All About Pocket Knives

Is this Camillus knife pre WW II or post WW II ?

The knife has nothing on the shield. Unless any letters were worn off. But the shield looks not to have that much wear.
It also has brass liners and a brass center pin.
But has the old type can opener.
The scales are bone. Everything else looks to be steel.
I see no signs of this knife being repaired or parts replaced.

JW

I have a Scout knife just like that, without the shield. Tang stamp is post WWII or thereabouts and construction seems to point the same. Nice knife.
All the Best

Made before 1946

Lot of BUTs with this knife.

The tang stamp is what's generally accepted as 1946-1956 BUT you know what Dale says about Camillus tang stamps. "Maybe"

There's a knife with this blade configuration in the 1946 catalog including that can opener. It's called the "Army Engineers and Marine Corps Utility Knife" BUT the one in the catalog has USA on the shield and the handles are that 1940s shrinky dink plastic they used during that era.

If it were pre-1946, it would have had steel liners and pins because all the brass was allocated to the war effort and making ammunition BUT without a pre-war catalog or other documentation AND with the bone handles, can we really rule out pre-WWII? Although there's still that tang stamp hanging out there.

I'm going to guess -- and this is just a guess -- 1946, maybe 1947

Thanks for the info.
Kind of confusing to me from the info I've read about these knives.
That's the reason for posting it.
Maybe (like Dale says) this knife was a transition from old design to new?
Or it is post WW 2 and made from old left over parts?
Whatever, the knife is in very decent shape and is in working order.
Got it for free while demolishing an old house so I have no complaints.

JW

I am pretty sure it is after Camillus dropped the 4-line tang stamp.
Even the 3-line stamps pre-1946 had the word CUTLERY in them.
The line dropped in 1946 was "CUTLERY CO."

In my working hypothesis of Camillus tang stamps, I would date that stamp 1946 to c. 1961.
My surety of that dating as about 80%, but I am still learning & have a long way to go yet.

Dale - Do you see a lot of bone handles on these knives after the late 1940s?


JW - It was a great knife to start with but 'free' makes it excellent.

Rogers bone was made up until 1962.
I have several post WWII 3-line tang stamp knives with Rogers bone handles.
You will find it also on the Camillus 3-line easy openers.

The blades & bone might be left over from military contracts or they could be all made after the war.
That pattern was also a scout knife, IIRC.
Camillus made a LOT of that pattern, military, civilian & scout.

I am looking at the can opener on the OP knife. In late 1944 the military utility knives were all starting to use the safety type can opener. Surely by late 1945 they were using this style on all their knives.

Michael Mirando applied for the patent on Nov. 7, 1944, received the patent on Dec. 25, 1945. The patent was received after the war had ended but this style can opener was used for over a year and is seen on many military knives of the WW II era.

So I give it till 1946, the knife companies exhaust their old style can openers for civilian knife use and use nothing else but the new style.

I have a box of 6 Army utility knives shipped to the U.S. government in 1945 under contract from Camillus Knife Co. they were delivered in 1945, 5 of the six knives have the 4-line Camillus address and one has the 3-line address and safety can opener.

So I am convinced the knives as seen above were made prior to 1946 and not much after, if at all.