Case Knives, now owned by Zippo, has an interesting knife museum in Bradford
Case Knife Museum in Bradford PA
Pennsylvania. The museum has samples of the early knives and the stories behind them. My nephew, Tim Pike accompanied me since he has been a knife fan for years. His grandfather, Thomas Pike, used to have Fort Tuscarora on Route 172 in Lisbon Ohio. History, guns, and knives runs in the family.
My quest for the best pocket knife was easy at the Zippo/Case Museum, because of the abundance of knives there. This place is open to the public, and I highly recommend it to knife collectors. These pictures were taken in 2006, so things might have changed since then. According to their website, the place is open 7 days a week, and boasts of 100,000 visitors per year, from all over the world.
We went on our yearly tour of the Leatherman plant in Portland Oregon this year. It’s amazing how fast this company is growing. They had to increase the production area. To do this, they had to move the shipping department to another building 3 miles away. That new location is rented, and it houses the warehouse of the tools, the shipping area, customer service, and the custom laser engraving area.
Back to the main building, the small Leatherman museum is in the front office
Early Leatherman Prototype2
and open to the public. Here are a few pictures of the prototypes that Tim Leatherman made in his garage during the birth of his brilliant idea.
Early Leatherman Prototype
You know, necessity is the mother of invention. The Leatherman idea started when Tim and his wife toured Europe in the 1970’s, using a used car he bought there. It kept breaking down, and Tim would fix it himself. He really needed some pliers, but didn’t have any. It would have been nice if he had something like a Leatherman tool. Many months later, Tim perfected some prototypes
Early Leatherman Prototype3
in his garage, and started a very successful company. Too bad Gerber Knives turned down his proposal to produce his tools. Too bad for Gerber, but not for Tim.
Here are 2 stories of how a Leatherman tool came to the rescue.
