Camillus Scout Knife Identification

[ronfish]

This is well documented in Kerr's "600 Scout Knives" guide on page 114; pages 113 & 114 provide some very interesting reading in this regard.

Old BSA equipment catalogs, Boy's Life Magazine's and BSA Gift Catalogues provide a unique way to validate the actual time periods where BSA related knives were offered.

[Vit_213]

Undoubtedly J.R. Kerr has done a great job, but I do not have full confidence in this book, as it contains a lot of mistakes.
I have two semi-official Camillus Scout knives

But the only the second I can date precisely (1939) because it has a hot stamp on the reverse side of the handle.

I want to know the specific issue of the Boys' Life magazine, which referred to any of these knives.

[ronfish]

I will concede that there are inaccuracies in Kerr's book but also in Holbrook's. However, some of the inaccuracies in Kerr's book are more administrative where he did not properly map pictures to his numbering system. Other errors in Kerr's, and in Holbrook's, mistakenly assume that there was only one version of a given knife (bail versus no bail, blade type, shieldless withwithout etch, etc). I have opened and actually own cartons of new-old-stock with 6 or 12 unopened BSA knives and found inconsistencies not documented in either guide.

I do not know the exact issue or catalog that this knife was published in but I have seen other issues where "premium" knives were being offered for promotions via words and some via pictures. Sometimes they were actually official knives but some were not. Regarding your pics, the 2nd imitation pearl is clearly not the semi-official version, as it was made for the 1939 NY World's Fair (as stated).

There is no claim that these knives were "only" created for Boy's Life purposes, so I don't think we should assume that this is the case and that Kerr is wrong (he also lists this disclaimer). As such, any knife of this type may be one of the promotional knives or it may not have been; there is no way to know for sure unless you buy one from an old scout who has the story of how he obtained it.

In general, most of the early knives that were made using "Scout", "Scoutknife", "Boy Scout", etc, were manufactured before 1945 as the BSA was eventually able to prevent other companies from using the word Scout on knives. As such, we can assume that these knives were made during that period from 19-teens to 1945 but cannot really PROVE that any one of them was obtained as the result of the promotion. However, a collection can certainly have representative and beautiful specimens like the 2 you shared and the one earlier in the thread!

[bestgear]

Here's a link to the Wayback Machine for Boy's Life where you can view any edition from any year complete with advertisements although according to Kerr you'd need to look at about 30 years (360 editions) between 1915 and 1945 to find the document that you are looking for.

http://boyslife.org/wayback/

[Nobleprofessor]

Sorry to bring back this old post. But, it was very helpful previously. I found an old pocket knife that looks A LOT like my Camillus Scout knife, but it looks like it was made by Ulster. When i first tried to identify it I thought it said "UTSTER" and I wondered if a K or C had worn off. After searching the forum, I think it is a Ulster and it must be one of the unofficial Boy Scout knives. It does not have the Scout Shield.

Here are some pics: