My latest Schrade

[KAW]

kj... I like that it commemorates the Napanoch Fire Dept.... nice lookin' knife!

[kootenay joe]

Yes Napanoch is a much respected name in N.Y. cutlery.
Exactly same size, shape, frame as the 5OT. The 5OT has a drop point blade. It too is a most usable knife but you hardly ever see this Old Timer version. Lots more 7OT's. The 5OT is nicer.
kj

[KnifeSlinger#81]

The 5ot and lb5 are not identical to each other. The lb5 is like a shrunken lb7 but the 5ot has a different frame, blade and is a barehead, it's also 1/4" longer.


I believe I have struck gold on this one, will confirm once it arrives. It was listed as a bid and I messaged the seller asking if they had a BIN price and they added one shortly afterwards. I am a bit excited.

[kootenay joe]

For 5OT & LB5 i did not say "identical". Calvin asked about size. I have a 5OT & LB5 in front of me right now. Length is the same, curve of the frame is the same. The 'height' or distance from spine to upper edge of liner is the same. The difference is not in size or shape but in bolsters/caps/handle material & blade profile.
Why would the frame be different when size & shape the same ? because the 5OT needs extra pin holes at head end ? (LB5 has caps at head end)
kj

[KnifeSlinger#81]

I was just supplementing what you said about them Roland, not trying to correct you or anything.

[kootenay joe]

O.K., thanks for clarifying. But my question remains: is a different frame required when the only difference is 2 extra pin holes ? Was there a new run of liners with all needed pin holes ? or were the existing LB5 liners used and 2 extra holes drilled in them ?
Kind of a nit picking question. Whatever the answer it doesn't matter now, 20 years later.
kj

[KnifeSlinger#81]

I don't know, perhaps they just wanted an additional option in that size range.

[bladecollectorr]

O.K., thanks for clarifying. But my question remains: is a different frame required when the only difference is 2 extra pin holes ? Was there a new run of liners with all needed pin holes ? or were the existing LB5 liners used and 2 extra holes drilled in them ?
Kind of a nit picking question. Whatever the answer it doesn't matter now, 20 years later.
kj

Hi gents. New poster here but I've collected Schrade knives for a long time. I hope I can add some clarity.

5OT and LB5 are different knives with different parts. You guys are off-track when you speak about comparing liners and bolsters and pin-holes on these two patterns.

Why? 5OT is indeed built with bolsters and liners but the LB3, LB5 and LB7 all have one-piece bolster-liner parts. Totally different parts. No liners or bolsters could be swapped from one pattern to the other.

[kootenay joe]

bladecollectorr, Welcome to AAPK !
And, thank you for this explanation of these 2 patterns. What a great contribution and on a first post as well. Remarkable. I hope you will stick around and post more of your knife knowledge.
kj

[bladecollectorr]

bladecollectorr, Welcome to AAPK !
And, thank you for this explanation of these 2 patterns. What a great contribution and on a first post as well. Remarkable. I hope you will stick around and post more of your knife knowledge.
kj

Thanks KJ! I've lurked for a while. You have a great collection. Just to muddy the waters...

While it is indeed true that the LB series had one-piece bolsters and liners as a selling point there's an exception to every rule. Here's a post-factory customized LB5 that has had the rear bolsters ground flat with the liners and then re-handled in stag. It looks that much more like a 5OT but it's not. I don't know who did the work. If anyone recognizes the signature please let me know.

[Mustanger]

Schrade Walden 897UH. Two months ago I didn't have a Schrade Walden. Now all of a sudden I have three. I think that makes eleven 897UH's, total. I can think of two more, off the top of my head, that I'd like to get someday. I may be getting a little carried away with these.....

[kootenay joe]

The 897 is a Great pattern to carry. I don't like Staglon so i prefer the 98OT which is the same knife, same stainless steel blades, but with Old Timer saw cut Delrin handles.
Am i reading correctly: you have 11 examples of the 897UH ?
Do any have the serial # on inside of liner ?
kj

[black mamba]

I have two of the 897s, both with serial numbers. This first one is a Walden with serial A0972, must be pretty early: either 1967 or '68, with nice coined liners.

The other is serial number S16617, I'm guessing mid 1970s. I like the more amber coloration of the Staglon.

