Schrade shield with red dot: Conclusion and pics now added

[OldGoat]

Howdy,

Can someone please explain to me the significance of a red dot on the shield of a few Schrade knives I have seen? The shield is acorn shaped and otherwise plain.

Thanks in advance.

[Chase]

Can you post a couple of pictures?

Might help

Tom

[OldGoat]

I don't personally have an example, but here are two recent ebay auctions that pictured (and pointedly mentioned) them: 290535762169 and 140512836879. I am not sure if it is ok to lift the seller's images and post them here or not, thus the item numbers only.

I have thought about this since posing the initial question and it seems that I have seen these plain shields with the depression but without the colored dot. Might this be a remnant of stamping a plain shield that has a pin for the scale? If so, did they come painted from the factory or did the dot get added to enhance some mysterious desirability in the item description?

Of the Schrades that I have with plain shields, all have a uniformly flat surface.

[OldGoat]

OK, I'm back armed with picture references and several other observations. There are two images on the collectors-of-schrades-r-us pages, an 881 and an 880 with urls of:

http://www.collectors-of-schrades-r.us/ ... es/881.htm

and

http://www.collectors-of-schrades-r.us/ ... n%2CNY.htm

then two from completed ebay auctions:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... wtOqg%253D

and

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... &viewitem=

Curiously, the dot/depression is not in the same place on the shields, being lowest on the 881, with two being red and two being empty depressions. Weirder yet, the first auction listed shows a Kon-Kav model stamped 806 rather than 805, which is what got me really wondering what significance the dots mean.

Hopefully these pics will give someone enough info to generate an answer or at least a theory. Sorry if I only post links instead of pics but am reticent to simply lift and repost the pics; as I have had that done to me from several of my publications for uncredited use in another.

[Chase]

Alright...I'm going to throw out one theory here!

I just talked with my Mom who was a Quality Control Inspector at Schrade for over 30 years! The hole in the shield was drilled to allow a tool to be placed into the hole and pop the shield out of the cover. There was probably an issue with the shield and it needed to be replaced!

The shields were placed into the covers and then heat treated to melt/seal the cover in place, the only way to remove the shields were to drill them and pop them out with the tool.

I suspect that the ones with the red dot were painted in by someone to fool folks into believing that the knife was made that way...

There you have it...my two cents!

Tom

[orvet]

Tom,
That makes a lot of sense and would explain the different locations of the holes on the shields.
Just more of the work in progress and factory rejects that were sold as first run product after the Schrade bankruptcy auction.

I had a guy ship me a box full of unfinished knives (and rejects) after Camillus closed, and asked me to finish them. Some were so messed up, there was no salvaging them.

These Schrades were probably cosmetic rejects and probably function just fine.
I would not want to pay extra for the dot though.

[OldGoat]

Thanks Tom and Dale,

Both of those ideas seem almost plausible but for several issues: all of the ones I listed have the dimples aligned axially and one of them I now have in hand appears to be merely a mechanical depression and not a though-hole. If the shield was drilled to pull then hole would be through-and-through and the axial alignment would be of no concern. Additionally, if the shields were defective and drilled for removal, then why were they not replaced with new ones?

Furthermore, I rather doubt that the two knives on the schrades-r-us page are of late or EOD production. Also, the one I now have, the 806 stamped Kon-Kav, is old enough for the scales to be some plastic material in use prior to the advent of delrin as they have shrunk away from the bolsters as the plasticizer leached out. Or maybe they are even celluloid though I would not know how to recognize that material. That stuff shrinks and curls too, doesn't it?

I am left to think that the depression is an artifact of the stamping process, but for what reason? Again I ponder the possibility of it being there to help stake/position the shield in the scale.

Again, thanks to you both for your responses.

[OldGoat]

Gentlemen, the mystery is solved! Well, sorta.

I just ran across an old 861 variant with awl that is partially disassembled. The images are here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Lot-4-Vintage-Schra ... 4157387480

The shield does indeed have a through-and-through hole, not a depression, and the liner has a corresponding hole. It would appear that the shield was originally pinned to the liner through the scale! So I must assume that at some point, the shields were pinned rather than glued (or melted into the scale).

Now the only question remaining is whether or not it was simply cheaper to stamp a flat shield and rivet it in than it was to stamp a shield with a builtin projection for positioning or if it was the way another manufacturer who was picking up slack for Schrade normally did their thing. This latter possibility would also go toward explaining why every "dot" shield I have seen was plain rather than inscribed.

On the whole, collecting Schrades and their cousins is as confounding as it is satisfying.

[OldGoat]

After the previous post I dug mine out and looked to verify if riveted.

Finally, a picture of the one I have. Sorry it isn't any better.

[orvet]

Tom,
-Did your Mom say if the drilled shields were ever sold in the company store for employees? Or given to employees?


Oldgoat-
I am a bit pressed for time to answer all your issues, but I will take a shot.
BTW, I see you have a sharp eye and are noticing details many people miss……this is a good thing.


The earlier knives had the shields pinned on. That is history, the old technology.
The holes for these would be uniform, all in the same location.
It holes drilled off center were for pulling the shield, as per Tom’s mom.

From what I have learned of the Schrade operation, knives were XXed out and sold as seconds. I have had a number of those seconds & I have no idea why they are seconds. They look and function perfectly from what I can tell. I have not heard of Schrade "repairing" knives that were cosmetically imperfect. If the shield was placed wrong, the knife would have needed that scale replaced which would require the knife be taken apart, new handle put on and the knife reassembled. The machine could turn out hundreds of knives in the time it took one man to repair the bad shield. Better to have that guy run the machine than repair a knife.

The labor required to repair a knife would be much more than it cost Schrade to make the knife in the first place. I just don't see that happening in the Schrade or in any other modern cutlery factory.

I think there are two different issues we are dealing with:
1- Random holes for removing shields as Tom mentioned.
2- Pin holes that here used for pinning the shield to the scale.
I suspect some of the ones you see are caused by having the pin fall out of the shield and the shield remaining on the scale.
3- Maybe a third issue ……… people messing with the knives…or who knows what else?


The only factory I know for sure that made Schrade knives was the Camillus factory. The same man owned them and they had shields and tang stamps for Schrade and everything for the Schrade knives. The blank shield is not an indicator that they were made by another company. Even the Buck knives Schrade made for Buck and the knives Camillus made for Buck all had Buck shields.

I hope this answers more questions than it raises,
Dale

[Chase]

Yes...the Company had a store where they sold a lot of the seconds to the general public. Many were sold to employees during the holidays and handed out to employees as well!

Tom