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modirt 
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Joined: 18 Jul 2018
Location: Missouri
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 Topic: Corn Knife
Posted: 29 Sep 2019 at 9:28am |
Anybody recognize this brand of corn knife and can remember who made it?
Blade was painted blue before it left the factory and only ID is CK70, stamped in handle.
Best guess is it dates back at least 50 years.
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Brian F(IL)
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Location: Paxton, IL
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Posted: 29 Sep 2019 at 10:30am |
I've got one similar to it in the toolbox of my pickup truck. 
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johnkc
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Posted: 29 Sep 2019 at 10:46am |
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Looks like a True Temper to me
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I support the development of hybrid automobiles and alternative fuels as I need DIESEL fuel for my ALLIS CHALMERS!
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modirt
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Posted: 29 Sep 2019 at 11:17am |
I had my very own True Temper knife about 50 years ago....and this one does look similar......but as I recall, mine actually said True Temper on the handle. And I don't remember it being painted blue.
I have a modern era Ames True Temper and is an exact twin......except for the blade. Modern era stuff is pure Chinese junk. Was not sharp when it arrived, would not take much of an edge and when you whack a tough stemmed weed with it, it bounces off.....and rounds over the edge in the process.
By comparison, this one has part of the original edge still on it and it will shave a thumbnail......and is tough enough steel you almost need to use a sharpening stone on it.
In short, the real deal........which makes me curious to know who made it.
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trace
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Joined: 01 Aug 2012
Location: N.W. Iowa
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Posted: 29 Sep 2019 at 4:15pm |
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is true temper bought mine at hardware hank in spencer. prolly 1980.
Edited by trace - 29 Sep 2019 at 4:16pm
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1955 WD-45 WIDE FRONT W/ TRIP
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Pat the Plumber CIL
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Joined: 11 Sep 2009
Location: Springfield,Il
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Posted: 29 Sep 2019 at 9:09pm |
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I got a blister on my hand just thinking about one of those things .
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You only need to know 3 things to be a plumber;Crap rolls down hill,Hot is on the left and Don't bite your fingernails
1964 D-17 SIV 3 Pt.WF,1964 D-15 Ser II 3pt.WF ,1960 D-17 SI NF,1956 WD 45 WF.
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shameless dude
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Posted: 29 Sep 2019 at 9:12pm |
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yeah...that style wasn't worth a chit! was made from metal scraps from some factory, all they did was put a few holes in it for the handle and put a chitty edge on it. made them a lot of quik money tho!
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modirt
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Posted: 30 Sep 2019 at 7:23am |
I was never a fan of using a corn knife either, but like a prisoner on a road gang, as a kid growing up on a farm I never had much say in what I was told to be doing. But like most of us, it turns out I lived to tell about it.
The knife selection back then was either this, or a thin, light weight turned up nose machete looking thing.......and I found this style to work better for me. Had a good balance to it and the wide end gave it enough weight out on the end to chop through the weeds. The one I had would take and edge.....which made the hard chopping go easier. Mine also cost 3X what the cheap ones did. I bought mine myself........and yes, off the shelf it would put a blister on your hand. Got a couple pretty bad ones the first day I used it.......so took a wood rasp and sandpaper to the handle to smooth out the sharp edges and no more blisters after that.
Biggest use back then was when we kids (and parents too) walked the soybean fields to hack out the weeds the herbicides of the day didn't get. The worst were the wild sunflowers. The stalks on those could get to nearly 2" in diameter and 8 feet + tall. They were big enough to knock out sickle sections on a combine and then had to be ground through the combine cylinder....doing a number on the rasp bars and concaves. So they had to be hacked out or else. Plus we (meaning parents) wanted to keep the fields clean of all the rest to keep the landlords happy.
This was never much fun, but about the time I turned 16, this thing turned around for me. When the older siblings had moved on, we were left short handed for the job and in looking around for more help, it arrived in the form of similar aged girls from town....about 4 to 6 of them each day.....or what could ride in the front seat and back of a pickup truck. They would cut weeds in the morning, then hang out at the pool all afternoon. In addition to cutting weeds alongside these girls (who mostly wore swimsuit tops to work on their tans), my other job was to go to town at 7 AM to pick them all up......and then around noon, load them up and take them all home. That is what you call a silver lining!
It is now 50 years later and I'm still on a first name basis with many of those girls.
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DMiller
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Posted: 30 Sep 2019 at 7:33am |
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Corn Knife we used in Greenville at Gr Aunt's farm were slightly Hooked at the business end, hand made as still had Blacksmith Hammer marks on them.
They all went away YEARS Ago. Had the unfortunate need of a knife to cut open Fresh Watermelon when 11 years of age, grabbed up the first LARGE Knife available(Corn Knife) and proceeded to hack one open, got my left hand palm in the process and almost lost my little finger in that process, still have a scar, still have a knot internally the great aunt tied in the 'Leader' inside the palm that works my little finger when she reconnected the two loose ends back together.