Does Codger or anyone else have a chart of serial numbers and when they were produced?

[tongueriver]

Mine in the hinged box has a serial # of 53xxx, considerably earlier than the point at which they started over with the "A."

[Mustanger]

The 897 is a Great pattern to carry. I don't like Staglon so i prefer the 98OT which is the same knife, same stainless steel blades, but with Old Timer saw cut Delrin handles.
Am i reading correctly: you have 11 examples of the 897UH ?
Do any have the serial # on inside of liner ?
kj

I posted the serial #s for the ones pictured next to the pictures. Also, my Keen Kutter Anniversary 897UH is serial numbered, 05801 and a 4 line tang stamped Schrade, Ny. 897UH with serial # R88951. The rest have different types of scales (early and newer), have different tang stamps or were made for Craftsman. Some are just pretty. There are a few that I would add to this herd of mine that are special additions. But I'm not too obsessed about acquiring them unless I got a good deal on them. I do have more knife interests than money (who doesn't) and more 897s is not real high on the list. These recent purchases were too good to pass up.

On a side note, the second one pictured above was sold with a clear view tube. I thought that was unusual so I wanted it pretty bad. Turns out that the tube is actually for an 882Y and not the 897UH. All the catalog pages I looked at mention that the 897UH comes 'gift boxed' and that's the only way I've seen them marketed. So I got fooled on that. It worked out good for me though because I needed a tube for my mint 882Y anyway.

[KnifeSlinger#81]

Schrade Walden 897UH. Two months ago I didn't have a Schrade Walden. Now all of a sudden I have three. I think that makes eleven 897UH's, total. I can think of two more, off the top of my head, that I'd like to get someday. I may be getting a little carried away with these.....

Nice one. Ive been wanting a nice one like that for a while but waiting for a deal to come along. Maybe I need to bite the bullet and spend the big bucks.

[Mustanger]

Nice one. Ive been wanting a nice one like that for a while but waiting for a deal to come along. Maybe I need to bite the bullet and spend the big bucks.

I waited a long time to find a hinged box 897UH that was well under a 100 bucks. There is some minor damage to the top of the box that looks like maybe someone pulled a price tag sticker off of it and took a little bit of the leather grain paper off the box with it. And of coarse the knife tray needed the black oil stains scrubbed off with dish soap. They all have that black crud on the knife trays. All stuff I can live with for paying about half of what they are asking on ebay. And the paperwork with it is flawless. Good luck and happy hunting!

[Mustanger]

Does Codger or anyone else have a chart of serial numbers and when they were produced?

I wish! Michael Little did a nice overview piece on the 897UH, but to my knowledge no one has researched serial numbers or much on timelines for tang stamps and changes in the scale molds. Other than the obvious change in tang stamps in 1973 to Schrade, Ny. I bring it up from time to time to see if anyone has answers. My 897s carry several different tang stamps or don't have a 897UH stamp at all, which makes me really curious. It would take some serious research from company documentation to answer all my questions and it's near to, if not, impossible. I don't know if such documentation is even still available.

Edit;
I guess I should have mentioned that, as Cal has posted before, that the serial numbers ran up to 100,000 and then they started over again from 0 with a letter prefix starting with A. So going thru the alphabet, every letter = 100,000 + the remaining numbers.
One of my SW is, #M5900 which = 1,305,900. My 4 line Schrade, Ny. is #R88951 which = 1,988,951.
There is 683,051 numbers between the two serial #s. It's impossible to nail down the years of manufacture without records. But it's safe to say that the SW is nearing the end of that time period. Maybe 1970 or '71? And the Schrade, Ny. knife is near 1973 or '74. That's a lot of math for a brain damaged guy like me!
But are we sure that the serial numbers and knives came out of the factory in succession? Or were the serial numbered liners just randomly pulled out of a box that contained 5000, (that was filled from a bigger box holding millions), of them while being assembled? The numbers were only for warranty purposes anyway.
Somebody block me from editing this post again!!

[kootenay joe]

Sorry, i just looked at the pictures, did not read the text.
kj

[black mamba]

As long as the serial numbers ran consecutively, then finding the highest numbered SWs or the lowest numbered non-SWs would at least give us an idea of how many they made per year. From what we have already, seems like they made around a quarter million of them each year, or around 20,000 per month. At least it helps us within a year or two on identifying dates.

