sakoblade wrote:A follow up question in regards to Colonel26's last post.
Is there an easy way to discern knives made by Western Cutlery and the knives made by Coleman and Camillus?
To know that is to know the history of the Western company. The year of the knife will determine the manufacturer, since Western was sold to Coleman in 1984 and then Camillus picked up the Western marque in 1991. Camillus went out of business in 2007 and a lot of knives from the mid-late 2000s showed signs of Camilus's desperation like the unstamped master blade on yours (possibly intended for use on a rebranded Remington or Kabar which Camillus had a hand in building from time to time). These blades went unstamped or received etches instead of tang stamps, for the most part. You may also notice a pattern of very late Camillus knives having unfinished/unpolished secondary bevels on some blade edges and other signs of impaired QC, mostly on those 2004-2007 knives when things were becoming untenable. I have one or two set aside where the blade edge is so haphazard it could almost pass as serrated from some angles.
Anything prior to 1984 is, I believe, the separate Western States/Western Cutlery/Western Knife Company out of Colorado. Platts started Western States in 1911, so anything before that is...a fake, or a Platts & Sons from a couple thousand miles away.
There are plenty of Camillus knives to compare to the newer Westerns, so that's usually pretty easy to determine short of having the year. There are Coleman-branded knives, too, but I don't think they were directly manufactured by Coleman (although for all I know Camillus might have made those anyway...) so you would need to learn to read the knife to identify this period if you weren't immediately aware of the year of manufacture.
sakoblade wrote:Except for the usual way of reading lots online and in books plus physically handle a lot of knives?
In the end, the usual way is the best and most accurate way. It's part of why guys like Steve and Charlie are experts in their respective knife brands and why so many people here have so much information about such an old art as pocket cutlery.
