Press Button Knife Co One Arm Man Knife switchblade

These are usually referred to as "One Arm Man" knives and were designed to help people with disabilities, specifically lost, or damaged arm or hand. It was designed to be used as both a cutting and eating utensil that could be opened and closed easily with one hand. This knife was made by the Press Button Knife Co of Walden, NY sometime between 1900 and 1923 and most, if not all, were made under contract for the AA Marks Artificial Limbs & Specialties Co of New York, as well as a few other switchblade models that they purchased. Most, if not all of these originally had an acid etch on the blade advertising the AA Marks company, but the etches were fragile and easily worn off with use.

The blade on this knife is mostly full and shiny with some scratches and scattered light pitting, esp on middle fork tine. It is marked PRESS BUTTON KNIFE CO WALDEN NY on the front tang and US PAT 470605 on the rear. The knife measures just under 5 inches closed and approximately 9 inches open and it has pressed aluminum scales and steel liners. Aluminum was a rarer and more expensive material when this knife was made, but unfortunately not very durable so most of these that saw much use have damaged, or corroded scales. The scales on this one are actually very good, but do show some smoothing/wear from being in pocket and a couple of small dings. The knife workd well with the blade seating deep, good snap and very good lockup open. Beautiful old automatic knife in VG condition.