[kootenay joe]

I was very active in the BF Schrade forum when Codger was doing his 897UH research. I thought he had been able to give approximate correlation of serial #'s to year dates for some of the years at least ? I am no longer a BF member so cannot search that forum. A search for "897UH" in thread title should bring up Codger64's threads.
kj

[Mustanger]

As long as the serial numbers ran consecutively, then finding the highest numbered SWs or the lowest numbered non-SWs would at least give us an idea of how many they made per year. From what we have already, seems like they made around a quarter million of them each year, or around 20,000 per month. At least it helps us within a year or two on identifying dates.

True. Within a couple of years. Without records things like overruns do to slow yearly sales cause less manufacturing the next year, the economy, popularity and a bunch of other stuff I know even less about. Because of the different tang stamps and the serial numbers on the two I gave as an example, I think my estimates are pretty close on those two. Moving farther in either direction from 1972-'73 and it gets more dicey. And I don't know for how long they serialized them into the '70s. When I started doing the math I was struck by how many they made and sold in just 5 or 6 years. Pretty popular knife. Or everyone cheated Schrade on that loss warranty.

[dweb1897]

Just to throw in my two cents worth....I asked Herman Williams about the serial #'s running consecutively. He said that the only thing that # means is the order that liner was punched out of the machine making them. When a cutler needed some liners, he'd grab some out of a large box and go to work. The liners with numbers on them were punched out by the thousands in a single day.

[dweb1897]

posted with Codgers permission:

Schrade 897UH Signature Premium Stockman Research
This is a copy/paste of an old post I made about a decade ago on this pattern. More knives have been acquired and more research by myself and others since that time. I'll add that newer information in as I can. But for now here are the basics.

In July 2004, the one hundred year history of Imperial Schrade Corporation came to an end with the forced bankruptcy and October liquidation of assets. During those one hundred years, the name changed several times, as well as company ownership. Several other companies were acquired, sometimes operated in tandem, sometimes absorbed. Begun by George Schrade and his brothers, it evolved over the years into the posession and guidence of Albert and Henry Baer. Albert, ever the business genious, steered the company to expanded markets with new marketing techniques, and new products designed under the watchful eye of Henry, whose signiture would appear on an entire line of upscale folding and fixed blade knives for the last forty years of Schrade's existance. Alongside the now famous Old Timer line of knives, the Uncle Henry Signature knives formed the backbone of Schrade's offerings of knives and tools.

Few knives were as popular as the medium Stockman pattern, the 897UH. The 897UH Uncle Henry Signature Premium Stockman was introduced in the 1967 catalog for a whopping $10. This at a time when a comparable Old Timer was selling for just a bit more than half that amount, and a knife from the rival company, Colonial Knife Company could be bought for even less. Putting this into perspective, a gallon of gas cost 32 cents, a coca-cola was a dime, the average new home was around $20,000, and new cars started at around $2,000. Given these illustrations, ten dollars was not a paltry sum.

The 897UH stockman began production in the early sixties, several years before the catalog introduction. While stainless steel blades were used from the beginning, several different styles of delrin were tried for the handle material before settling on the faux stag delrin, later known as "Staglon". Peach seed jigged bone looking delrin was handsome and used a short while, and several diferent base delrin and accent colors were tried. In later years, special limited editions were produced with special handle material, including a 95th anniversary edition.

The knife used the Schrade+ stainless steel three blade pattern that became popular with the 825, 895, 896K, 898, and 899UH. This blade material became a mainstay of the UH line of knives, both folders and fixed. In 1981, 197UH "Cat Paw" was introduced for a a run of a few short years using the familiar serpentine body and the single modified Turkish clip blade. It was one of the very few liner lock knives in the Uncle Henry product line, and a very interesting variation on the 897UH. Evidently the buying public was not swayed to purchase it over the other single blade offerings in the lockback and trapper lines and it was discontinued after a nine year run in 1989.

The 897UH had a closed length of 3 9/16" with a Turkish clip blade of 2 15/16", a 2 1/16" sheepfoot blade, and a 2" spey blade. This combination of blades mounted in the deeply textured serpentine Staglon handles proved to be extremely popular with knife users for more than thirty five years. It is both pleasant to hold and to look at with the nickle silver bolsters and Henry Baer signature shield, stainless blades, brass liners and pins, all mounted in a bi-color stag appearing handle.

