Doctor, Doctor

 I seldom buy slip joint knives.  They seem so old fashioned, as if the manufacturer can’t catch-up with the 1980s not to mention 2021.  The blade is held open by spring pressure on the tang and doesn’t lock the blade open.  I see it as a safety issue, but that’s me.  I do make an exception for very cool knives, like Doctor knives or Physician’s knives.

Case Doctor Knife, no64128  You could say it is on target.

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But I’ve got a list of must-haves.  It’s got to have a spatula and a slender spear point.  The knife butt should be flat and I suspect the originals has a solid, flat end.  Back in the old days when doctors made house calls they often took medical supplies with them.  Sometimes they needed to formulate medication and would grind up a power or pill and makes a salve or roll pills.

You don’t find too many as this was a niche market, but I’ve seem examples from ink and paint companies as part of their advertising and self-promotion.

Yeah, those are scratches on my new knife.

I’m also not a big Case knife fan.  They are, in my opinion, a collector’s club attempting to drive sales by constantly changing handle materials and their unique system of dating blades.  If you collect a specific pattern, you’ll never be done as each year a newly dated knife is made by the thousands.

One of their ploys, which I like from a marketing point of view, is they will “retire into the vault” a pattern that doesn’t have much demand and later release it when they think there is demand for it.

This happens to Doctor knives.  I saw this knife in 2018 for the first time, but even as I jumped on it, it slipped away.  A. G. Russell had “found’ a cache and I didn’t wait.

The handle is natural bone scales that have been sculpted and dyed with the stars and stripes of the American flag waving in the wind and capped with nickel-silver bolsters.  The fact that Case jigs and dyes their own bone in house allows them to create these unique pieces.

The back is a nice white bone

My knife is part of the Star Spangled series Case introduced at the 2017 SHOT Show.  The blade is a slender spear point 3 inches long with a Rockwell C hardness of 54-57.  The blade is made of Case’s proprietary steel called Tru-Sharp.  Case describes as a high carbon steel.  I suggest a drop of oil is called for.

The front is a nice jigged bone handle in a American Flag motif while the back is just white bone.

The one thing I don’t like, half the width of the spatula seems to be scratched by the brass bolster that separates the two blades.  I doubt very much the brass actually did scratch the blade.  I think it is a manufacturing artifact.  I could polish it out, if it’s not too deep, but I’m going to leave it as that’s the way they made it.

I understand A.G. is out of stock and the Case vault is still locked.  I’m happy to have it in my collection.