Imperial w/swinden key

Schrade Cutlery Company was founded in 1904 by George Schrade, and his brothers Jacob and William Schrade. In 1946 Imperial Knife Associated Companies, (IKAC; an association of Ulster Knife Co and Imperial Knife Co) purchased controlling interest in Schrade Cut Co and changed the name to Schrade Walden Cutlery. In 1973 the name was changed to Schrade Cutlery. In 2004 Schrade closed due to bankruptcy.

This forum is dedicated to the knives that are the legacy of this company. This forum is not the place to discuss the replica knives currently being imported using the Schrade name.
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BatJak
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Imperial w/swinden key

Post by BatJak »

I'm aware of the mish-mash between schrade/imperial/camillus etc...
But haven't seen this before...
IMAG0902.jpg
Few years ago I took apart a Chicago cutlery folding hunter with swinden key construction.

Just thought this interesting.
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cody6268
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Location: Southwestern Virginia

Re: Imperial w/swinden key

Post by cody6268 »

I thought Camillus made those Double Eagles? Thus, typically not Swinden, but pinned. Normally. I have a Medium Stockman, a Sportsman's Knife, and a Sears Craftsman 95325 (identical to a Frontier; however); and all are pin-through.

That's one thing about Camillus and Schrade. They both made knives for the same third parties, and for each other. It gets extremely confusing once you get into them. And they're the brands that interest me the most; along with tool-branded knives, which means a bunch of Sears Craftsman, most of which either one or the other made for Sears.
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tongueriver
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Re: Imperial w/swinden key

Post by tongueriver »

A given company did not necessarily make the whole knife. Imperial could send some blades over to Schrade for completion. I believe that I have read here somewhere that Schrade sent some 8OT parts over to Camillus, and thus there were a few Schrade 8OTs with through-pin construction.
knifeaholic
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Re: Imperial w/swinden key

Post by knifeaholic »

I believe that the Imperial factory in Providence had the tooling to put knives together with the Swinden construction.

I recently purchased a small group of knives from a collector in Rhode Island - the knives had come off of a wall display located in the office of the quality control manager in the Imperial factory. These were a mixed group of Imperial Frontier, Imperial Diamond Edge, and Craftsman marked knives - all solid bolster knives with Swinden construction.

That said, yes it has been shown that some Imperials and some Old Timers were made with pinned-through construction, made in the Camillus plant.

Further confusing things, Schrade did make some Delrin handled knives with pinned-through construction. I recently had an SS825 "Razor Blade Stainless" stockman with Delrin handles and pinned through bolster construction. The razor blade stainless knives were introduced in 1965, so it is possible that the use of Swinden construction started about that time or a bit later.
Steve Pfeiffer, author of Collecting Case Knives: Identification and Price Guide published by Krause Publications.
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