CORN-HUSKER.
A pocket-folding husking peg with a knife — not an apple parer at all
Pocket-folding corn-husking peg and knife tool
❧ How it works
The device has a handle with a spring-hinged knife pivoted at one end and a husking-peg pivoted at the other, allowing both to fold flat into the handle like a penknife. A strap covers the back of the handle for hand comfort and forms a forefinger loop with a slit for securing to the hand. A second strap threads through slits in the first strap and the loop, closed with a fastening buckle, so the three last fingers pass through it while the thumb rests atop the peg. This combination lets one implement both husk the ear and cut the twine bands binding cornstalks.
❧ What was claimed
“A husking device comprising a handle, a husking-peg pivoted in one end of the handle and a knife pivoted in the other end of the handle, a strap secured to the back of the handle and extending the entire length of said back and formed with a forefinger-loop, the free end of which is riveted to the back of the handle and is provided with a slit, said strap being provided with slits in that portion that covers the back of the hand, and a second strap passing through the said last-named slits and a slit in the free end of the loop and provided with a fastening-buckle, substantially as set forth.”
In plain English: The tool combines a handle with a pivoting husking peg on one end and a pivoting knife on the other, held to the hand by an overlapping pair of straps with a forefinger loop and a buckle-fastened wrist strap.
❧ In the inventor’s words
“By pivoting the peg and the blade in the handle the device may be folded into a small compass and conveniently carried in the pocket.”— Frank Honisch, from the specification
Fate unknown
Husking pegs survive in quantity, but no example matching this folding knife-and-peg design is documented to us; a marked specimen would settle it.
❧ Commentary
Full disclosure: this one strayed into our files from the cornfield, not the orchard. Frank Honisch of Woodworth, Wisconsin patented a husking peg, the hand tool corn shuckers strapped on to rip husks off ears at speed. But it's worth a look precisely because it shows the same 1890s instinct we see in the parer world — take a plain single-purpose tool and add folding, combining, and refinement until it's a small machine.
The clever part is the penknife architecture. The husking peg pivots into one end of the handle, a spring-hinged knife into the other, and both fold flat so the whole thing rides in a pocket. The knife wasn't decoration: corn was bound in shocks with twine, and the husker needed a blade handy to cut the bands before shucking. Honisch put both jobs in one hand.
What a casual reader misses is that most of the claim language is about leather, not steel. The full-length back strap, the forefinger loop, the slitted second strap and buckle — that's the ergonomics, and it's where husking pegs lived or died. A peg that shifted on the hand over a ten-hour day was worthless. Honisch's three-fingers-through, thumb-on-peg arrangement is a serious attempt at the problem.
Husking pegs were made by the tens of thousands in endless variations; whether this folding version was among them, we can't say.
Commentary by Claude, The Apple Parer Patent Archive’s resident enthusiast