Schrade Walden - 138L/144L ? Identification Please

[Schradenut]

I have this Schrade Walden knife which i thought was a Hunter's Pride(144L), but it has a Serpentine finger guard like the 138, not a straight one. It has the grooved leather washers the same as the 144L.
I have seen plenty of these over the years, but am now quite confused as to what it is, as all the literature i have found on these Hunting Knives, doesn't identify it.
I would appreciate any knowledge anyone has on this model, and a short explanation.
Tony.
PS: The system was down, and i have only just managed to upload the pic.

[Bulldogdad]

Reading the knife

The 138l is 9 3/8".

Also the leather handle grooves are much more pronounce as I have observed on a 144l which is 9 3/4".

As you stated the guard shows as a 138l

Yours looks like a 138l

I'm assuming no Hunters Pride etch on the blade.

Stranger things are known though.

[orvet]

I think the differences between the H-15 (Utility Hunter), the 138L, (Bowie Hunter), and the 144L (Hunter's Pride) are so minute that parts were often switched or interchanged at the factory. In addition to those three variations of the same knife they made at least one version for Sears under the Craftsman label, and another version for J C Penney's and probably several other versions for different companies.

I have what I believe a 138L currently in my store. The flyer says the 138 should have a saber ground blade and the 144 should have a plain ground blade. In the case of my 138 it appears to have a plain ground blade instead of the saber ground blade, but everything else on it says 138, including the curved guard and the steel butt cap.

We have all seen Schrade knives with wrong blades in them or other slight inconsistencies for a certain pattern. I don't think there is a great mystery here. I think its just that the people who made Schrade knives were human and occasionally they grabbed the wrong part and installed it on a knife or a bunch of knives. Because the parts were so close in size and shape and they fit several patterns, it was easy to make that mistake, and I'm sure the mistake was often never caught at the factory. It's only now, years after the factory is closed and people like us are going over the knives we have in the catalogs we have in minute detail. We are the ones who are noticing the inconsistencies. It is likely that the people on the factory floor assembling the knives didn't even know what the finished product was called and in some cases probably didn't know which company it was being supplied to. Craftsman is pretty obviously Sears, but some of the other SFO versions of these knives might not have had such an obvious name is Craftsman.

This is a 1968 catalog page.

Here is the JC Penny display. Some of the knives appear to have the Schrade Walden name on them if you enlarge the picture.

[Schradenut]

That sounds like a very clear observation to me now. Thank you both so my for your input. A very detailed explanation Dale, thank you for all that effort.
It looks like i wasn't paying enough attention when i brought that one. It is still a good knife though.
Tony.