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This is my recently acquired IXL Wostenholm Bowie knife.
It was manufactured towards the end days of the Wostenholm & Son Cutlery firm, (the end days as it pertains to it still having been a stand alone company).
The Joseph Rodgers & Sons cutlery firm purchased Wostenholm during 1971, but that merger was not able to stop the new combination Joseph Rodgers/Wostenholm firm from going belly up. Both brands got shuffled around a bit, including Schrade owning and making Wostenholm branded products for a while. But, both of the original Joseph Rodgers & Wostenholm firms have been gone for quite some time.
Both brands were eventually acquired by the current owners of those once famous brand names, that being the Egginton Group in England.
They, (Egginton), still makes and offers Sheffield, England knives with these two brand names.
Here's some history I found online of Wostenholm after the WW2 period...
"After the Second World War, when part of Washington Works was destroyed by a German bomb, Wostenholm’s was poorly positioned to exploit the economic upturn in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Competition was also growing from the Far East, which would eventually drive Wostenholm’s out of business. In 1961, the firm employed about 350 workers. Between 1955 and 1968, the firm made several acquisitions – such as Christopher Johnson and Champion – to strengthen the company, especially in the scissors market. However, in 1971 Wostenholm itself was bought by Joseph Rodgers and the new company (Rodgers-Wostenholm) moved to Guernsey Road, Heeley. In 1975 this joint firm was bought by Richards, which in turn was bought in 1977 by Imperial Knife, an American firm based in New York. The Imperial connection linked Wostenholm with a famous name in US cutlery – George Schrade – which led to the production of Sheffield-made knives marked ‘I*XL Schrade Wostenholm’. However, the business lost money for its American owners and by 1983 the Richards-Rodgers-Wostenholm group was bankrupt. The I*XL mark was briefly owned by Meteor Industries, and then acquired by Egginton. Washington Works had been demolished in 1978."
This recently acquired specimen has an almost 10" carbon steel blade, (I do not know the grade of steel).
The guard and shield are nickel silver.
The handle scales are Buffalo Horn, (brass lined).
It has a true full tang, and the tang is tapered, (a neat classy touch).
It's a 50+ year old knife that was obviously kept/stored properly. It's condition is like it just came out of a time capsule.
My guess is that these knives were pulled from Wostenholm's remaining inventory shortly after Joseph Rodgers purchased the company, then the blades etched with the wording they have to commemorate them as being some of the last knives made by the real Wostenholm cutlery firm.
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