Böker Chromium Poultry Shears, Forged and Chrome-Plated with Coil-Spring Action, Bone Notch and Sliding Latch, U.S.A., c. 1945–1965

The Piece

A pair of forged poultry shears in bright chromium plate, built with three mechanisms most kitchen scissors do not have.

The blades are asymmetric. The upper is plain and strongly curved, drawn to a point; the lower carries a fine serrated edge along its whole length to stop skin and tendon sliding away from the cut.

Just above the pivot, cut into the lower blade, is a crescent notch — a jaw for gripping and cracking a joint rather than shearing it.

At the joint sits a coil spring housed in a barrel, which pushes the shears open again after every cut so the hand only has to close.

The handles are unmatched by design: one is a plain closed bow, the other a shaped grip finished in fine diamond knurling around a blank cartouche panel. At their ends, a sliding bolt latch hooks over to lock the shears shut.

Stamped beside the domed pivot rivet: BOKER — CHROMIUM — U.S.A.

History & Provenance

The word stamped between the name and the country is the one that dates this. CHROMIUM is not decoration; it is a sales claim. These are forged carbon steel under a chromium plate, and the plate is there to keep a wet, acidic, bloody job from rusting the tool. A maker only stamps a material into a blade while that material is still worth advertising — and once stainless steel became ordinary in kitchen cutlery, nobody stamped “chromium” on anything again.

The Böker name on an American-made tool carries a genuinely strange history. The family's chestnut-tree mark had been in use since 1674. Hermann Böker opened H. Boker & Co. in New York in 1837 — thirty-two years before his cousin Heinrich founded the Solingen works in 1869. The American house came first.

Then the war split the company in two. The Solingen factory was firebombed and lost its machines, tools, catalogues and product samples. At the same time the United States government confiscated Böker's American trademark rights under wartime law. John Böker Jr. bought those rights back independently, in New York, and carried on — which meant that for roughly forty years there were two Bökers: a German one in Solingen and an entirely separate American one, same family name, same tree, different owners.

The rights only returned to Solingen in 1983, and American manufacture ended at the same time. A tool stamped U.S.A. belongs to that severed American branch.

The design is doing three jobs a knife cannot. Serrations on the lower blade only, so the food cannot skate; the notch at the throat to crack a leg joint with leverage instead of force; and the spring, which matters more than it sounds. Jointing a bird is dozens of repetitions in a row, and a hand that has to open the shears each time tires in minutes. Let a spring do the opening and the same work is half as hard. The latch is the necessary companion — a sprung tool will not stay shut in a drawer on its own.

The handles are unmatched because the grip is unmatched. The plain bow takes the fingers, the knurled shaped side sits under the thumb and palm where the force is applied, and the checkering is there because the hand doing this job is usually wet.

Dated on the CHROMIUM stamp — a plating claim that belongs to the decades before stainless took over kitchen cutlery — together with the U.S.A. mark from the period when the American company was separate from Solingen: c. 1945–1965.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Spatchcock a chicken once with a proper pair of poultry shears and you will not go back to a knife.

That is the whole argument. Cutting out a backbone with a chef's knife is a fight involving a rocking blade, a slippery bird and a cutting board that moves. With these it is four cuts and about twenty seconds, because the serrations hold the skin, the spring does the opening, and the notch cracks the joint that the blade would otherwise have to saw through.

They are also the most useful thing in a kitchen drawer for the jobs nobody plans for. Cutting up a whole chicken, trimming fat and silverskin, jointing a rabbit, taking the fins and tails off fish, snipping herbs and bacon straight into a pan, cutting through a lobster shell, and — unglamorously but constantly — opening packaging that has defeated everything else.

Old forged shears are better than most new ones, and the reason is that the working parts are steel rather than plastic. The spring is a real coil in a barrel, the latch is a sliding steel bolt, and the pivot is a solid rivet. Nothing in the mechanism is moulded, so nothing in it will crack.

And they look like something. Bright chrome, knurled checkering, a shape that reads immediately as a tool made for one job — hanging on a rail beside a stove or lying in an open drawer of good utensils, these are more interesting than anything currently sold in a kitchen shop.

A note on care, and chromium plate over carbon steel has one clear rule. Dry them immediately and completely. The plate protects the steel only while it is intact; wherever the chrome has thinned at a wear point, the carbon steel beneath will rust if it is left wet. Wash, dry, and if they are going into storage put a light film of food-safe oil on the blades.

Never put them in a dishwasher. The heat and detergent attack the plating and drive water into the pivot and the spring barrel, which is exactly where you cannot get it out again, and a seized spring is the end of the tool.

Put a drop of food-grade mineral oil on the pivot and into the spring barrel once or twice a year and the action will stay as it is. Keep the latch closed when they are not in use — that is what it is for, and a sprung pair of shears loose in a drawer is a hazard.

Sharpen the plain blade only, on the bevel, and leave the serrated blade alone; the serrations are the part that makes these work, and grinding them off cannot be undone.