Solingen is a famous cutlery producing town in Germany. Your knife is the real deal.

Mark.

 

very cool knife ya got there!

 

The thing that makes me pause is there's a compass next to iron.
Does a magnet stick to the knife? If not it's austenitic stainless which was not commonly used prior to the 40's-50's - wasn't even invented until the 20's or so.
Doesn't affect it's value as grandpa's knife at all.

 

A priceless heirloom.

 

Thanks everyone. In kind of the same with you, it made me curious. I looked up gutmann cutlery and all I could find was a company out of the smokey mountains that imports foreign blades. My family was known to visit that area a lot back in the day. So I wasn't sure if it was really old.. Or if it was more of a 70's reproduction that you might find in a mountain outfitter/tourist trap. Either way I still love the knife, but it's always fun to find out.

 

I hope you don't try to cut those eggs with it!
Nice knife!!!

 

Thank you for that info! I stuck a refrigerator magnet to it, and it held on. It's not a strong hold, but a magnet defiantly sticks to it.

 

Just about everyone in my generation has owned or seen those knives a lot. I know I have owned at least 10 Solingen steel knives with the stag grips over the years. I still see them at gun shows, they sent tons of them over to this side of the pond. They have very good steel in them and good stag grips. A nice specimen will bring 50-60 dollars depending on he condition. Your knife is a keepsake since it was your grandfathers knife and a good knife on top of that.

 

Solingen steel was one of the gold standards for many years. Solingen spawned a bunch of different knife companies but the most famous is probably Puma who at one time built some really awesome knives and probably still do if any of them are still being made in Germany. Yours looks like a great knife and I would suggest you do more research to see if you can find out more info. Hard to say from the pictures but the compass may have been added to the knife by one of the previous owners, if it was they did a really nice job of it. If it came from the factory that way I think the compass was put there as more of a novelty than for it's actual use.

Stu

 

Great knife... steel is first rate quality steel. Solingen is known world wide for high quality steel. Great heirloom. Take care it and you'll be leaving it to a family member too.

 

That's a VERY cool knife.

 

Your Grandfather's knife is a good one and is about 50-60 years old
These knives were the standard knives from just after WWII to about the 1970's when Japanese knives were made a bit better and American made knives such as Buck stole the market in the 1960's the Buck 110 being a stellar example of a top shelf American made knife.
There was always the custom knife market Randall, Morseth, Ruana etc. but that is a completely different market.
Solingen is a valley in Germany which due to a river which powered waterwheels essential to the cutlery trade before electricity was discovered. Most of the iron used in German cutlery came from the Kiruna mine in the northern part of Sweden which is the purest iron ore in the world 99.9 %pure. The lack of imputities made the German Steels from the Solingen area superior to most steels in the world and could be tempered harder without fear of breaking. Today the best steels for cutlery are the CPM steels from the USA, CPM means crucible particle metal. It is the most consistent grain of steel essential in the making of knife blades.
The German knives are still top shelf and I own several similar knives imported by Premiere Knives of Canada an importer of knives from around the world similar to Gutman.
Gutman cutlery is an American importer of knives and equipment, here's a quote:
the well established Gutmann Cutlery, Inc., which is a subsidiary of Woodcock International, Inc. of Washington State.

 

Nice knife!! Great steel and takes a wicked edge! Congrats