Ripster wrote: ↑Mon Mar 08, 2021 5:34 pm
Hey there Schrade fans,got a question for you? Picked up this 163 last week , don’t know much about it . It was 13 bucks so grabbed it ,thinking it’s worth that for sure. So does Schrade label this a Pruner ,Hawlbill ? Seen a couple referred to as Rope knife,but don’t think so on that one? And does the Bail, shackle, look factory . It’s all steel liners,pins,bolsters. Snaps and bites! The bail, the more I look at it ,doesn’t seem right for this period of piece.
Thank you if able to answer questions.
During the Schrade Walden era there were three similar knives in that line that utilized the same handles:
-The 186 was the horticultural hawkbill with the very pointy beak and no shackle.
-The 136 was the Lineman's Skinning Knife with the identical hawkbill only with a slightly rounded and blunted point. Blade had a linesman's knife etch. This knife had a shackle.
-The 163 was the rope knife. Same handle but with a large sheepsfoot or rope blade and no shackle
In the first few years of the Schrade Walden era the bolsters had a rattail cut into them, a carryover from the Cut Co days. Eventually the rattail was fazed out and straight bolsters were used. Without the model numbers on the 186 and 136 it would be almost impossible to differentiate between the two when just comparing blades on used knives as the act of sharpening them several times would likely round the pointy tip of the 186 and maybe add a bit more point to the 136. The bail definitely helps in telling them apart. Ripster you definitely have the 136 there and the bail is legit.
Starting around 1979 or 1980 they started interchanging the 136/186 model numbers on their respective blades for some reason. I think they'd just make a batch of hawkbill blades with whatever model number was handy for the stamp, and then if they needed linesman's knives they'd just round the tip and add the etch. The crazy thing was that on those blades they started grinding the edge right around the rounded point, which completely nullified that safety feature making that end like a flying scalpel when it snapped shut LOL! At this point shackles were added to both knives as well. Here's an example of that, two different models with the same 136 tang stamp, likely from around 1979:
Eric