All About Pocket Knives

Picked up 2 Westerns today. Seem like they are well built L66 and W36

Drukai wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 11:50 pm Picked up 2 Westerns today. Seem like they are well built L66 and W36

2 very nice ones.

Indeed.

Does that L66 have a single pin in the pommel ? I think that is odd. Both are beautiful knives !! Well found!!

Felanmac wrote: ↑Tue Dec 13, 2022 5:35 am Does that L66 have a single pin in the pommel ? I think that is odd. Both are beautiful knives !! Well found!!

For some reason, Western changed the L66 construction from bifurcated tang with 2 pins to hidden tang with a single pin sometime during the 1973 to 1976 time frame. All date coded Western and Coleman-Western L66s have single pin construction. The W66 remained bifurcated in construction.

I have seen double pin and single pin construction on L66s with the 1973 to 1976 ricasso/guard stamps. Not many double pins but a few.

I have seen that with some that I have as well, I still think it is odd. Please understand that I know they are real Westerns, but why did they do that? It was well before being bought by Coleman, so I think it was not for cost cutting $$. They already had that knife with the bifurcated tang in house. Maybe, just maybe they were trying to horn in on the “single tang” market ?? inquiring minds want to know!

As I said "For some reason". Most likely everyone involved in in the decision process is dead or in a nursing home, since we're talking about a decision made 48 to 50 years ago.

The curious part is that they only made the change for the L66, not the W66 or the S-H66. It's not like they were trashing a specific blank die - the 66 pattern. They kept the bifurcated blank die for 2 models but shifted to the late-50s K5 model blank? Makes no sense at all but they did it.