MODIRT you dirty minded Old Man!!!! We never received any sweet young things at the farm, just Old women, Older men and boys that needed some extra cash to court young women as that.
Edited by DMiller - 30 Sep 2019 at 7:37am
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Hubert (Ga)engine7
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Posted: 30 Sep 2019 at 9:54pm |
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Our corn knives were made out of broken crosscut saws and pretty crude but sharp. Don't know if I could find one still around the farm or not. No sweet young things helping out on the farm, I had to work all week so I would have some money to go to town on Friday and Saturday nights and chase them.
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Just an old country boy saved by the grace of God.
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modirt
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Posted: 01 Oct 2019 at 7:29am |
Our machete looking knives came from Orscheln farm and home.......might have been military surplus in origin, as they came with green canvass sheath........never saw one that was anything but commercial made. I have another old vintage one made by Atkins, outfit from Indiana that made hand saws. It is similar, but different.........and BTW, logo on the Atkins handle does ID it as a "corn knife"......and not a machete.
As for the girls.......that wasn't my idea, but once I realized the possibilities.....I was all for it.....for a couple reasons. Hanging around a bunch of girls for starters, but lining out 6 to 8 girls meant that nasty job was going to go faster and be over with sooner. BTW, girls saw it as the female equivalent of the city boys who were hauling hay. And like the boys who hauled hay.......some only lasted one day. The ones who stayed with it for the long haul were generally not the cheerleaders.....if you get my drift.
Other farm related job that both boys and girls worked at side by side was detasseling seed corn.
Mixed emotions when someone invented Roundup and a tractor with wick applicator replaced the girls and corn knives.......on balance, Roundup was better.....and when it can be used.....still is. But that trusty corn knife remains a quick and dirty option when it's not.
Edited by modirt - 01 Oct 2019 at 7:32am
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klinemar
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Posted: 01 Oct 2019 at 5:33pm |
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We used both corn knife and corn cutter. Corn cutter has the curved blade like a sickle or scythe. We used them to open corn fields as the custom harvester had a 1 row Papec Chopper and a Farmall 560. We had an International Silo Filler that we used to chop the corn from opening the fields.My Dad would always open fields on Saturday so he had plenty of help!
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Dennis J OPKs
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Posted: 01 Oct 2019 at 5:55pm |
Way back when- there were areas around buildings that we couldn't get to other than by hand chopping. I don't know where the idea came from but my Dad would mount a curved corn knife blade in the end of a full length axe handle riveting them in and that worked great on the big stuff including sunflowers, you could chop and be far enough away so they didn't come down on you. I've never seen others like it so I don't know if it was his unique approach?
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JC-WI
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Posted: 01 Oct 2019 at 6:17pm |
Klinemar, did you cut the outside row or two of corn and set it in the row the chopper would be coming through on? We/ I did that for several years and then one day had enough of that and just drove over the corn, trying to avoid running on the row itself and then chopped the row afterwards and got most of the corn... wasn't like using the old ground drive corn binder where it caused troubles in the tying of the bundles. That was the reason for hand cutting the rows. I remember a couple years we cut the outside rows next to the pasture fence and just pitched the stalks over to the cows... was fun watching them old cows shaking them stalks trying to bust the ears off.  We had several knives for cutting corn stalks but the faorite was one that looked likeit had been cut out of a saw blade and was very sharp had a curved one and a machete looking one but the first one was the best. Also cut weeds and brush under the fence with that one...
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He who says there is no evil has already deceived himself
The truth is the truth, sugar coated or not. Trawler II says, "Remember that."
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klinemar
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Posted: 02 Oct 2019 at 7:48am |
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JC,my Dad until we hired a man with a Uni Harvester always cut 2 rows around the field and split it. Dad was a stickler about running corn down! Also what would the neighbors say if they saw that corn on the ground? Big argument between Dad and I when I started chopping because I ran the first two rows down and came back the other way and picked up most of it. By then most of the neighbors who would comment were gone!We did hire a neighbor with an old Fox self propelled chopper to open fields but that machine was either broke down or he was busy chopping his own. We bought our own pull type forage harvester as the men known as Silo Fillers were gone. Now Custom Harvesters chop hundreds of acres each day and the silage they waste by missing the truck would have my Dad cussing!
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HD6GTOM
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Posted: 04 Oct 2019 at 5:43pm |
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I still have dads that he used from 1926 up to the day he stopped farming in the late 1970's. Guy's it dont get used much. We cut and shocked a lot of corn up till about 1965.
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tadams(OH)
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Posted: 05 Oct 2019 at 1:00pm |
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Yes, I have my dad's and all it gets used for is cutting the sweet corn
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