All About Pocket Knives

I happened to notice that the pattern number tang stamp on my Bone Stag Seahorse Whittler does not begin with 6.5 as do all my other Case XX knives with Bone Stag scales. Instead, it reads: V6355WH (over) SS. Anyone know why it doesn't have 6.5 when clearly that's what it is? And what does the "V" refer to? I'm perplexed.

~Q~

That sure looks like the 6.5 stag bone...Case used the V for "Vintage Bone".

If I remember right, vintage bone came and went prior to the introduction of the 6.5 stag bone.

Vintage bone was white with black in the jig trails and was rough jigged similar to stag bone.

Yours may be a factory error? Used an older blade with the wrong pattern 3?

Hard to say.

That makes sense. And it makes the knife a bit more interesting as well.
Thank you, Steve.
~Q~

Steve,
Minor detail here...trivial really...but I couldn't help noticing that you refer to this handle material as "stag bone" instead of "bone stag" I've noticed a few other instances where it has been called stag bone as well (mostly on eBay). The label on the original box identifies it as "Bonestag" (written as one word). I've always called it 'bone stag' because not only does that help eliminate the mistaken impression that the origin of the bone is deer instead of cattle, but also because the order of the pattern number itself begins with a 6 (bone) followed by .5 (stag)...and the 'point' between them suggests it's not real stag, just 1/2 or .5 stag in that the (cattle) bone has been jigged to resemble stag. When I hear stag bone, or whale bone, or giraffe bone, or any other kind of animal bone...I can't help but think the bone actually came from that animal, just the same as ram's horn, buffalo horn, elk horn, etc., are all horn from those specific animals, whereas, bone stag has an entirely different connotation.

But, like I said...trivial

Only one of the knives in this photo is genuine stag...most of them are 'Bone Stag' and 3 of the 4 cheetah cubs at right are cattle bone, one is Giraffe Bone.

I think it's pretty common to hear it both ways. But Bonestag or Stagbone are the same thing... cattle bone jigged to look like deer stag.

I've also seen it called "staged bone". Camillus used that term but it just referred to jigged bone.