USA stamped utility knife.......

[knife7knut]

Picked this one up over the weekend for real short money.USA is the only stamping on the master blade.Had a piece of one scale missing so I filled it with 2 part epoxy tinted with paint(unfortunately not a good match)and worked the surface a bit with a small round head cutter in a die grinder to simulate the jigging.That came out good;now I have to work on my color tinting.Put too much black in the mix but couldn't correct as it was 5 minute epoxy.Will use slower drying stuff the next time.

[robinetn]

I believe that these knives were made by Kingston (a joint venture by Ulster & Imperial) for the U.S. Army in the early 1940's . Good quality and worthy of your time and effort .

Bob R. (RIDGEWOOD CUTLERY)

[coffeecup]

It would probably be 1944 or later; that can opener was adopted in 1944. The earliest military knife with that stamp ("USA" vs. "Made in USA") I've been able to date was issued in 1956; all the suspected WWII Kingston's I've seen or read about had the "Made in USA" stamp.

Neat knife, congrats on finding it! Very nice job on the patch--much better than the Camillus 72 I did in much the same way. (FWIW, JBWeld is probably not the best material to use if you want to match old bone . . . but the knife is a user, so who cares?) Next time you might try Accraglass gel from Brownells, or at least the colors they sell to tint Accraglass. That seems to give a better color match.

You could try to patch in bone too, pieces of that bone aren't too hard to find though it would probably double your investment.

Jim

[Joe Dirt]

Great old knife AND patch job, knife nut!
Kinda looks like the x-ray of my knee with the bone graft in it ???
"All hail the bone donors!"
I've never grafted bone onto a knife scale, but it would require a lot less colored epoxy.
What type of paint or dyes are a compatible mix with epoxies? (enamel, lacquer, latex, ?)

................... Joe

[FRJ]

That's a nice knife. And that's a nice bail on that knife.........is that a birds eye pin on the spear end? Nice jiging.

Joe

[gino]

Nice knife - I love finds like that!

[ole_muddy]

A tip I learned about epoxy patches. Take a 1" belt sander and a piece of bone handle (out of the junk box) and grind off some of the bone to mix with the epoxy and then use some brown leather dye to color it. Then put in the patch and match the jig with a dremel. Eric

[knife7knut]

Thanks for all the tips and the kind words.I do a lot of color matching on cars during the day so that isn't a problem.I was in a bit of a hurry(wrong idea)and so I used the 5 minute epoxy rather than the slower-drying stuff.I had a good starting color(1-Shot lettering enamel tan)but threw in too much black and had no time to correct.I might dig it out later on and try to get a better color match.The knife was only $5 so I'm in good shape.

[FRJ]

????????? A birds eye "pin"? Well.... that was just a shot in the dark. Joe

[knife7knut]

????????? A birds eye "pin"? Well.... that was just a shot in the dark. Joe

Joe:Sorry not to have replied to your question.The pin is solid but there is a depressed area in the middle almost as if it were struck with a nail set.The appearance is due to shadows.

[tjmurphy]

Man, you did a really great job of patching that handle. If you could have gotten the color right, you'd never know the difference without close inspection. K-nice K-nife.