The Finnish Butterfly

After college and having found a real job I discovered I had a little extra spending money.  I was entranced by a red handled folding knife that could be best described as a butterfly knife from Finland.  Of course I satisfied that itch.

Hackman Folding Puukko

The blade doesn’t have a tang stamp and the only identification is “Hackman Finland” molded into the red plastic handle.  The 3.75 inch blade is a saber grind with a small secondary bevel that forms the actual cutting edge. 

The blade is an unknown stainless steel.  I’ve had it for years and no evidence of rust has appeared, despite the minima care I’ve given it.  And the plastic has also held up quite nicely.  I filed a small choil in the blade to separate the edge from the ricasso.  It was thought, with some justification, that without the choil you would damage your sharpening stone by chipping away it’s edge. 

In retrospect I realize was all I really accomplished was to add a stress riser in the blade.

Hackman was a cutlery and cookware company founded in Finland in 1790.  Later it was bought by the Iittala Group.  In 2007, littala was swallowed by the Fiskars Corporation.  Fiskars never, in my opinion, understood the American knife market and even now needs to make up for lost ground.

The folding Puukkko closed and latched

The Hackman butterfly knife was better known in Finland as Linkkupuukko, or "latch-knife". The marketing boys positioned it as a retkiveitsi or "camping knife" and later as Eräpuukko or "wilderness puukko."  By now you should associating puukko with Finnish for knife.  I want to thank the unknow commenter who told me veitsi is Finish for knife.  They were kind enough to inform me thay puukko is a particular type of veitsi.

The Hackman story begins when Johan Friedrich Hackman was awarded the right to establish a trading house in the Hanseatic city of Vyborg.  He soon had a successful timber goods business on his hands, but like most businessmen he sought out new opportunities.  West of him was the territory now known as Finland.

In the early 1800s Hackman bought Sorsakoski – a small factory community in eastern Finland.  The purchase included a sawmill, flourmill and a brick factory.  Hackman’s cutlery business began in nearby Vyborg in 1876, headed by his son also Johan Friedrich Hackman.

Junior moved their entire cutlery manufacturing business to Sorsakoski in the early 1890s. The factory community was a mirror of Finnish society at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Companies like Hackman took full responsibility for providing basic services to their employees.  Sounds a little like the American coal mining companies and the company store, doesn’t it?

In 1902 Hackman began manufacturing new low-cost cutlery items forged from a single workpiece. The introduction of quality stainless steel in the 1920s revolutionized the entire cutlery business.  By the 1960s design legends like Kaj Franck and Bertel Gardberg had designed iconic cutlery collections for Hackman.

The black handle version of the knife seems to have a sordid past or excellent present day marketing.  There are rumors, highly unsubstantiated rumors, that CIA agents were issued the knife for Vietnam.  If anyone has any real knowledge I’d sure like to hear from you.

This makes some limited sense.  The knife isn’t made in the USA and being caught with one might not brand you as an imperialistic agent.  The mechanism is simple and robust, perhaps perfect for undercover work.  Being inexpensive, ditching the knife if you were being followed or mouse-trapped didn’t require a huge sacrifice on your part.

However, it isn’t likely you can call up the CIA and speak to the quartermaster and expect to get a straight answer.  That’s where the marketing comes in.  It’s easy to say on ebay that the knife is from the CIA / Vietnam issue era.

Recently, Spyderco added some credibility to this story in their April Newsletter:
" While the Finnish Hackman Camp Knife, a balisong-style folder rumored to have been issued by the CIA in Vietnam..."

There’s a story here and perhaps one day we’ll know it in its entirety. 

Post script:  At the Novi, MI April 2023 show, I saw a black handled Hackman butterfly knife.  Like the red one, the blade did not have a tang stamp or other markings.  But the knife wasn't completely sterile as I had expected.  Impressed on one side of the black handle, where the words Hackman Finland in very small letters, about half the size as the embossing on the red handled knife.

The knife was in very bad shape and I now have buyer remorse that I didn't buy it.  

Does this resolve the CIA story.  No, with out some province from someone who was issued or worked with a agent and saw the knife, the question remains unanswered.

