All About Pocket Knives

Here are a couple oddball (to me anyway) trappers I picked up at the farmers market today. The first is a 94OT, nothing really odd here except for the threaded bolsters, which I have never seen on a standard OT. I think maybe some overrun frames from some heritage or DU knives?


Second is a 285UH serialized inside the liner # 2709 (early one) standard Schrade Walden era quality with the milled liners ECT. A couple odd things here, the first UH marked SW I have seen in carbon steel, and the spey is of a different profile than the standard spey blade, it is more of a spear. At first I thought someone had the blades switched out into an UH frame but the back tang reads clear as a crystal 285UH. Any thoughts? I guess the very early waldens were carbon?

Nice ones Kaleb!
I run across those sorts of things every once in a while with carbon steel blades when you expect to find stainless. If I like the pattern, I keep them for users. I really like the milling on the liners of the 285. I don't know of any special issues of the knife that were made like that. Perhaps they were made with leftover parts, as you pointed out.

Nice grab on both those,
Dale

The milled liners look very cool next to the patina-ed steel! Interesting knives, Kaleb!!

Kaleb - You bring up a not so well known fact, or in my case it was an assumption unil recently. Plus those threaded bolsters are new to me, and look sweet. I have an early 285UH in the brown box with the pamplet. On this little pamplet the "Hunters and Trappers" knife is listed as having "high-carbon tool steel", the 885 is listed as "high-carbon stainless steel". I believe the same applied with the Schrade Walden 285UH Uncle Henry's. My 285UH is F5929 serial number. Liners are not milled. Tang Stamp is SCHRADE / N.Y. USA / 285UH. There is no SCHRADE+, and SCHRADE was fairly consistent in those days of marking stainless blades (STAINLESS), even the secondary blades. I was surprised when I got this one, and did not realize (at least some) of the early 285UH were carbon unlike than the years following. Anyway, that is my translation about the steel, I could be wrong though, since I have not seen Schrade put an edge like this on a carbon steel blade.



http://www.collectors-of-schrades-r.us/ ... W-CATS.pdf

Checking this 1972 Schrade Walden catalog shows the 285UH and 171UH were high carbon cutlery steel, the remaining Uncle Henry's as high carbon stainless steel.

Nice finds Kaleb! Here's another 285, VERY early vintage serial #00067. Has same blade shape and milled liners as well. No sign of stainless, even has a few minute spots typical of HC:

Nice trappers Kaleb, Hal, and Eric! It looks like a sign of authenticity is that polished "halo" just above the cutting edge.
I like the fact that there are some UHs with the more desireable (IMO) carbon steel. I will have to look more closely at them!
Thanks for putting them up guys.

cool! nice to know mine isn't the only one. now for the great search to find when they started unsing stainless in the trappers, and what the last serial # was for a carbon UH looks like at least 5929 of them are floating around out there according to Thawk's knife. this is fun

I have a SCHRADE+ with 94078 if you want to try and find out when the steel changed.

cool. thanks thawk. can anyone else fork up some numbers on thier stainless walden trappers? the earlier the better