royal0014 wrote:You can barely make out Schrade Walden on the tang mark-side. Pile-side marked 204S. According to Mr Orvet's research, seen here: http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/sch ... _stock.php
....204 is a 3-3/4" Electricians knife, cocobolo scales. This knife is obviously not cocobolo. Judging by the 'V' at the bolster ends, I believe it to be delrin, but not in a jigging or style I have seen before. Possible re-handle? The pin at the barehead-end looks like steel rather than brass like the other two. Or might the 'S' designation have something to do with it?
Opinions?? 
Nice full blade, good-lookin' knife. So at less than $13 shipped, I don't feel had.....
Thanks for any input!
I think everyone has answered your questions before I got here.
You noted that my list shows the 204 as having cocobolo handles. That is correct for the earliest listing of this pattern.
All of the knives in my lists have the description of the earliest listing I can find for them.
In this instance the 204 first appears in a Schrade Walden catalog in 1948 even though the pattern is a carryover from a C2041SD the Schrade Cut Co pattern number for the 204. I always list the earliest description on these knives to put the knife in the proper historical setting. There were many changes in the 204 over the 56 years from 1948 until Schrade closed its doors in 2004. The lack of space prohibits me from listing all the changes in every pattern from 1948 through 2004. Not to mention the years of research it would take to document even a majority of the changes because after about 1957 they switched their catalog format. In 1958 they introduced the Short Line format (though it was not called that in 1958). With the introduction of the Short Line format there seemed to be fewer of the detailed catalogs printed, or at least fewer that survived to today. In this Short Line format they have a drawing of the knife and an abbreviated description of the knives, with a code for the handle material and a key for the codes. For example BL was black plastic, GS was genuine stag, P was genuine pearl, etc. In later years even this handle material information was dropped. So the only way to know with a reasonable degree of certainty when the handles changed is to have a knife from each year to examine as the changes are not always noted in the catalogs, especially in the Open Stock series which were de-emphasized over the years and nearly phased out by 2004 when they closed.
The pin you note that appears to be steel originally held on the bail. It may in fact be steel. You can check it with a magnet; if it is magnetic it is steel, if not it is most likely nickel silver. Nickel silver (a.k.a. white brass) is much easier to work with in pins than steel. It is like working with brass and it does not rust like steel.
There were a few other handle materials used on Schrade 204s that I can think of off the top of my head; the cocobolo of the late 1940s and no doubt into the 1950s. There may even have been some early Schrade Walden electrician knives made with handles left over from Schrade Cut Co TL-29 military electrician knives of WWII. These handles were black wood and appear to be ebony wood, though I also have examples which appear to be cocobolo.
In 1958 Schrade Walden had introduced a handle called Wondawood. I am not sure what this is, but probably a treated wood similar to the resin impregnated wood used on knife handles today.
By 1965 they show a 204 listed as having ‘hardwood’ handles. I am not sure what type of hardwood, nor when it was changed.
There were also the brown wood grain Delrin, like on your knife. Also I know there were some smooth Delrin handles on the 204 with coloration similar to the handles on your knife. Some of these (perhaps all) were made by Camillus for Schrade. You can tell Camillus made these by the S.C.C. tang stamp.
After 1975 Schrade seemed to loose interest in making the TL-29 type electrician’s knife, though they still made the 136 Lineman’s skinning knife until 1983. The 136 was a large hawkbill knife used for removing insulation form large electrical cables.
Here are some Schrade TL-29 type electrician's knives from my collection. The Schrade's civilian models were numbered 204.
The two knives at the bottom of the picture are ones I think were also made by Schrade as SFOs of other companies.
