All About Pocket Knives

Here's a Standard Knife Co. jack that I guess you'd call a boys knife. 3" long.
A very nice little well made knife.
According to Goins it was made by Case or possibly KA-BAR.

And a couple cousins.

Joe,you are on a roll,nice.

Good looking knife, you do not see many of them around.

Thank you Lyle. I was on a roll, but I think the old ball is starting to develop corners.

Thank you 0078. I agree, I hardly see them at all on e-bay. I bought the hunter on e-bay and David Anthony sold the other little jack to me.

Joe,
I have handled a lot of Standard Knife Co. Knives. The great majority have greenbone handles. I have never seen handles and shields like that on any of them? We're they something special? I was always under the impression that they were made by Case in the 20's.

Tom

Tom,
I really don't know anything about these knives. My information is from Goins book and I plead ignorant from there. These are the only Standard knives I have seen and I'm gleefully going along for the ride. I think they're pretty neat. I hope they're on the up and up.
Thanks Tom.

According to BRL's 3rd edition the Standard Knife Co operated by two of the Case brothers was in operation in Little Valley NY from 1901-1903. The second listing is for W.R.Case & Sons in Bradford PA from 1920-1923.
Your knives are in great shape! I only have one and it was in very poor condition when I bought it(still is).It is a large boot knife with celluloid picture scales and I'm not sure which era it was from.

There were two iterations of STANDARD KNIFE CO. The first one was very short lived and I have personally never seen a knife marked STANDARD KNIFE CO LITTLE VALLEY NY.

The brand name STANDARD KNIFE CO was then used by WR Case & Sons. I do not know the exact dates, but some books say that they started using it in 1923. The earliest Case factory price lists that I have cover 1931 through 1934. The Standard Knife Co knives have their own separate pages of listings in the 1931-33 price lists. The pattern numbers oddly are quite different as compared to regular Case patterns. In the 1934 and later price listed, the Standard Knife listings disappear.

I recently owned a knife identical to Joe's posted knife. Actually while most Standard knives had typical Case green bone handles, quite a few were made in the yellow celluloid with celluloid inlet shields like that one. Especially the thin frame, large sell center folding hunter pattern.

The odd thing about the Standard knives is, every example that I have owned or seen is very similar to a Case pattern, but not exactly the same. I have no idea why. Maybe Case did have them made by Union Cut C0/KABAR, but the green bone certainly matches Case green bone (maybe Case supplied the bone to Union?). Case and Kabar's pocket knife lines in general had a lot of similarities.

I own two of what I believe to be the old original Standard Knife Co, Little Valley knives dating to the 1901-03 era. One I got from David Anthony and the other I picked up fairly recently at a knife show. Tom Russell told me that the old ones were stamped Little Valley whereas the newer ones just have Standard Knife Co. I believe both of my knives were contract knives. These are the only two old ones I have seen. Both blades on my knives are stamped as well. All of the ones I have had that were the later company just had the one blade stamped similar to most tested knives.
I love the old stamps.

Tom

Tom; thanks for posting those, the first that I have seen.

Steve

Steve,
Glad to post them. Thanks for the information on Joe's knives. The celluloid shields I had not seen before.

Tom

Well worn Standard Knife Co.Little Valley toenail.

Another photo of the Standard toenail.

..........peanut, how old is that one???.............. ..................

1901-03.

olderdogs1 wrote:Steve,
Glad to post them. Thanks for the information on Joe's knives. The celluloid shields I had not seen before.

Tom

You will occasionally see a Case Tested knife with the celluloid shield.

The top knife in the attached photo is a Case Tested 3347 Sp Pen. It has two other rare features - milled NS center liner and it is marked on all blades.

And all I wanted to do was show off my yellow boys knife.
Thanks to all of you, Ray, Steve, Tommy, Tom and Roger for elevating this thread with so much information. You can learn a lot if you hang around here. Great stuff.

I looked at my old price lists...actually the STANDARD patterns used the same numbering system as did regular Case pocket knives of the era, but each STANDARD knife pattern had double zeros in the middle.

So for example a 6347 Case would be a 630047 Standard, a 6214 Case would be a 620014 Standard, etc.

Based on what I have seen, Case used the 00 in the pattern number to designate a similar but lower grade/lower priced version of the same pattern. This was true in later catalogs after the Standard knives were dropped.

And in the price lists, the Standard knives were 30% to 40% lower in price as compared to the same Case patterns.

So that would indicate that the STANDARD KNIFE CO line was offered by Case as a lower priced knife line of knives without the CASE trade mark. This was not the last or only time Case did that!!

That is great information, Steve.
There are no pattern numbers at all on my three knives.
I wonder why there is such a significant drop in value on these knives in the catalog.
Maybe because of the covers and/or not a refined blade finish?
They don't seem to be lacking much else to my uneducated eye.
Thank you, Steve.

FRJ wrote:That is great information, Steve.
There are no pattern numbers at all on my three knives.
I wonder why there is such a significant drop in value on these knives in the catalog.
Maybe because of the covers and/or not a refined blade finish?
They don't seem to be lacking much else to my uneducated eye.
Thank you, Steve.

Its a good question. On some patterns like the 47, the Case version would have nickel silver lines and pins and would have a shield, whereas the low priced version would be brass lined with no shield. But on the basic jack patterns I do not know.

Maybe it was some kind of financial shenanigans, offer a lower priced line then sell up to the "better" line that has the Case name.

Thank you, Steve, for all you have contributed to this thread.
It's really interesting information.
And thanks to everyone else who took the time to add pictures and comment.

Found one for the thread.........B2063 SHAD

WOW!
Paul, that's a great example and one with covers I haven't seen before.
Thanks for showing that very clean beauty.

FRJ wrote:WOW!
Paul, that's a great example and one with covers I haven't seen before.
Thanks for showing that very clean beauty.

Thanks Joe

How about this one I just found. I'm quite pleased with the condition...walks and talks and looks like it was carried a lot and used lightly. I got a nice history lesson while researching this as well! cheers