Hello Chris, if i may ...
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Originally Posted by Chris Evans
... Can't comment much on this as I don't know, and unfortunately my French is limited to counting to six! These peculiar knife handle ends came into fashion in the 19th century, so by this time they would have known what a rattle snake was - Just a guess......
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The point not being whether French cuttlers knew what a rattle snake was, but that of adopting a non territorial reptile as a home decor; certainly more plausible that they made these handles for those familiar with such snake, where there are some 27 sub-species - i would say ...
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Originally Posted by Chris Evans
...Can you please provide more details? Any mention of the typology of the navajas? ...
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Forton ... LA NAVAJA ANTIGUA ESPAŅOLA
Page 170/171
[Quoting] The 3th September 1772 is the day Francisco Santiago Palomares concludes his Noticia de la Fabrica de Espadas de Toledo which, for so many centuries until end XVII century ...
... We quote this author and work here for two fundamental reasons: the first is that although in principle he apparently referred exclusively to sword making, reality is different, once from the 93 punctions shown and identified, many of them are found in beautiful cuchillos and navajas, which indicates that these sword smiths equally dedicated themselves to the fabrication of short white weapons and domestic utensiles of determined category ...
... little intensity whould have had the guild life of Cuchilleros Toledanos during the last third of the XVIII when they, which had ordnances since 1689, required new ones in 1775, as noted by Larruga. Then Forton writes about the cuchilleros of Granada in 1776 ...and so on.
We can also see in the chapter dedicated to marks, quite a few from the XIX century FABRICA DE TOLEDO; but as expected no one personal mark of sword smiths, as specimens from so early age are not presently gathered ... or revealed to public.
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Originally Posted by Chris Evans
... But I don't think that the `bandoleros' and other criminals, especially in the presidios, never mind the infamous barateros, were all that interested in a fair fight ...
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Most probably those characters did not elect the noisy ratchet version
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