Very Old Knife

[oldtools]

Anyone seen or know about this Knife?
Found this old 12" survival type Knife back in 1973, in the bilge of an old Diesel Submarine.
Heavy ~12 oz. solid sharp 6 3/4" blade didn't rust in the saltwater bilge under the diesel engines, but the 4 1/2"L X 1 1/2"D wood handle was beginning to deteriorate. 
Don't know how long it was in the bilge, but the last overhaul was over 4 years before.
Blade keeps it's edge better than any knife I have and it is very dense & smooth.  (like on pores for rust to form)
has a sharp 1 1/2" saw on back, and blade is one piece solid formed into handle diameter, Hard wood handle has nice fitting finger notches with a solid 3/4"L X 1"dia. brass end cap.

any help identifying this knife would be appreciated.
Thank You...

[keykeeper]

That looks to be what is called an Integral Bolster style knife. The bolster nearest the blade is forged and finished out of the same piece metal as the blade. The handle is probably drilled, then slipped over the tang (which may have been welded on to the blade/bolster), which was more than likely threaded at the end. Then the pommel/butt would be screwed on and peened in place to hold the wood tightly. Then, everything was worked down to the finished profile that the maker wanted.

Beautifully made knife, a definite found treasure!

[oldtools]

Thank You very much for the feedback.. The Blacksmith must have been good!!
seems like very high quality steel & tempering to keep a hard edge & rust resistant, tried a good file on it, just slips off can't bite.

[mikeswrenches]

Possibly an old "hardhat" divers knife.  Divers knives were tools rather than just being carried for defense.  Considering where you found it I think this might be a possibility.  It's nice that you rescued it.

Mike

[HeelSpur]

Nice find out of a bilge. I've found a whiskey bottle or two down there.

People didn't secure their bottles good enough and they would float around til someone saw them.

[scottg]

  Its a serious dive knife alright, but who made it??

This is a very unusual knife. I keep waiting for someone else to pop up and actually know abut it.
 I have never seen another even kind of close. The forged bolster is ginormous. Heavy enough it could be on a pigsticker chisel, meant to be brutally pounded all day long~!
 It appears to a knife reforged out of something else.  Maybe a broken extra large chefs knife?
If you took one of those 16" blade monsters and cut it all the way down, maybe the bolster would be this thick?
 The top cap is equally massive. Someone had access to big lumps of brass.
I bet this knife weighs a ton!

 The blade shaping seems a bit amateurish. Or possibly it was made well, but ground/worn badly by a previous owner?

 The last and very unusual thing about this knife is the total lack of guards. There is no guard to keep you sliding out onto the blade, or to keep the knife from slipping though your fingers either one.  An underwater dive knife is going to have to work with either frozen cold hands or clumsy gloves, but either way the knife better hang onto that hand, or be lost in the bilge.
    yours Scott
 
 

[oldtools]

Thank you Scottg, good point about the lack of guard for a dive knife.. 
What gets me is it is NOT! Stainless Steel, but only had a black coating of slime on the blade when I pulled it from the bilge,
and the only "rust" was a little ~1/2" long & ~.010" deep pit as seen on the 1st photo. the rest of the blade just cleaned up by wiping it & little scothbrite.
I didn't buff, polish or sand it.

[rusty]

>it is NOT! Stainless Steel, but only had a black coating of slime ...

Because it has a slug of brass attached to it, provided electrolytic protection, like a zinc plate on a boat....

[oldtools]

But the Brass wasn't deteriorated eather, we use lots of Zinc plates on the hull for cathodic protection, the zinc sacrifices it's self to the hull..
somehow the steel is so dence with no pores for salt to enter?... or it could have been next to a zinc plate??

[rusty]

It is kinda hard to guess, exactly , there are quite a lot of things going on in a bilge.
The water, unlike the outside of the boat, isn't replenished continuously, so it can become saturated with dissolved substances, exclusing some of the oxygen, the acidity can change, which affects the corrosion of metals....

Brass, in general, degrades much more slowly than zinc, and would make a better plate, except it wouldn't protect any of the other brass things. (which is why zinc is used)

'Black slime' describes just what I would expect from cathodic protection tho, a soft hydroxide coating on the steel...

Unless your knife is old enough to be true wrought iron....(seems highly unlikely)

The condition of the wood is interesting also, it doesn't seem all that bad for being immersed in water for a length of time....

If scottg's speculation that it was made from something else, like a chef's knife is right, it may have some quasi stainless in it, keep in mind, not all stainless steels are non magnetic....and even a small quantity of nickel will drasticly improve it's corrosion resistance...

All I know for certain is, i wouldn't want someone comeing at me in a dark alley with that thing ;P

[oldtools]

Thank you Rusty, makes sense..

although I thought the "Black coating of SLIME was Because it has a SLUG of brass attached to it" was Funny...

[mrchuck]

I believe it to be an old WW1 trench knife that has been "re-worked".
The end cap was probably pointed very sharp to crack a skull with.
The blade and length is correct for a killing knife.
The hilt is thick enough for twisting and tearing.