Lansky1 wrote:
I've got a couple Silver Sword's ... one just like the one of yours on the bottom. To me, these seem like Camillus' budget offering - the blades are really chunky by comparison & not ground as finely as most other Camillus knives I've owned.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Silver Sword is a far cry from the old Sword Brand that Camillus introduced in 1906. The Sword Brand was the top of the line, the best quality knife made by Camillus.
The Silver Sword was a later series, (1982 as per Vit). In looking at the 1984 Camillus catalog and it seems like many of their designs were patterned after many of the knives coming in from Japan in the same time frame. If you compare the 1984 Camillus catalog to a 1984 Kershaw catalog you will see a lot of stainless steel frame knives with wood inlays in them.
I have had some of the Silver Sword knives and saw some of them in the 1980s when I managed a cutlery store and one of our major lines was Kershaw. I always thought several patterns of the Silver Swords were modeled after Kershaw, but the design was not as well executed as Kershaw or some of the other Japanese knife makers of that time, (the Valor brand comes to mind). All similar style knives but the fit & finish and edge retention of Kershaw always seemed better to me than the other brands.
Overall the Silver Sword line seemed to me to be a heaver knife than other Camillus patterns and as you said, some of the blades did seem "chunky" when compared to other Camillus knives.
I would even go so far as to say the early Silver Swords patterned after the Kershaws seemed "chunky" when compared to Kershaw. IMO, Kershaw had a cleaner execution of the design that the comparable Silver Sword patterns.