All About Pocket Knives

Here is one you won't see often. A Western 'Crazy Horse' thowing knife. They were offered either singly (model WT190) or in a two knife/double sheath set (WT290). Included was a bear and deer target. Stainless steel, with a 'Indian Flint Style Finish'. What Buck calls 'chip flint'. Naw, I haven't bothered tossing it.

I've shown it here on a 1991 Vintage Camillus catalog. More about that catalog in my thread

http://allaboutpocketknives.com/knife_f ... php?t=3004
in the knife lore forum.

Phil

Naw, I haven't bothered tossing it.

I hear it is a skill to toss a good knife.
i can't ever toss my cookies right.

Is it sharp? That 'chip flint' looks KOOL.

Where can you cary that knife? In the woods legal?

Time to give new life to an old thread.
I just bought one of these off of Ebay, and was wondering if anyone had any more info, other than what is in the catalog?
The catalog is the only place I have ever saw them, and had given up hope of seeing one, much less buying one. And now that I have, I know nothing about them.

So here you are. Courtesy of Tom Williams, our owm member 'CAMCO', former historian of Camillus Cutlery. He mailed me the hard copies some time ago.

Knife was originally made for.... tata!: Smokey Mountain. Then became, as sometimes seemed to happed with Camillus- after a special order became popular-- a regular production issue.

So here is the paperwork tracing some of the knives design. Note the prototypes made for Shot show, ect. Where are they now? As well as a photo of the sheath with fringe and the knife with a leather wrap handle.

And, copies of the targets included with the knife.

Thanks go to Tom, not me. I'll email him and let him know about this thread. I am sure he will add what he can.

Phil

note: Probably not woods- or anywhere else legal to carry in most jurisditions, as the double edged thing is sharp.

note: Original, or working name for knife was apparently 'Arrowhead'
note: for those that do not know, click on images once, then twice to bring them up super sized.

Hi Phil:
Excellent, that's not good enough to say but I can't think of anything better.
Thanks to both you and Tom. These types of posts are treasures. I do hope that it is okay to attempt to reconstitute the original document for personal use only. Use to live in eastern Oregon. Lots of obsidian present. There are knappers out there who can knock out objects that look like your presentation a lot faster than one thinks. I wish that I had sense to get some before I left. I figure they had to do something when it was -25-30 degrees.
moss

Thanks for the great info. Can't wait to see if Tom has more to add.
This must have been a short run, because they are very hard to find, or they were all bought up, and people don't want to let go of them.

No doubt there were more documents involved, but what I show gives us an idea of how these things came to be.

'Chip Flint' steel knives have not been done that long, to my knowledge. I did a little studying on these things, and found a couple of examples from the early 1990s. David Yellowhorse made his very classy tribute to his grandfather 'Cuthair'. Beautiful peice. Also, Custom maker, Bill Cheatham made some nice ones. I think Yellowhorse go the idea from Cheatham.

All it is, of course, is 'jigging' the steel, much like one would do with bone handles, apparently.

As far as I know, it is perfectly ok to reproduce these documents. Now that Camillus and Western are gone, I think the history belongs to all of us.

Gr8Scout wrote: All it is, of course, is 'jigging' the steel, much like one would do with bone handles, apparently.

I can see "jigging" steel for small runs or one-off customs but for a production model like the Crazy Horse? I think Drop Forging (before heat treat) would have been a much more economical and faster way to knock these out.

Does anyone have two that they can compare? I suspect that the jigged/knapped patern is the same on all.

Chris

If my memory is correct these blades were made by a local company-Schilling Forge in Central New York. If Phil Gibbs sees this post he will have more info.

Tom Williams

Throwing knives are great fun! I got to where I could hit a playing card 3 out of 5 times from 20+- feet. I haven't done it years, but back in those days it was a great time passer.....................

Very cool!

I did find this on a search...

http://wwmas.com/crazyhorsethrowingknife.aspx

Gr8Scout, I'm sending a PM on another subject.

Bill