After a lifetime as a knife collector and four decades as a knife retailer, Lonnie Basham is taking a step into manufacturing.
His passion for pocketknives helped fuel a business that sells and ships hundreds of knives weekly and has established Red Hill Cutlery as an industry leader.
It also gave rise to the Kentucky Museum of American Pocketknives where he displays his vast personal collection of artifacts in the rear of the store. The free exhibit, combined with the Guinness-certified World’s Largest Pocketknife out front has become a tourist attraction and resulted in Radcliff being declared the Knife Capital of Kentucky.Now the dream takes a new direction. Basham said he long has wanted to have his own knife brand. A connection among collectors led him to a historic twist as he was able to purchase rights to a name cherished in industry circles.
For the first time in more than a century, knives bearing the trademark J.B.F. Champlin Cutlery are being made and will be available exclusively through Red Hill Cutlery.
“It is a big responsibility to bring all this history back,” said his son, Josh Basham, who operates the knife store.
Mark shared this with me this afternoon. I could not get the whole thing to open on my computer, but I could on my phone. If you can’t read the whole thing, in a nutshell, Red Hill Cutlery (https://redhillcutlery.com/) plans on releasing the new versions of traditional Champlin knives under the J.B.F. Champlin brand.
I do not know all the details yet., I imagine this will be a Knife News item in the July issue (June went to press last week). I will have to reach out to Lonnie to get more details than are in the article anyway.
But I did a little digging myself…
According to this site (Brad Lockwood was a contributor): JBF Champlin became Cattaraugus Cutlery after reorganizing in 1886:
Operating under the name J.B.F. Champlin & Son by 1873, the importer, jobber and wholesaler would employ 125 by 1882 at its impressive Opera House headquarters in downtown Little Valley. Recruiting masters from New England and Europe, J.B.F. also hired his Case brothers-in-law as salesman, and the industry would never be the same. The company would be re-incorporated as Cattaraugus Cutlery at the end of 1886, and Cattaraugus County would soon have its first full-scale cutlery manufacturing factory.
I do not know the particulars, it looks like there is a GEC JBF Champlin from around 2012/2013, which you can see at Arizona Custom Knives. Note this is “JBF Champlin and Sons”, not JBF Champlin Cutlery. This might be an important distinction, I will ask Lonnie.
Digging further down the rabbit hole, I found this post about the Resurrection of JBF Champlin –
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/resurrection-of-jbf-champlin-sons.1005661/
From that thread:
JBF CHAMPLIN AND SONS
JBF Champlin and Sons Cutlery, is a new version of a very old brand. It is being created and pushed forward by two rather unlikely partners, Derek Smith from Salt Lake City and Michael Losicco of Pennsylvania. They have both been independently researching and collecting anything to do with JBF Champlin for many years.
Michael Losicco’s fascination with vintage pocketknives started innocently enough while he was visiting an antique store about 20 years ago. He wasn’t even shopping for knives, but on a whim he picked up a pearl handled whittler with a broken blade that happened to be a knife made by JBF Champlin. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was hooked.
Derek Smith was married to Kimberly Champlin for 12 years, Kimberly is a direct descendant of JBF Champlin. Through her, Derek has had the chance to visit extensively with several family members who have been collecting old letters and working on the family genealogy for years.
This treasure trove of family history along with Derek’s newly found interest
in vintage knives started him on his own journey. Since then he has spent countless hours researching the history of the Champlin family and the knives they made.Through the love of anything that was part of JBF Champlin’s history, Derek and Mike eventually crossed paths and became fast friends and allies. They have asked GEC to produce their first offering in honor of JBF Champlin, a cutlery pioneer and family man, whom they both respect and admire.
One of JBF’s early trademarks was ‘JBF Champlin & Son’. An ‘s’ has been added so the new trademark reads ‘JBF Champlin & Sons’ in honor of all of this man’s descendants including his grandsons, great grandsons and great granddaughters.
I also took the cover photo from that thread.
There is a transcript of a discussion between Jan Carter, Gus Marsh, Derek Smith and Mike Losicco at iknifecollector.com:
https://iknifecollector.com/group/jbf-champlin-cutlery/forum/topics/the-jbf-story
If you want to join me at the bottom of what has been quite the rabbit hole, read the whole thing. It is pretty good.
More to come next week.