Watch fob knife - gold inlay?

[ISCS Yoda]

Since I'm posting about knives I'm adding this one:

The inlays of flowers and doves might actually be gold or might be painted something something. My jeweler will know but it's a fascinating old piece.

 

[Modified]

Looks like Damascene at a glance.

 

[Alpo]

Is the knife any good, as a knife?



My father had a gold watch, which had belonged to his father. At the end of the chain was a little pocket knife, like that one. Also gold.



And I remember him telling me one time that it wouldn't hold an edge. That as a knife, it was worthless.



It was pretty though.

 

[JohnRippert]

Is the knife any good, as a knife?



My father had a gold watch, which had belonged to his father. At the end of the chain was a little pocket knife, like that one. Also gold.

And I remember him telling me one time that it wouldn't hold an edge. That as a knife, it was worthless.

It was pretty though.

Probably meant to be used as a letter opener and not much else.

 

[ruger 22]

In the late 19th century when pocket watches were in style the knife fob was also mainly used as a quill pen sharpening tool.

 

[ISCS Yoda]

I'm not sure that little knife is more than a hundred years old but I reckon it is closer to 100 than not. It's very clean so it is unlikely that it was ever used to sharpen a quill pen and definitely not a pencil or anything else.

A letter opener...........maybe.

Because I just tested it. I tried to cut the edge of a piece of paper. Big blade - not great. Little blade - not good at all.

BUT!

The larger blade is sufficiently long that I could run it through my knife sharper (not too hard - it's kind of delicate) and it successfully took an edge which was sharp enough to slice the edge of the piece of paper. So it could have been used successfully to open mail. But it's so tiny I bet it never was used for that, either.

As for being Damascene, I think Modified's post is correct, I think that's exactly what it is. If it turns out to be valuable I'll let you know!

 

[rustythread]

These were also useful to scrape the burnt crud out of your pipe bowl.