Found a knife in the basement

That cleaned up nicely

I know to tell plastic from scrimshaw you use a hot needle but I am not sure if this would work on stag horn (burn or melt). If you try it, do it on a section that is not visible when the knife is assembled

Nice one!

It really looks like stag horn.
I don't think plastic would have held up that well on a hidden tang knife over the years. To much strain. The shrinkage (look at the spacers) also suggests natural material.

In any case, very nice find! These were almost always sharpened with a convex edge & you can tell in some of the pics that there were an original convex edge that grew larger with use & sharpening.
Going back to that & do some thinning would probably both make it a better cutter & take away alot of the pitting near the edge.

Could be bone..........human bone.....


J/k
Nice find and nice clean up!

Cool knife Luc. Being German, I'd bet that the handle is stag horn. But +1 on stabbing it with the hot pin to be sure.

I've fixed up a few old knives of that vintage, and they have always been easy to put an edge on. (keeping it there varies, the steel can sometimes be a little soft).

All in all, a cool find. It should serve you, and your future boyscouts, well.

sweet blade u have there partner.

Great find...the last one in un-restored condition just sold for $2500 dollars on Vintageknifebids.com.


Ok...not so much...actually.....The knife is a generic contract knife made in Solingen, probably post 1950. Many German makers contracted knives with their markings, to be able to sell a wider variety of cutlery. It is not a rare DORKO knife. It's a sub-contracted Solingen-made knife that has Dorko's name stamped on it. You can find many copies of this knife, stamped with a variety of names. However many they made for Dorko is of little importance from a collectible standpoint.
It's a great family heirloom, and in your shoes would do the very same...enjoy the restore and I hope it provides you with many years of enjoyment and performance.

NBT said:

Great find...the last one in un-restored condition just sold for $2500 dollars on Vintageknifebids.com.

Ok...not so much...actually.....The knife is a generic contract knife made in Solingen, probably post 1950. Many German makers contracted knives with their markings, to be able to sell a wider variety of cutlery. It is not a rare DORKO knife. It's a sub-contracted Solingen-made knife that has Dorko's name stamped on it. You can find many copies of this knife, stamped with a variety of names. However many they made for Dorko is of little importance from a collectible standpoint.
It's a great family heirloom, and in your shoes would do the very same...enjoy the restore and I hope it provides you with many years of enjoyment and performance.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the post, I still need to talk to my bad about it... One thing is for sure, I will never sell that knife.

turtle said:

That cleaned up nicely

I know to tell plastic from scrimshaw you use a hot needle but I am not sure if this would work on stag horn (burn or melt). If you try it, do it on a section that is not visible when the knife is assembled

Click to expand...

+1 Red hot needle, and you will immediatly find out. Only do this once, and in an spot on the handle that is the darkest, and only for a few seconds.

It's a good size for real work.

Thanks for taking the time to put up the good photos.

Okay, so my dad is back from being away so I had a chat with him about the knife. As I suspected, he had no idea who the maker(Dorko) is. So far, he remembers that someone gave it to him as a gift. He thinks his grand-father(my great grand pa) but he's unsure right now. He will think about it and let me know.

That's all I got for now.

I have a VERY similar knife to that one that's been through my grandpa's hands, to my dad's, now to mine. I'll take a few pics of it later tonight, but it's a leather handle instead of antler/bone, and the mark is Lamplough Cutlery, Solingen, rather than Dorko. Most durable knife I've ever seen, based on how mean I was to it as a kid, heh.

Here's mine, which you can see has basically the same blade, same guard and same pommel (well, same pommel as the one NBT posted anyways). The differences are the handle and the brand stamp.


And a close up of the brand stamp (best I could get with limited lighting options).


(both can be clicked to embiggen)

Yuritau said:

Here's mine, which you can see has basically the same blade, same guard and same pommel (well, same pommel as the one NBT posted anyways). The differences are the handle and the brand stamp.


And a close up of the brand stamp (best I could get with limited lighting options).


(both can be clicked to embiggen)

Click to expand...

Nice knife!

Handsome knife. There's just something about older, handmade knives. I have an RH Ruana about that size, from the same era that I just love. Every so often I buff it up w/NevrDull, and soften the sheath with baseball glove conditioner. Your knife is a beauty.

Only two flaws with my knife at present are 1) the last 1.25" are bent about five degrees off of true (probably my fault, didn't treat the knife well at ALL when I was young), and 2) at some point someone took it to one of those shopping mall knife stores for a sharpening on the in-store grinder (it's sharp, but the edge feels rough, sloppy work). I can fix the edge on a good hone, but I don't think I'm going to risk making things worse (or cutting myself to pieces) by trying to straighten the blade.