All About Pocket Knives

No worries Ken, I make these mistakes all the time with no ligitimate excuse. Don't know if you took notice but there is a bone handle 895 in pretty good shape at a reasonable price for auction. 201833033559

Looking closer. I'm not sure that is jigged bone???

JAMESC41001 wrote:Looking closer. I'm not sure that is jigged bone???

It is bone, without a doubt. Decent price too, I got a nice bone 899 from that seller.

Finally got a Trapper, I really like this knife. Will be in my pocket tomorrow, and im sure many more days following.

Pre-war. Pattern S8373 (page 21 of catalog E reprint). SFO for JKB shop.

Cal I'm speechless

Looks like it was just made!

Eric

That is an absolute beauty Cal and has a lot going for it Lloyd

Incredible Cal. Absolutely incredible. What a great piece history as well.

Phil.

That puts the all about in all about pocket knives.

Thanks for the kind comments. I appreciate that very much. That knife was not cheap.

tongueriver wrote:Pre-war. Pattern S8373 (page 21 of catalog E reprint). SFO for JKB shop.

DANG!!! What a beautiful cattle knife.

KnifeSlinger#81 wrote:

tongueriver wrote:Pre-war. Pattern S8373 (page 21 of catalog E reprint). SFO for JKB shop.

DANG!!! What a beautiful cattle knife.

All by itself it's an absolute stunner.

The fact that it's also a Jack Knife Shop marked knife sold out of Benjamin Chon's shop at the Chicago Stockyards adds even more to the knife for me.

Be interesting to know if it was sold before Chon retired and turn the shop over to his sons.

FatCity67 wrote: Be interesting to know if it was sold before Chon retired and turn the shop over to his sons.

I just got done reading from SEVERAL sources on the JKB story and mostly conflicting information and some opinions on Schrade involvement which I do not agree with. Anyway, one source said that Chon turned the business over in 1928. Although one source whom I respect said in a couple places that he thought Schrades for JKB were made in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, I do not think this is always so. The knife I posted is definitely of 1935 to 1941 vintage, according to my eight years of study of older Schrades. Just my opinion, of course. I also have a tang-stamped Schrade WALDEN 1950s knife with a JKB etch which would fit SOME of the Schrade involvement. It is amazing to me how few years need to elapse before important information is lost forever... "We are but dust in the wind."
The Schrade Walden:

Reading about the difficulty in determining who made a particular knife is starting to make my head hurt! I have a question about who made some Schrades but I need to get some good photos before I ask a question which has probably already been answered here in the past

Tongueriver - that Schrade JKB is one fine knife! I am not a big stockman fan, but that knife I like!

tongueriver wrote:

FatCity67 wrote: Be interesting to know if it was sold before Chon retired and turn the shop over to his sons.

I just got done reading from SEVERAL sources on the JKB story and mostly conflicting information and some opinions on Schrade involvement which I do not agree with. Anyway, one source said that Chon turned the business over in 1928. Although one source whom I respect said in a couple places that he thought Schrades for JKB were made in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, I do not think this is always so. The knife I posted is definitely of 1935 to 1941 vintage, according to my eight years of study of older Schrades. Just my opinion, of course. I also have a tang-stamped Schrade WALDEN 1950s knife with a JKB etch which would fit SOME of the Schrade involvement. It is amazing to me how few years need to elapse before important information is lost forever... "We are but dust in the wind."
The Schrade Walden:
891 JKB.jpg
891 JKB2.jpg

Thanks for the update Cal. So imagine what we have lost as a civilization before so much info can now be stored almost Ad infinitum.

As an aside William Shawn son of Benjamin worked his was to Editor of New Yorker Magazine and Wallace
Shawn his son is a character actor seen in many movies and successful playwright comedian. Another American Family Story of Rags to Riches.

Phil

Born in the USA

I could not help myself. A bone 861 carrying knife with milled liners for $25?

What a great score Cal, gotta love those Slenderinos

dweb1897 wrote:What a great score Cal, gotta love those Slenderinos

So... you must be on your way. You lucky dog; don't forget an extra pair of socks to carry stuff home in!
p.s. I hope the knives I sent are OK.

Cal, does your bone Schrade Walden 861 have the pattern # marked on it ?
Delrin was first used in 1960 but even before this Schrade-Walden was using other plastics for knife handles. My question is when did S-W stop using bone as the regular knife handle material ? And was it a gradual transition bone to plastic ? or all in one big step over a 1 or 2 yr period ?
If answers could be known then dating of Schrade-Walden knives would become fairly specific, i.e. narrowed down to the span of just a few years.
kj

The 861 does have the pattern number stamped on the pile side. I don't have the knife in hand yet. I believe that it was Eric Albers (not sure about that) who said a few years ago, that the bone supply dried up to nothing and Schrade was so desperate for a handle substitute that they even experimented with Masonite®. I think the scramble was on between roughly 1958 and 1961, but I am not the one to answer that definitively. I think that the celluloid might even have become scarce? Ugly old indestructible Delrin® was manna from heaven, so to speak. I still don't know the exact time frame in which Delrin effected the nearly 100% takeover. Late 1960? Early 1961? Not finished until 1962? I don't know. During all this upheaval, CASE seems to have plugged along with some right stellar bone, no problem. Must have been different suppliers, with territorial contractual rights to production?

I think the years 1958 to 1961 seem right, and there were other plastics used in several patterns before they settled on Delrin. In the catalogs it was called stagged rather than bone stag. I think 1963 was when Delrin took hold across the product line. They called it Staglon for a while. Early Delrin handled Open Stock knives may be called stagged in some of the catalogs. By the time Staglon was introduced there was no more bone stag or stagged descriptions in the catalogs. It was not, in my opinion, a straight across cut off date. I think it varied from pattern to pattern as bone handles ran out of stock.

Nice to hear from you, Friend!

tongueriver wrote:Nice to hear from you, Friend!

Cal, Had a bout of the pancreatitis the first part of the week or would have gotten a note off thanking you for the knives. Just got back from dinner here in Eugene. OKCA SHOW IN THE MORNING. I'll post some pics when I get a chance.

The switch to delrin really started when the Rogers bone factory burned down didn't it. That ought to be pretty easy to date.

I like them slenderinos Cal, nice pick up.