All About Pocket Knives

Pictured below is a knife I have that has a somewhat unusual construction. It is a Western sheath knife with a 5 inch blade. The unusual feature is how the guard is attached. It has a big slot with 2 small brass pieces wedged into the slot to hold the guard onto the handle. What was the purpose of this? Manufacturing shortcut to speed up production? Also the blade is stamped with a patent number 1,967.479 which I assume is the patent covering this design feature.

The patent number is for the bifurcated tang construction. It's a split tang that the leather washers were fitted over. Has nothing to do with that guard assembly, That's rather odd, I've never seen that before. Almost looks as if someone had an oversize guard that they slid over the blade and wedged it in place with those shims.




Eric

The patent number does not refer to the guard attachment, it refers to the split tang construction that Western used on fixed blade knives. You see the tang on both top and bottom of the handle but the tang is not one piece, it is open in the middle. I believe you are correct that the guard system is for ease of manufacture.

Eric posted while I was typing. The Western "Shark" knives also have the space around the guard, they did that on several models.

Gunsil wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 2:34 pm The patent number does not refer to the guard attachment, it refers to the split tang construction that Western used on fixed blade knives. You see the tang on both top and bottom of the handle but the tang is not one piece, it is open in the middle. I believe you are correct that the guard system is for ease of manufacture.

Eric posted while I was typing. The Western "Shark" knives also have the space around the guard, they did that on several models.

So the brass wedges going thru the slot in the blade is Western factory correct. It was the first one I had seen like that. Thanks for your info.

I don't believe the brass wedge is original. I could be wrong because I haven't looked at one in quite some time but i think the original guards were formed with a piece of brass connecting both sides in the middle, just like the leather washers. This was slid over the split tang and stopped at the end of the split against the blade, then the washers were stacked against it. There would have been no need for shims. Perhaps someone added them to your knife to fix a loose and floppy guard. That could happen if the leather shrinks.

Eric

There's nothing factory about that guard, it's a repair, and a bad one at that.

When that knife was manufactured the guard would have been slipped over the tang, the leather handle pieces added, then the pommel would have been pressed on and pinned. Somehow or another that knife lost its guard, and a new one was slipped over the blade and held in place by the wedge. No knife manufacturer would slip a guard over the blade and secure it like that. It'd be an almost 100% warranty return rate, not to mention a great way of getting someone hurt.

Western knives were always solid, working man's knives. They never did anything as shoddy as this.

The only thing NOT original to this knife is the copper wedge stuck though the slot in the tang.

This is an L57, a 5" B&T.

For some reason, the L57, had a guard that had 2 larger slots in the guard which allowed the gaps to show, kinda like an "8".

With this knife, the leather shrank over time, allowing the guard to become loose. Rather than removing the pommel and adding a leather disk or two and replacing the guard, made a "field expedient" fix by shoving a piece of what appears to be copper through the gap between the leather disks and the forward edge of the tang gap.