All About Pocket Knives

Here's one you won't see often. Matt

It looks like a demonstration knife with a cutaway that shows the Swinden pin.

That is neat, haven't seen one before.

It was a poor design whatever it was for.. The piece that comes out is a nail file. Of course the pin next to the bolster is useless.

After looking at these pictures on the large screen of my PC as opposed to my cell phone I agree, it does appear to be a poor design and I would even venture to say it’s probably homemade. The fit of that nail file that goes into the bolster is abysmal. It almost appears to be a different material. Those bolsters don’t appear to be the normal Schrade #206 bolsters. I noticed the sticker that says rare and the sticker that says prototype are both handwritten. Both of the pins that I see appeared to have issues of some sort as though they had been drilled into?

It looks me like something a guy made for his wife because she wanted a knife with a larger nail file in it. With the cut out in the bolster the only support on that side of the knife around the blades would be what support is given by the liners and the little bit of the remaining bolster. The Barlow design was meant to be a heavy-duty work knife and the longer bolsters were to help support the blade and prevent twisting and loosening of the blades

This doesn’t look like the quality that would come out of Schrades custom shop or prototype shop. This looks more like something homemade.

Just my 2¢…

I agree with you Dale. I think what you have there is something that someone cobbled together. I will share this photo with my Mom and Uncle to see if there was anything like this being looked into. Mom was Quality Control and my Uncle worked in the Custom Shop and was the Sample maker.

I assure you that "If" it was a sample or prototype, it would have been a much better finished product ....my two cents

Tom

The knife was part of the stuff that was sold at the Schrade bankruptcy auction. If it was cobbled as some suggest, it was done at Schrade. The rare and proto stickers were not put on at Schrade.

The knife was part of the stuff that was sold at the Schrade bankruptcy auction. If it was cobbled as some suggest, it was done at Schrade. The rare and proto stickers were not put on at Schrade.

I don't doubt that Matt, I would like to see some of that stuff that was sold as I am sure there were a lot of pieces like that. The employees made up a lot of different knives that were not Schrade production knives.

My brother was always making up butchering knives, hooks, and gambles not to mention lots of other "Pet" projects. It is highly likely that what you have there is a piece that an employee was working on for personal use.

With that said, it "IS" a piece of Schrade History, not something that was thrown together in someone's worshop or basement. Now if you could find the person responsible and document the story.....that would mean a lot

I have some sample knives that were made by my Mom out of Quality Control, they wanted to see if they would be able to sell them. In fact two of those particular samples were not approved for production and they were given to Mom. She passed them to me for my gathering.....truly one of a kind knives that just didn't flip a switch for the consumers.

Thank you for sharing!
tom

I think it's kind of cool. The fit of the file handle to the bolster leaves a lot to be desired, but it's not exactly an easy task to mill that slot in the bolster to fit the file and not go so deep that you interfere with the blade rivet. Definitely took a bit of work and imagination.

Eric

At the very least it's pretty interesting, and like he said, it's one that you won't see very often...

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Mike