Damn it, I should have bought the knife!

Q Branch Knives

WWII wasn’t the first war to have enemy combatant’s dressed as civilians. But it is the war we seem to most associate with covert weapons and spies.  The problem for agents and spies is a weapon found on your person discredits your claim that you’re something harmless and can be ignored.  Yet having a last resort weapon could be the difference between death by torture and escape.

OSS and later the CIA developed little hideaway last resort tools for their agents as did many other domestic and foreign agencies.  We are fascinated by these James Bond devices.

Agents tied a small cord around the metal to provide them with a loop and more friction surface.

There probably isn’t anything more fascinating then the OSS “lapel dagger.”  It was just a small thumb-size flat piece of sharpened steel that could be sewn behind lapels, inside pockets, or just about any place. 

The key to placement seems to be to:

One: sew it where it wouldn’t be found in a quick search,

Two:  sew it where arresting officers would expect you to place your hands in response to their orders.

I had always wanted an authentic one, but twenty years ago A.G. Russell came out with their version of a undetectable lapel dagger.

It is about 3.75 inches long with a 2.5 inch double sided blade.  It’s made of plastic and frankly, I don’t think it would survive more than a couple quick stabs before the blade snapped.  But that’s all you might need to get your feet under you and escape.

I don't believe it has the weight or strength for the two techniques shown above

It came with two plastic sheaths so you could move the dagger between coat and another location.  One can almost see Bond moving it from his suit coat to his pants pocket unnoticed.  Each sheath has small holes to facilitate sewing.

At the time Russell also came out with a dagger shaped like their Sting but made from nylon filled with glass fiber.  It was advertised as a CIA letter opener.  I remember the claim that you could resharpen it with a coarse file.

The knife is about 6.75 inches long with a 3.25 inch blade and 3.5 inch handle.  It is substantially sturdier than the lapel knife.

Both of these were on sale during the very early days of metal detectors at airports.  At this time you could carry a smallish knife like a Spyderco Delica through security.  You declared the knives by placing them in a small basket with your wallet which bypassed security.  There was often some question about partially serrated edges, but most of the time the knife passed and you carried it on the plane.

Don’t even think about it today!

You can find an almost identical lapel knife at: https://lapolicegear.com/imminent-threat-solutions-black-glass-filled-nylon-lapel-dagger.html

But at this time they are out of stock.

Cold Steel makes a variety of plastic knives that are almost undetectable.  They used to come with removable metal rings to ensure they could be seen when x-rayed.  They may have simply given up on the pretense of detectability and saved the customer the problem of removing the metal rings.

Lansky also makes a very passable plastic dagger they promote as a box or letter opener.

I guess they assume your opponents will be named Box or Letter

TOPS - 3 Bros First Look

Have you noticed how things come in threes?  Three leaf clovers are common.  Winning card hands can be three of a kind, or perhaps menus give you three choices from three different selections each containing three different dishes.  Maybe you have three bourbons on the shelf?

Why not knives?  TOPS thought.

Don't forget TOPS trademark whistle!

Face it; most of our cutting chores are small.  We need a small utility knife, but considering the world we live in, we want max performance.  Why not put three different blade configurations, Hunter's Point (spear point), Tanto and Sheep's Foot blade in a small belt carry package.  Well, that’s what TOPS Knives has done.  They call it 3 Bros.

So who is TOPS?

In 1998, TOPS Knives was founded to create the highest-quality knives using the extensive knowledge and real life experiences of Military Operatives, Law Enforcement Officers, and outdoor professionals.  Perhaps the best part, all TOPS knives are manufactured and hand-finished at their facility in the Rocky Mountains, USA.

TOPS Knives have been requested and deployed in "Hot Spots" all over the world. Numerous individuals who are or were Field Operators have used these knives and report top performance and reliability when their lives depended on the tools they had with them.  That’s a pretty hard claim to top.

The 3 Bros are also very easy to carry everyday. Even in the sheath, one of these knives only weighs 2.8 ounces.

