As far as functional telescopes go, this is probably the oldest one that I’m ever likely to get my grubby little mitts on! I have no idea how old this thing is – it was sold as being early Victorian (1840s). However, research suggests anywhere from 1800-1850, with the style becoming increasingly uncommon from the 1850s onwards. What I do know is that this telescope is definitely of a much, much older style than I’m used to, and which hasn’t been seen in at least a hundred and forty years.

The way it’s constructed, the way it operates, and its various component pieces, and features, screams just how different it is from any other telescope which I’ve ever had the privilege of handling.

So, what do I know about it?

This particular type of telescope is pretty freakin’ old. That much I do know. In some respects it’s not too different from the others I have, in other respects, it is very different!

It’s a two-draw wooden-barreled naval telescope with brass fittings, with an eyepiece cartridge, erector cartridge, and two-piece objective lens, which were all common features of antique telescopes of the 1800s. Where it differs is in how these pieces are assembled and fitted.

For a start, let’s look at the eyepiece mount. It’s much larger and more elaborate than most such mounts, and the eyepiece lens which it protects is also fitted differently into the cartridge which holds it.

The eyepiece cartridge has two lenses which magnify the image seen by the big objective lens at the front of the telescope. On later telescopes, both these eyepiece lenses are fitted into rims of roughly the same shape and size, and are screwed into either side of the cartridge which holds them.

On this telescope, the eyepiece lenses are not only of dramatically different sizes, but how they’re mounted into the cartridge is also markedly different. This style of fixture is something you just don’t see in telescopes which come from the second half of the 1800s.

The second major difference between this telescope and others which I’ve handled, and which points it out as being an older style, is how the lens-caps are mounted and operate on the telescope.

Most telescopes have one big round objective lens-cap, which just covers the front of the telescope, to stop the big, light-catching lens from getting dirty, gritty, scratched or damaged, and a smaller cap at the other end, for the same purpose. To use the telescope, it’s necessary to remove the lens-cap at the front, and to slide the lens-cap built into the eyepiece mount, to one side. The cap or shutter pivots on a screw-post into the side of the telescope’s eyepiece and is hidden neatly away.

Here, you can see the two ‘guillotine’ shutters raised into their open positions.

By comparison, this telescope has rectangular, sliding lens-shutters on both the front, and back end. They slide open and shut and they stick out the sides of the telescope instead of tucking neatly away. I’ve seen some people call these ‘guillotine-style’ shutters, on account of how their operation resembles that of everyone’s favourite full-sized vegetable-chopper – so, I’ll call them guillotine-style shutters too!

The lens-cap removed, with its shutter raised.

They really are a very whimsical piece of telescopic history. They’re a feature that you simply do not see on modern telescopes – and not on many antique ones, unless they’re really old, like this one! I’m pretty sure I’ll never find another one like this – at least not at any price which I could comfortably afford!

Another feature which I like about this telescope is the fact that the lens-cap that protects the objective lens at the front of the wooden barrel has two purposes. First, it acts as a lens-cap, to keep the lens free from dust, scratches and breakage – second, it acts as a rain and glare-shield! It’s not actually necessary to remove the lens-cap from the front of the telescope, in order to use it. You simply slide up the shutter on the front of it!

This feature would’ve been common on telescopes designed for naval use at sea, where sea-spray or rain could easily have obscured the view of the telescope’s user. Protecting the telescope’s lens from the full force of the rain or sea would’ve allowed for clear vision even during inclement weather.

Given all these factors, how old is it?

I honestly don’t know. My guess is the 1820s or 1830s. I have no evidence to back this up beyond what I’ve seen from similar telescopes which were dated to this era, and which match the design elements which I’ve seen here. But that said, that would make this about 180 years old…which is impressive, any way that you slice it!

This has certainly been a fascinating piece to tinker with and pull apart, fix and clean. Hopefully I’ll have a video about this coming soon on my YouTube channel, so watch out for that! 🙂

When I was attending university a few years ago, for the first time in my life, I found myself doing a lot of travelling and walking around every day. Going to the campus, going to lecture halls, going to classes, the library, the store, the cafeteria for lunch, all kinds of places. And it was during this time in my life that I started to realise just how many things I needed to cut open. Lunch packets, sauce packets, that super-annoying skin-tight plastic wrap that adorns almost every single type of manufactured product these days, from POST-IT notes to writing supplies, and I began to wish more and more that I had some sort of pocketknife on me.

I never had a pocketknife as a child. I never saw the point, I never saw the need, and for almost every cutting job around, I used a pair of scissors. But as I got older, and started moving around more, I began to realise just how handy it would be to have a portable blade on me with which I could do things. And so I started hunting.

