This is the Brontosaurus Bone 3″ Damascus Lockback Knife from the team at Santa Fe Stoneworks. The handle contains fossilized 150 million year old Sauropod (Brontosaurus) bone in the center, sourced from Moab, Utah.
The Moab region of eastern Utah, close to the border with Colorado, is one of the richest fossil grounds in the country, with countless important finds from the Mesozoic Era. This was the era that includes the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods – the age of the dinosaurs.
Each of these knives has a Damascus steel blade, made from folding and forging until there are 11 layers, resulting in this unusual pattern.Santa Fe Stoneworks was founded by Bill Wirtel in 1978. He had been working in a corporate job but found it didn’t suit him, and so he travelled west seeking a new future for himself. He found it in Sante Fe, New Mexico where the local sources of high quality turquoise were famous around the world.
Bill’s family had a long history of working with gemstones, and his natural aptitude for it began to show. He worked with a local jewelry maker but soon realized he wasn’t particularly interested in making jewelry – he wanted to make more.
Before long he had gone into business with John Iverson, making a whole range of products with ironwood inlays, turquoise, silver, and more. Bill now works with his son and daughter at the company, and in more recent years they began using fossilized mammoth and dinosaur bones in some of their knife handles.
Santa Fe Stoneworks now sells their products around the world through dealers, and right from their own online store.
The Brontosaurus Bone 3″ Damascus Lockback Knife
As noted in the introduction, this knife has a section of genuine 150 million year old fossilized Brontosaurus bone in the handle. The colors of the fossil can vary between red, brown, black, and white, depending primarily on the predominant mineral inclusions.
The blade is made from Steel-Inox 690-440c stainless Damascus steel with 11 layers, offering the ability to hold a razor sharp edge without being brittle. It’s an ancient technique that has been revived in recent years, and brought back into production.
This is the team at Santa Fe Stoneworks, and that’s company founder Bill Wirtel there in the middle, who started the whole thing back in 1978 after leaving his corporate life behind.The knife can be ordered with the dinosaur fossil in the front of the handle only for $170 USD, or in the front and back of the handle for $255 USD. The increased cost is simply down to the high cost of buying the fossil sections.
If you’d like to get one yourself you can visit the listing here on the Santa Fe Stoneworks online store.
Images courtesy of Santa Fe Stoneworks
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