Doctor, Doctor

I'm a big fan of doctor or physician knives.  They usually come with a spear point blade and a spatula.  The knife butt, on the best of them, is a solid flat end cap used to grind medications and materials.  There was a time when doctors would make house calls, especially in the more remote parts of the country.  Sometimes they need to open their black bag and formulate medication by absorbing a liquid into a solid and solids to ointments.  This called for a spatula and a way of grinding materials.  Hence the doctor’s knife. 

Rough Ryder's Doctor Knife

“…this was entirely done by hand. The pill mass was rolled into the form of a cylinder, placed on a graduated tile and divided by means of a spatula into measured lengths calculated to contain the required amount of active ingredients. These were then rounded between finger and thumb to give the final product.”  Hong Kong Medical Journal 2015.

Of course, the blade was needed to lance boils and carbuncles.  Medicine in the early 1900s was not for the faint of heart.

I’ve always been fascinated with spatulas.  As a chemist, I used a variety of sizes to weigh out chemicals and unknowns.  Then I turn around and see a chocolate maker use the same tool.  Take a step and you’ll find printers keeping the ink in the printing bank mixed and evenly spread out with spatulas.  You’ll find them in kitchens, paint and pigment stores, in labs and pharmacies, but you’ll seldom find them with doctors.

I don’t see too many doctor knives around, especially the older ones, so I was happy to find one from Rough Ryder.  Yes, they changed their name from Rider to Ryder.  I don’t know if it was the condom association or Teddy Roosevelt.  Perhaps the change was just a public relations move to get more notice.

I think of that blade as more of a sheep foot blade, but there is a high degree of freedom in naming blades 

The knife is 3.6 inches closed and has nickel silver bolsters.  It has a spey blade and the traditional spatula.  The handle is malachite and pearl from Stoneworx.  The knife has brass liners and the two blades are separated by brass as well.

All and all, it is a really nice doctor’s knife and I really like it.  Rough Ryder has an upscale group of knives, and this is one of them.  It is a nice example of knife art at a reasonable price.  You can buy one for the princely sum of $26.00.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

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.