All About Pocket Knives

New guy here - doing a little reading on here and ran across the term "transition knife", what is that in the knife world?

Some context would be helpful. It could be a knife with an unusual mix of components as a manufacturer phases out a model and ramps up production of a new one. It could be a knife assembled from parts that were found in a dark corner or left over from another project.

I most frequently see the term "transition knife" applied to Case knives which utilize a date code on the tang stamp indicating the year the knife was produced. Only a few patterns have multiple blades which bear the date code stamp, for example the muskrat and congress patterns. When the end of the year comes along the company will use up the existing blade stock even if they don't have the exact year stamping to match the current production date. A congress knife might have seven dots on one tang stamp and six dots on the other because of this. That scenario would be how a "transition knife" comes to be.

Another thing about "transition" knives, especially Case, is that since 1970 Case has used a yearly date code scheme. So transition knives are more common than they used to be. Since 1970 it's not unusual to see a knife having blades from two different years. Although it happens on only a limited number of knives, it happens every year.

However prior to 1970, Case did not change their tang stamp annually. So for example a transition knife having one blade marked CASE XX and another blade marked CASE XX U.S.A. is fairly rare. That only could have happened once between 1945 and 1969, when in 1965 Case made that change in their tang stamp. The next change didn't occur until 1970.

Ken

It was a discussion about Case knives - and I was kind of gathering that it may be multiple blades with different dating codes. Thanks

Here’s a Bear & Son transition Barlow. If you look closely, one blade has their tang stamp they used up until that time, and the other blade has the new tang stamp they were introducing.

enuf wrote: ↑Fri Dec 08, 2023 4:23 pm New guy here - doing a little reading on here and ran across the term "transition knife", what is that in the knife world?

First of all, welcome to AAPK! The term is usually attributed to knives made by the Pal Cutlery Co. of Holyoke Massachusetts. They purchased the equipment & inventory from Remington Arms ca 1941.
With a large amount of knife parts stamped with the Remington mark, they elected to use them up in their knife production together withblades stamped with their own logo. These knives came to be known as transition knives. Here is an example of one I own. The master blade has the circular Remington stamp on the tang and '' PAL Fine cutlery '' etched on the side of the blade.

good info - starting to see the trend.