Vorpal's

    These massive scary sharp things caused some rather nasty injuries at the factory when they were made. In fact I think the reason they switched from a polished to a bead blasted finish was because an employee had most of his fingers cut off on one hand while polishing the blade apparently the blade caught on the buffing wheel and whipped around on said employee. Here is some information from Mike Stewart regarding the above incident. There was a special fixture which held the blades while the polished finish was being applied. Apparently the employee got in a rush and try to polish the blade on one without the fixture. In the process 3.5 fingers were lost. Ouch!  Anyone familiar with knife making knows this is one of the more common shop hazards. The employee's fingers were reattached and when I met the gentleman he was working at the BlackJack outlet store.

    Writer and former BlackJack employee Anthony Lombardo provided the following information..

"1200 Vorpals were blanked (of 1095). A few hundred were polished, the majority were SAND blasted. I had one with a green pakkawood handle. Most were black Micarta, either linen or paper. 

    The sheaths were usually pretty poor. The earlier ones and the consistency of beef jerky, the
later, simple sheaths weren't so bad. 14" blade if I recall." I think the early sheath is what Mr. Stewart refers to as The Baldric sheath. It appears that there were only about 250 of these made.  Mike Stewart says that only about 400 Vorpals were made with the bead blasted  finish and only about 100 with the high polished blades. Bringing the tally to 500. All I know is that these are not often encountered by me. Even when the company was still in business I don't recall the factory outlet store ever having more than one of these on hand at a time and several times when I visited they had none. We will probably never really know just how many of these were really made."

    Bobby Branton Co-Founder and Production Director of the American Tomahawk Company and
President  of the American Knife Throwers Alliance adds   " The Blade on the Blackjack Vorpal Sword is 17 inches. The overall length is 24 inches. The original as designed by Tom Maringer had a 18 inch blade and was also 24 inches overall. I
believe 300 were polished. "

 I would like thank both of these fine gentlemen for the information.  I would also like to add that Mr. Branton purchased all of Tom Maringer's equipment and plans to offer Vorpal's in the future. 

    This Particular Example is from the collection of Steve Jones. Steve tells me this actually is the second Vorpal that was made. This particular example was originally used by Tom Gordon who made most of the Effingham era sheaths for just that purpose.

photo courtesy of Steve Jones

Here are a few more pictures of a Vorpal. This one came with a Baldric style sheath.

Below is a view of the Vorpal etch that appears on the blade on these.

    This is a recent addition to my personal collection. It has the bead blast (really sand blasted) finish and was used by a previous owner. It's good to know that with all the collecting of these knives that some are getting used as they were meant to be.