please send the G+R knife to me
...(Im only kidding, but that said I would seriously love to add it to my collection)I think that it could be a Georgus Rex mark used by Rodgers and son during the reign of George the fourth...I believe that he technically only ruled England proper between 1820 and 1830 ?...thus predating the more commonly seen victorian era "VR" marks...if so, this looks to me like it could be a
very early and rare butcher knife mark from the heyday of our western fur trade era...I would not do anything to that blade except keep it safely unless you consider selling or trading it to a collector where it could honestly be worth quite a bit....
the wilson with the Sheffield mark is valuable, but also pretty common...its a later mark (very late 1800s) and could be sheathed up for a later western plains rig...or again, traded or sold to a collector, but not for nearly as much as the "G+R" marked blade...
what ever you do,
I personally would not grind, rehaft or alter either of those blades...there are tons of old generic unmarked carbon steel butchers you can alter, but marked blades like you have are getting pretty scarce...not to be overly dramatic, but if you need a few generic blades to grind, I have enough hoarded up to outfit half of the plains Indian nations on a buffalo hunt, and could send you a couple just so you dont grind those two until you research them a bit more....
TC
