The Turkish clip, sheepfoot and spey blades are common to this pattern throughout the years but the bone stag handles and the milled liners put this knife in the mid-1950s or before to the best of my estimation. Unfortunately Schrade did not put the detail into their catalogs that collectors 50 and 60 years later would have appreciated. As late as 1954 the #861 was listed in the catalogs as having nickel silver liners and bolsters. Since I do not have a 1955 or 1956 Schrade catalog I was able to find the #861 listed in 1955 Belknap hardware catalog, where the #861 is listed as having nickel silver liners and bolsters.
By 1957 Schrade Walden had change the format of their catalog, it was no longer a catalog with pages, but a two-page sheet also known as a short line catalog. In these catalogs the picture of the knife was diminished and the handle material on the knives were abbreviated. There was no listing of the liner material in though short line catalogs.
By 1962 there were some catalog pages once again printed, possibly printed as flyers for the annual sales meeting and flyers to send to jobbers and dealers. This was kind of a compromise between the old catalog in the short line catalogs. It gave a little more information but at the bottom of the page where the #861 was listed there was a note which said: “All knives made with Solid Nickel Silver Bolsters and Solid Brass Linings except where otherwise noted.” There was no notation beside the #861, thereby indicating that the liners were made of brass.
1961 was about the time that the Swinden machine was patented. I am told that the patent was not granted until there was a working model, so one can assume that the model was working probably at least a year before the patent was granted. I am also told that Schrade Walden began using the Swinden system as soon as the machine was functional, well prior to the patent being granted.
The reason I am making such a fuss about this knife is that it is a rare example of a pre-Swinden Schrade Walden, with bone stag handles and milled liners. This in itself makes this knife noteworthy to me as a Schrade aficionado. That is also why I took extra measures to repair this knife at no additional charge to the owner.
The owner’s complaint about this knife was the blade was wobbly. I could tell from a quick examination that the pivot pin was badly worn. I thought this was a late 1950s/early 1960 Delrin handle knife made just prior to the Swinden system coming online. Once I got some of the goo cleaned off of the knife I noticed the handles were bone and that a piece of missing bone around the rocker pin on the mark side had been replaced with some sort of colored putty, similar to the putty used to fill in the indentation where the shield had been inlaid.
Here is the patch after it has been glued into the handle, prior to shaping it.
Here is the shield installed on the handle and the patch pretty much in its final shape.
These last two pictures are the final results of the restoration. Not shown in pictures are the filling of a crack that opened up between the bolster and the handle pin above the shield. I had detected a crack there before and was hoping in vain that it would not get larger. In addition to choosing a piece of scrap bone that was similar in color and jigging pattern I did a little jigging with my Foredom to blend the two patches together and I also use some dye to darken the bone a little bit.
