Russell Green River Works "Professional" 6" Skinner Carbon Steel Twine Wrap 1950s+

Russell Green River Works "Professional" series with forged carbon steel blade and beechwood handle with twine wrap. This line was made for butchers and generally show up very used with the twine damaged, its great to find an example in unused shape like this. It had a few patches of heavy rust at the tip which needed to be removed but otherwise this is in unused condition!

The surface electro etch on this one most likely places this made at the end of this line's production, likely after the 1950s. Russell folded in the 1930s and was bought by the "Dexter" Harrington Cutlery Co of Southbridge Mass. who bought the Russell trade marks and continued many of their lines and continued production for a while at their Turners Falls factory. 

Russell Green River Works was the first American knife-maker to look to aggressively meet the new and growing American cutlery market which was being met with English imports from Sheffield. In the pre-Civil War time period of the 1830s to 1860 Sheffield engaged in a protracted trade war with the new American knife makers, dumping underpriced knives on the American market in an effort to bankrupt companies such as J Russell, Lamson and Goodnow, and Harrington Cutlery. Russell's answer to this was to offer wages double that being available in Sheffield and to incorporate immigrant Sheffield skilled labor into his process.