All About Pocket Knives

Collecting Western knives in this part of the world ain't easy. Matter of fact, I'd never heard of them until I joined here. Then I got a Western USA 742 in a trade with Junebug and I was done for. Then I discovered the older Boulder knives and I was really in a bad way then. But most all the folders I ran across were delrin. The old bone ones were really hard to find, and next to impossible here without the internet.

A couple of years ago someone posted the old Western AD that I'm including here of the 74x family if knives all in bone. So I decided to try to piece together as good a set as I could of each. Well as of today I only need two more! Here are the ones I have so far. Now a couple still need cleaning up, and they've all been used. But I'm right proud of them.

The 74x line were 4 inch stockman patterns that differed in their blade compliment. I am including one here that while not in the photo is a 74x, the 741 two back spring 4 inch muskrat.

Here they are in order: 741, 742, 743, 744. In the photo of the 744 it looks like the punch is tipped, but it isn't.

Excuse the less than stellar photos.

Oh, you've got some beauty's there, Colonel.
Good for you.
I'd be quite happy to pack any one of those.

Thanks Joe! That's near part of not being able to find mint examples/being to poor to afford them if I could, you can sharpen them and pack them if ya want to!

Colonel, is this link a 745? It looks like it to me.

http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/kni ... 05#p453097

Ralph it sure looks like it. That's a real looker. I like it!

Wade,nice focus,maybe you can trade Ralph out of that one.

Thanks Lyle.

Back when I was a kid, other than Marshall Wells, about everything sold around here was Westerns. I started collecting then 20 some years ago and other knife collectors asked me why. They sold cheap and were so common that they couldn't see my reasoning. My first knife as a kid was a Western. I bought everything I could pick up cheap. I don't even know how many fixed blade Westerns I have, and I hunted for every variation of the stockman knives I could find. Some just moved the stamping around a little or used new slightly different ones as old ones wore out. I'll have to gather them together for a picture some day to see what I actually have. Dave

Dave I understand. Here it was Case and then those off brands. We had Schrade, but those were the "cheap" knives for kids, men packed Case. I was grown before I'd ever heard of Camillus. About the only other brand that was seen as almost as good as Case was Eye Brand. But she then it was no Case.

Western was non existent here, they weren't sold, and even now no one here collects them. But man do I love em!

Colonel, thanks for showing those stockmans. It is always a treat to see Westerns; I am quite fond of them myself. I have quite a few fixed blades, but very few folding Westerns, and only one stockman. It is a pre-war 3 7/8 inch slender stockman like the 861 Schrade and the 69 Camillus. The companies all made that pattern up as a special Sunday knife for folk, I guess, because they often had etches, nickel silver liners and sometimes the liners were milled as well. I even have a 4 blade version from Schrade Cutco that probably dates to the 1920s in pearl. Anyway, here is mine; the pattern # is 6347C (or maybe 6374C?). It was in a little Christmas holly motif box that was exactly the right size so it may have been sold that way.