Sandon's prototype cleft palate knife with variable angled blade, carbon steel, by Roland Somervell, London, 1956.
This prototype was made for Raoul Sandon by Roland Somervell, an employee of surgical instrument manufacturers Downs Brothers. The BAPRAS Antony Wallace Archive holds a letter written by Somervell to Sandon in 1956; he writes, 'I enclose the Cleft Palate knife prototype which we discussed recently. As you can see the tubular sheath can be rotated when the nut is slackened moving the balde through 90°.' It doesn't appear that the knife ever went into production.
