smiling-knife says, "Rust never sleeps" nor do the knife obsessed :eek: Talking from experience as well.

Two recurrent pictures on the Forum interest and inspire me: one is the knives from the 'Arabia' as shown by Frank most recently, the other is a shot of the Stag Room of a Sheffield cutler from c19th where unbelievable stocks of choice antler are piled up in what looks like a very new room for the times. Food for thought and non-sleeping dreams alright!:thumbup:

The mid c19th knives that survived from the Arabia are interestingly diverse both in pattern and sizes. Tom & Huck were not spoiled kids of the wealthy so their Barlows and sheath knives would've been of the cheap and available type. The sort all of us thirsted after as young lads with a passion for knives and pennies to spend, not much changes thankfully! :D I'm looking at those small Congress/Senators in stag in the picture, beautiful but beyond the means of youngsters. Stuff of dreams and insomnia........

Here's Sawn Bone Barlow, didn't cost much at the time.

IMG_3022.jpg
 
I can remember when the old Pond Hill Works was still standing Will. Things have certainly changed a lot since the Indian export ban on Sambar, with the few remaining Sheffield cutlers struggling to find substitutes. Stan Shaw is OK, he bought a sackful of the stuff from one of the firms that closed down in the eighties for £5, reckons it'll see him through :)
 
It still seems odd to me that Huck could say every loafer was whittling with a genuine Barlow. If Barlows were popular enough, Barlow would have been to pocket knives what Kleenex is to facial tissues.
 
I wonder if it had been written later, if Tom would have been watching that group whittling with genuine stockmans?
 
Maybe Mark Twain had shares in the Barlow mines ;)
 
scrteened porch said:
It still seems odd to me that Huck could say every loafer was whittling with a genuine Barlow. If Barlows were popular enough, Barlow would have been to pocket knives what Kleenex is to facial tissues.
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********************************************************




Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources together. He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under one end of it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded hollow. He put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:
**
The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope
**
"Good idea," said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down, raised one of the rearward hearth-stones and took out a bag that jingled pleasantly. He subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for himself and as much for Injun Joe, and passed the bag to the latter, who was on his knees in the corner, now, digging with his bowie-knife.
**
Tom Sawyer

***********************************************
By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, and then I couldn't come for him no more. I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but he laughed such a screechy laugh
**
I took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the place—pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking.
**
We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, and Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. The straps was broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find the other one, though we hunted all around.
**
They always dig out with a case-knife—and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock.
**
Jim's too old to be dug out with a case-knife. He won't last."
**
If we was to put in another night this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well—couldn't touch a case-knife with them sooner."
**
"Gimme a case-knife."

He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down, and says:

"Gimme a case-knife."

I didn't know just what to do—but then I thought. I scratched around amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and never said a word.

He was always just that particular. Full of principle.
**
Huckleberry Finn

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Twain just had a way with the language. He probably said "Barlow knife" to sound more homey and familiar. I like Mark Twain's stuff. I found Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn both worth a re-read as an adult.

I always thought of the "case knives" as kitchen knives out of a case.

As I collected this I wondered if Muff Potter's "spring knife" was a switchblade.

Leghog, I also bemoan the lack of workingman's Barlows in current production.
 
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Very cool, Dave! :cool::cool:
Thanks for doing that literary research. It's interesting to see the various types of knives referred to in those two novels.

- GT
 
davek14 said:
Twain just had a way with the language. He probably said "Barlow knife" to sound more homey and familiar. I like Mark Twain's stuff. I found Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn both worth a re-read as an adult.

I always thought of the "case knives" as kitchen knives out of a case.

As I collected this I wondered if Muff Potter's "spring knife" was a switchblade.

Leghog, I also bemoan the lack of workingman's Barlows in current production.
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Yep, good stuff Dave :thumbup: I re-read both books quite recently, very different I thought. Huckleberry Finn was the first book I ever read as a young child, and I wonder how on earth I understood it! :confused: :D

I wondered about the case knives myself, and it took me a while to track down an explanation - I forget my source now, it's somewhere in the middle of Charlie's BIG Barlow thread :eek: Just an old name for a sheath knife apparently.

The term 'spring knife' was common parlance for what we call a slipjoint today, but who knows :)
 
Jack Black said:
Yep, good stuff Dave :thumbup: I re-read both books quite recently, very different I thought. Huckleberry Finn was the first book I ever read as a young child, and I wonder how on earth I understood it! :confused: :D

I wondered about the case knives myself, and it took me a while to track down an explanation - I forget my source now, it's somewhere in the middle of Charlie's BIG Barlow thread :eek: Just an old name for a sheath knife apparently.

The term 'spring knife' was common parlance for what we call a slipjoint today, but who knows :)
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And then the "clasp knife" might be a friction folder. That makes sense.
 
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