All About Pocket Knives

Did Schrade have the 8041 whittler made by some other company.The blades have pin in either end.I have two of these knives with pins .So decide to check to see if they where made this way because they are seconds.I found this picture on Ebay and it shows pins.I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on this knife

I have two of the Redbone Sets and both of the 8041's have pins through the bolsters. I don't know why, however, these two sets came direct from the factory right after they were made!

I hope that helps some.....Maybe Dale (ORVET) will come along and give us his expert opinion!

Tom

good question Shearer , I have never noticed the pins before , after checking some other whittlers i found the 9554 Craftsman is showing the pins also , but not Tennessee/Kentuckey whittlers nor the SW804......

forgot one , the 85th anna commemorative show's the pins also ......

Lots of Schrade work got done over in the Camillus buildings. I know that a bunch of stockman knives for Parker got sent over to Imperial buildings because the Schrade boys were too busy. I think the cutlery businesses owned by Baer did lots and lots of trade work-- whatever made economic or timeline sense at the time.

The pins can show up if they are made with different steel types, when polished you may find the difference comes out that way. I have other Schrade knives as well as other manufacturers that show the pins this way. You can actually see the pins in the Tennessee/Kentucky whittlers if you enlarge the picture.

Russell

Calvin is spot on!
There was an incredible amount of work that was farmed out between the companies. For illustration purposes take the Imperial Frontier series of knives. Imperial began making them about 1975 and I think they hit the market mainly in 1976. By 1983 Albert Baer was the sole owner of Imperial having purchased all outstanding Imperial stock. I know from Camillus’ own internal records that Camillus made many of the Frontier patterns in 1984 and following. There is also creditable information that many patterns were made at the Schrade plant in Ellenville. So we can see that in the instance of the Frontier knives they were passed around to at least 3 factories. I think a lot that was based on production cost, production schedules and available tooling in the different factories.

We know that tooling cost is substantial to set up for a pattern, (tens of thousands of dollars usually). That may have played a part in what you will find some models of the 804. Like any pattern the tooling for the 804 for the Swinden machinery would have to be made, necessitating significant capitol expenditure. Some of the 804s may have been made by Camillus or made with pin-through-bolster at Schrade in small limited edition runs not large enough to pay for the Swinden tooling, though it would appear that at some point they did go ahead and make the tooling to produce the 804 on the Swinden machinery.

Russell is right, when the pins are made of different materials than the bolsters, the pins can be quite visible. I don’t think Schrade & Camillus used a lot of steel pins in the smaller knives after WWII (though some did have ss pins), but most were made of nickel silver. There are different formulas for nickel silver and some pins show up more in certain bolsters because of that difference. I often encounter this in knife repairs. The nickel silver made today has a slightly different than the nickel silver used by some companies for their bolsters in years gone by. No matter how well you polish them, they still show up. The original manufacturer had the advantage of being able to buy pins & bolsters from the same supplier and made of the identical metal.
This is my theory why some factory pins are harder to spot on some knives than on others.

Thank's for the information Dale. I find Schrade very interesting to collect because there always something different to find.