At first I really didn’t know much about knives, but with my historical bent, I knew that I’d like a pretty, antique one. The good news was that antique pocketknives are really common. The bad news is that finding a decent pocketknife that you like enough to buy, refurbish, maintain and use can be a bit tricky. There are loads of different styles, models or patterns out there, each one suited for different purposes. After a lot of hunting around, I bought a knife at the local flea-market. As I said, vintage pocketknives are really easy to find, the trick is finding one you like. The good thing is that most of them really don’t cost much at all.

What Did I Buy?

I ended up with a neat, medium-sized ‘Barlow’-pattern knife. It’s rounded off at one end of the knife (designed this way so that it’s easy to slip into the pocket), and has a pair of bolsters at the other end. The scales (decorative panels) on the sides of the knife are covered in panels of polished bone. Would be nice if it was ivory, but we can’t all be that lucky!

The Barlow knife is one of the oldest knife-patterns still manufactured today. And I mean really old! The first Barlow knives were invented back in the 1600s and were owned by such people as George Washington, and mentioned in the works of Mark Twain. Although it was actually invented in England, the Barlow became an icon of Americana by the middle-1800s, and was liable to be owned by thousands of people.

The classic Barlow has a handle with a rounded end, and two folding blades which both pop out of the same end. The style of the blades changes from manufacturer to manufacturer, but in the end, they comprise of one larger main blade, for general use, and one smaller blade, about half the size. This smaller blade was originally intended as a pen-knife, used for sharpening, cutting and shaping pens and pencils, in the days when writing was done with either quills, steel dip-pens or pencils (before the widespread availability of pencil-sharpeners).

The reason the Barlow was so popular was because it was effective, simple and cheap. The two blades did just about everything that most people in the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s needed of their knives, and it was also small enough, and cheap enough for most men, boys and probably women too, to own one. It’s qualities like this which have seen it last into the 21st century.

Cleaning the Knife

Any antique pocketknife that you pick up at an antiques shop or at a flea-market is bound to need cleaning. In most cases, the knife won’t have been properly maintained in decades. Cleaning the knife is important for a number of reasons.

First, it makes it easier, and therefore, safer to operate – an essential importance when anything with sharp blades is concerned.

Second, it improves the look of the knife and keeps your clothes clean. Nobody wants to carry a pocketknife in their pocket when it’s full of grime, and liable to transfer that to your jeans or slacks. And for something so small, a pocketknife can come with a whole heap of crap packed into it, and I’m not talking about the blades!

The first thing you’ll want to do, if you can, is to open all the knife-blades and toss it into an ultrasonic bath, ideally with warm water and liquid soap to blast out all the gunk inside the knife. Turn the machine on and watch all the dust and grime and crud come shaking out. You may need to do this two or three times, and change the water in between washes. This should clean out most of the grit inside the knife. Anything extra you can pick or scrape or wipe out with tissues, cotton-buds, or pins (useful for getting into the tiny cracks).

Once you’re removed all the grime, it’s time to remove all the tarnish and rust. This can be done using either hard abrasives like extra-fine sandpaper or steel-wool, or liquid polishes like Brasso, depending on how bad the the tarnishing is. Like the cleaning, polishing and rust-removal may take a few applications to get the look that you’re most comfortable with.

Sharpening Your Pocketknife

Once you’re done cleaning your pocketknife, the last thing to do is to sharpen it. There’s a million ways of sharpening a knife and half a billion ways of testing how sharp it is, so I won’t be going into this in great detail. YouTube is always a great place to find more, if you need it.

But to cover the basics – I sharpen my knives using stones of three different grits – coarse, then fine, then extra-fine, staring with the roughest, and progressing to the finest, with about 20-30 strokes of the blade across each surface on both sides. It’s important to keep the stones lubricated while you sharpen them. If you’re the sort of person who sharpens blades regularly, it might be useful to keep your stones soaking in a bucket of water somewhere, so that they’re always ready for use. If not, you’ll need to soak them for a few hours before you start using them.

Once you’ve given each blade of your pocketknife a thorough sharpening on both sides, now is the time to test it. The classic way is to see how cleanly it slices through a sheet of paper. A well-sharpened knife will produce a clean, straight cut and the paper will have sharp, clean lines either side of it. A knife which hasn’t been sharpened properly will simply tear the paper, or fail to cut it at all. As you cut, make sure that you pull the blade along so that you can test that its entire length has been properly sharpened. If it cuts cleanly, then congratulations, you’ve sharpened your first vintage pocketknife!