The A. G. Russell Brute

In 1971 I designed a knife I called the "Brute". This was a lockback folder with a 3/16" thick hollow ground droppoint blade of 440C. The first ten or twelve knives had one of my new concepts; a milled thumb notch, rather than a nail mark. (We just came across one of the originals on ebay and have included this information and three images of the knife at www.agrussell.com/brute.) The idea was that you would place the tip of your thumb in the notch and swing the blade into the open position. I positioned the notch in the middle of the top of the blade, it worked but needed to be moved back toward the pivot to work best. I made another small run with the notch half way between the middle of the blade and the pivot. That wasn't quite right either but on the third try, I got the position right. We made the Brute (a handmade knife) for years with the notch in just the right place for ease of opening. I remember Jimmy Lile's first thumb stud, he also put it in the middle of the length of the blade.

I am still using the thumb notch, one example is our very popular Folding Gent's Hunter from 2017 at https://agrussell.com/foldinggents.