Miller Bro`s wrote:I don`t know what Case does today in modern times.knifeaholic wrote:I have toured the Case plant and I can assure you that the tang stamps are stamped on to the blade blanks as part of the blanking process, long before the blades even get to the heat treat ovens. And Case (and other knife companies, at least the traditional manufacturers) have always done it that way. This is verified by looking at the Case sequence of manufacturing boards and by sequence of manufacturing descriptions in the catalogs of other early knife companies.
I do know I have old catalogs that show the manufacturing sequence of a pocket knife. In the catalogs and actual sequence boards I have seen in person the blades are tang stamped after the hardening, tempering and grinding process.
Dimitri;
Thanks for posting this. I have suspected that some manufacturers did just that. But I never had proof. Which manufacturers did it that way based on what you have seen?
I can only state that Case has done it the way I describe, based on their sequence boards and on my plant visit, and on descriptions of plant visits in days past, at least from the XX era forward.
What you describe, having the tang stamps done after all of the other manufacturing steps are completed, may be the explanation as to why most stamps do not have the black inside the letters. The stamps do not go deep enough since the blade is already heat treated.