With the closing of Imperial Schrade, quite a few variations of handle colors and materials have been seen on the market. Many, such as the burgandy Micarta, blue jigged bone, etc. were found among the stock carted off from the factory at the asset auction in October of 2004. My conjecture is that these knives were intended for 100th Anniversary editions, as several have been spotted with the anniversary etch and shield. A few of the earlier "Buckskin" knives, both completed and uncompleted have shown up. These sport a tan delrin base material and light brown accent color as opposed to the more familiar cream delrin base and coco brown accent color. Quite a few 897UH's have appeared with dark coco colored scales. The ones I have examined seem to be normal cream base knives that simply did not receive the final scale buffing that smothed the high points and ends revealing the cream base and flushing the scales with the shield, bolsters and pins.

Limited editions and special private editions of the 897UH seem to be relatively rare. All of the scrimshaw special edition sets I have seen used the larger framed clip blade 885UH stockman as the base knife. The same goes for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation sets, and the Ducks Unlimited sets. One issue, the 95th Anniversary issue seems to be the diamond in the crown of special issues for the 897 pattern. Mounted on an engraved plexi pedestel on a round wooden base and enclosed with a clear glass dome, it is quite an impressive presentation. Bone handles, and a gold filled etched blade, sterling silver bolsters guild the lilly.

An 897 pattern was used on a Cigar Box Classics issue with red accented yellow bone handles and the classic arrowhead shield in place of the UH signature shield.

The pattern was used in 1969 to produce a 100th anniversary edition commemorating the Keen Kutter mark.

A "second cut" green bone stockman of this pattern with SCHRADE-WALDEN NY USA was produced.
This pattern was also used on a Orangewood handled Lewis and Clark anniversary edition. It had a bark canoe shaped shield, and came with a double picture of Lewis and Clark in miniature frame.

Recently, a few Ducks Unlimited editions have come on the market, but their embelishment seen so far is limited to a blade etch on production variety knives. Whether or not these were ever marketed, or were slated to be a 2004 release is a matter of conjecture at this point.

A set made for MATCO Tools in 1996 contained a 12UH Roadie, 285UH Pro Trapper, and 897UH Premium Signature Stockman in an attractive formed burgandy lined black leather grained gift box with Matco Tools, Schrade Cutlery logos and "1996 Uncle Henry Limited Edition Collector Series" in silver lettering on the cover. Matco Tools and the Matco eagle logo are etched on the clip blade of each knife.

It is no surprise, given the long association of Schrade with the retailing giant Sears, Roebuck & CO., that a contract stockman of the 897 pattern was produced for them. Only the shield and tangstamp changed from the regular production knives. These seem to be relatively uncommon on the market currently in any condition, and rare in mint state.

I have carried and used the 897UH knives for many years and I find no fault with them. I have never broken the delrin scales on one, though one or two had blade tips broken when a worker used them for screwdrivers or pryed with them. They are just the right size for pocket carry, an excellent compromise between the larger 885UH Senior, and the smaller 834 Rancher. The long nearly straight turkish clip blade is great for slicing, and the sheepfoot opens boxes and cuts tape well. The spey blade makes an excellent scraper to clean up cut pvc pipe or strip wire, and in a pinch makes a good skinner blade for small game.

I was dismayed when I found that Imperial Schrade had closed and would no longer be producing my favorite stockman, but thrilled to find the current glut on the market allowing me to buy all I could ever use and half or less of retail. The last listed MSRP of the 897UH was $39.45 in 2004, but I have found them new for ten dollars to twenty dollars, and the rarer new in the presentation box ones for under $40. Excellent used ones routinely fetch only ten or less, and while the supply will no doubt dry up before long, they are plentiful now.

[Mustanger]

Thanks for that info on the liners, Doug. If I may be so bold, I'm posting one of Codger's pictures, as a companion to his essay above. It shows some of the odd, experimental scales on 897s that he wrote about. I'm still wondering if the blades that have no 897UH stamp on them came from before the '67 catalog introduction or was just an oversight in production. There is a lot of them out there in hinged boxes.