Scott Matthews writes:

> Tang of cutting blade is marked W. Butcher.  Other blades are not marked.
> Web seems to indicate this is an after market blade from England.
Possibly
> a "home made" plane?

Dunno whether this helps or confuses.

I have, as a long-ago gift from my brother who then traded in antique arms
and armour, a knife marked, so far as I can decipher, "W. & S. Butcher"
followed on the next line by "J? R. Gravely & Wreaks" and followed on the
next line by "New York".

The knife, in, as I understand it, the Jim Bowie pattern, is adorned with
German silver and with horn scales and has received no use from me in
circumstances where it measures 17 1/2" overall and has a blade 12 1/4" long
and 2" wide.  Daresay the frontiersmen ancestors of some of the Murrican
Galoots built their log cabins and quartered their own buffaloes using one
of these things as their only tool.

Regards from Brisbane

John Manners
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