Ah. . . [waves hands over crystal ball]. . .you were born between. . . between 1967 and 1974. . .
One of the few Bonds I don’t own, so couldn’t check - not a slightly fantastic version of an Urumi, was it?
Anyone without a copy of this film who wants a go at Guess The Weapon can watch Sean Connery being beaten up by the late, great Pat Roach here. The Mystery Weapon appears at about 3.22.
It just looks like a length of spring to me, and I’ve never been able to work out how it was supposed to be able to cut through metal the way it appeared to.
It doesn’t “cut through” the knife - the blade just snaps when he hits it with the spring. Not very likely, but not ridiculous, also.
Perfectly reasonable in fact, hardened blade steel vs hardened spring steel the blade should lose every time. Every blade I’ve ever bought warns against using it to pry with … unless you actually want a knife with no tip. Most blades aren’t heat treated for that purpose. Straight carbon steel (pretty common for kitchen knives, easy to sharpen) is kinda notorious for snapping if it’s not cared for properly.
A thin, flat bladed kitchen knife heat treated to get the best hardness out of the steel, very weak across the flat.
A thicker bladed combat knife, preferably with fullers, with a heat treating to maximize the other strengths of the steel (mostly toughness), that’s a whole different beast.
It’s cutting the (pretty clearly aluminum) roasting pan that’s bullshit. Crush it, yes. Cut it straight through it, ain’t gonna happen.
Close, '63*.
CMC fnord!
*Generation Jones (as I’ve come to prefer), the last bloom of the 'Boom. Neither a Boomer or an X’er, but both at the same time.
Wreaks havoc on your music collection though, five decades (50’s doo wop, 60’s rock, 70’s pop, 80’s punk and 90’s alternative) of [del]45s[/del] [del]LPs[/del] [del]8-tracks[/del] [del]cassettes[/del] [del]CDs[/del] MP3s. 
.
Here is a reply I posted to someone asking about the weapon.
Here is bulletin board devoted to your question.
For my part, having watched the bit, on one of the links on the website, I think what they are depicting in the movie is what we would today call a spring baton. In the movie, it looks like they substitute for a real baton and use one of the old screen door springs. They are hard to find now, but growing up, wooden screen doors were closed by a two foot length of coiled flexible spring.
Contrary to what the guys on the bulletin board are theorizing, I don’t think the thing was a blade of any sort, since the villan at one time in the fight grasps BOTH ends of the thing, one by the handle the other with his gloved hand. I would not think this would be possible if it were depicting some kind of molecular blade. Rather I think it is just a baton, and it broke the knife with shear inertia. A kitchen knife is fairly brittle especially if it is high carbon steel.
As to your Grandfather, yes he might have been familiar with something like that and it might have had a “street” name, but I could not find any reference to it. In the 30’s and 40’s bicycle chains were used to great effect by street gangs in the US and even later, motor cycle chains, as a non-lethal weapon. This is before they got more serious and moved on to lethal weapons. In the book, “365 Days” about Viet Nam, the author recounts how night time hunter killer teams of GIs would hunt Viet Cong and one member used a bycycle chain presumably as a flexible club and a garrot.
Don’t underestimate the striking power of one of those things, just like a whip, which breaks the sound barrier when cracked, the tip of such a weapon is traveling at least a couple hundred miles an hour when swung hard and mass times velocity squared equals force. So if hit with the tip on say your head or anywhere else can result in a devastating blow.
By the way, the handle of the weapon in the movie, looks very similar to this kind of knife handle:
http://img.alibaba.com/photo/10099878/Indian_Jambia_Dagger.jpg
I noticed the similarity right off. I think the whole thing was a fabrication of the Bond movie makers “skunk works”, or prop shop, but based on something from real life.
Keith
I think the weapon is a whip/sprig baton that uses BlendTec blades for the edge.
Or possibly adamantium?
I can’t imagine how you’re wondering about the weapon used in that fight when you have James Bond throwing a jar of his own piss into someone’s face and killing them on the spot.
Does he drink so much his piss is poison? Does the assassin over-react and die from backing into that cabinet? Why do they leave labelled jars of piss all over the laboratory?
Anyway, I belive it was just a dirty great spring. I liked how James Bond kept holding things up for him to cut with it.
I’m thinking one ofthese and the usual rigorous Bond film respect for physics.
Well, the character did in fact die from falling back into the shelving after getting James Bond’s urine in his face, since the beakers and bottles in that shelving apparently broke and so carved his back (which you see as his corpse falls forward in the last seconds of that clip from above with bottles and glass sticking out of his back).