Specs:

Overall Length     4.27 inches

Blade Length       2.00 inches

Cutting Edge        2.00 inches

Blade Thickness  0.120 inches

Blade Steel          1095 steel hardened to RC 56-58

Handle Material    Black Canvas Micarta

Knife Weight        1.9oz

You can purchase one, two or all three.  For a little extra you can go with serrations and/or camo finish.  I’d hate to break up a family, so I got all three.

The small size was not found to be a limitation with daily chores.

Each knife has three deep depressions on the spine.  It’s a little aggressive for naked skin but fine for the glove hand.  Each knife has a deep bolster which acts as a finger guard to prevent hand injuries from sliding onto the blade.  The edge goes just about all the way to the bolster and there is no ricasso. 

The blades are a flat-sided saber grind ending at a shoulder about one third of the way on the blade.  This provides sufficient room to grip the blade by thumb and forefinger while the ring and social finger grip the Micarta disk on each side of the knife.  The disk provides a nice anchor point even if you are wearing gloves.

The small sized was not a factor wearing gloves.  The micarta disk provided sufficient grip as did the massive jimping.

TOPS blades are made of 1095 steel and they recommend an 18-20 degree sharpening edge.  These knives can be sharpened with ordinary stones but can also be sent to TOPS for a new factory edge.  The warranty card spells it out for you.

I’ve never owned a TOPS knife that didn’t perform.  The 1095 steel will hold an edge, but will need resharpening with use.  The steel needs to be taken care of with a protective coating of oil or corrosion inhibitor.  If you anticipate needing it for food preparation or consumption, make sure you use food safe oil.  Nobody likes the trots!

You can get yours at:  https://www.topsknives.com/3-bros

A single knife is $70, but they’ll deal you all three for $160.00. 

Souvenir Knives

 When it comes to souvenir knives, I’ve got to go with historic references.  A knife that simply says Disneyland doesn’t float my boat.  But given the option of an event occurring at a specific time and place, well I’m a sucker for it.  

I can easily understand military collectors.  There are so many extraordinary events happening to ordinary Joes and Janes and their stories are told in the badges and mess kits they carried.

So when I had the chance to buy a brass-sided knife from the 1982 World’s Fair held in Knoxville, Tennessee I bought it.  The tang stamp identifies it as made by Parker Cutlery in Japan.

The letters are so small I needed a magnifying glass to read them.

The 1982 World's Fair, formally known as the Knoxville International Energy Exposition, was themed "Energy Turns the World."  It opened on May 1, 1982, and closed six months later on October 31, 1982.  The Sunsphere, a 266-foot tower topped with a five-story gold globe, still remains and can be seen in Knoxville.

James F Parker founded the company as a sideline to his employment as a paint sales rep.  He was one of the first to effectively utilize direct mail services to buy and sell collectable knives in the 1970s.  He used a stylized logo of an eagle with its wings spread.  He helped start Frost Cutlery by partnering with James Frost in a short-lived partnership. 

One of the more recognized tang stamps from Parker Cutlery

The commemorative knife business can be very confusing.  Parker had knives made by both Schrade and Rodgers-Wostenholm in addition to his own production.  As his business evolved the tang stamp changed, reflecting involvement with his brothers, purchasing of the Japanese company Imia and then Rodgers Wostenholm USA Ltd which gave him the right to use the IXL trademark.  In January of 1989, Parker purchased the W.R. Case and Sons Cutlery Co.

There can be no doubt that James Parker was a player in the knife world stage!  Knives ranging from good to yuck quality were produced both for the souvenir market and cutlery trade. 

In 1990 James Parker declared bankruptcy.

I find it interesting that I am unable to find a Wikipedia entry about Parker or his knife company.  Even Case knife histories fail to mention their brief ownership by Parker.  All I could find out through my limited search of the Internet was Case is currently owned by Zippo Lighters.

(Most of my information on Parker was liberated from Collector Knives by C. Houston Price.)

After that little historic jaunt, I’ve still got a very nice historic souvenir worth five dollars on E-Bay.  It doesn’t look like the blade was sharpened and I’m going to leave the brass with its patina.   Now, if I can only find an elongated penny from the fair, I would be a happier camper.