hobo set of sorts

[npeters3]

I picked these knives up this weekend. They have plastic handles with a shield that appears to be pushed into the plastic at the ends with prongs of some sort. These are low quality knives but I had not ever seen them before. They appear to me to be made before 1970. The fork appears to me like there was some bad planning and it was installed on the wrong side of the knife. You can see the cut outs in the plastic where the shield was intended to be placed. I am not sure if someone did this afterwards, or if it was poor craftsman ship from the beginning. The notches in the handle are especially crude with not much attention to detail. You can see the tag stamp on these reads Colonial Prov. USA. I have seen lower end knives of this brand, but never a set like this. They just kind of spoke to me, so I decided to bring them home. Each one is right at 3". So I guess my question is how old are these knives? Are these in fact a production knife or has someone handmade these? Who would have manufactured these?

[#goldpan]

Nice little pic-nick set you have there. Those are factory made, I have two of them somewhere. If I find them I will post some pictures. Its hard to date Colonial knives. 60's to 70's sounds pretty ballpark. You may find more info in the Colonial forum.

[#goldpan]

I found mine and they are a little older than one you have. The fork and the spoon are the difference. These two have straight forks that fold neatly into their pockets. I believe that mine are from the 50's Yours is typical of the style used on later hobo's when they stopped making them slot knives. The newer ones look more like a pocket knife with the curved forks and smaller spoons. Here are some pics.

Nice find by the way. That's first one I have seen with the newer fork.