Case experts needed-Real or Fake 1965-1969 Canoe 52131

[knifeaholic]

Ok time for me to weigh in since I am the one who sold this knife to BFORSE.

I have owned and sold probably over 200 10 dot and USA stamped 52131 canoes, in addition to the 10-15 XX and Tested stamped examples that I own.

My first thought is that if this particular knife has been altered by installing a new front handle, it is far and away the best rehandle job I have ever seen, comparing it to the many that I have owned, seen, and sold.

It goes without saying (I hope) that when I sell a knife I look it over carefully for any issues, this knife had none, a perfect mint knife, never used, sharpened, or cleaned.

That said, I usually do not look inside of a knife at the shield pins unless I have some reason to think that the knife has been altered.

The only other reason that I examine the shield pins inside of a knife would be for ’78 and ’79 bone and stag handled Case knives to see whether the shield is pinned or glued.

I have seen what appear to be empty holes for shield pins inside of other knives, but not on any Case knife that I can recall.

Solingen Bokers, for example, are notorious for this – for whatever reason for many years after Boker started gluing shields in, they continued drilling a hole in the front liner for the shield.

The only odd thing that I have seen on a Case knife shield installation was on a used USA era 33044 “Birdseye”. This knife had older (not Delrin) yellow handles that had decomposed, leaving the shield pins visible.

I was shocked to find that while there were shield pins, and the shield pins went down to the liner, there were no holes in the liner to accept the pins. So the shield pins were peened and polished off at the holes in the shield and the pins went through the handle, but the pins did not extend through the liner and of course were not peened to the liner.

That was an odd factory error.

So with this knife (assuming that it has not been cobbled/altered) there are two possibilities:

#1 – the pins are in the holes and peened to the liner, but for some reason they ends cannot be seen properly, so it appears that the holes are empty since it is difficult to properly see inside of the knife given the narrow opening. This is possible but unlikely.

#2 – the shield was installed at the factory with pins that were too short to reach and go through the liner holes. The knife went through final assembly and hafting with the pins peened and polished off at the shield level, but not peened/polished off at the liner. The shield would of course still be held firmly in place due to the shield pins fitting tightly in the holes drilled in the stag, so this flaw would never be noticed during final inspection. I believe that this type of factory error would have been likely, due to the hand crafted nature of Case knives in that era, and especially on a stag handle since stag is not of a uniform thickness. Unless a cutler is very careful it would be easy to install a shield with pins that are a bit too short.

Regarding the position of the shield on the handle, that varied as well during those years. Remember there were no CNC machines then, so all manufacturing functions at Case were either done by hand or on conventional machine tools – machine tools that were set up by hand.

On many patterns, the shield position and the positions of the handle pins, as well as the length of the handle as compared to the bolsters, could vary.

The shield installations on stag were especially problematic, as stag is not a nice uniform flat surface. A cutler had to try to find the best spot given the contours of the individual unique stag handle.