All About Pocket Knives

In cleaning out my parents home I came across several "vintage" pocket knives that I would like information on. One is this little DE pen knife pattern in pretty rough shape (OK, it's trashed). I suspect 1960's or 70's vintage maybe based on what was with it. I was told in another post that this was made by Shapleigh. Mainly just curious about the age and history of it. I remember knives (generally) like this at the hardware store when I was a kid. I will attempt to attach pictures. Thanks.

I wouldn't call it "trashed". I routinely buy knives that are in worse shape than that one!
It has some wear, but nothing that cannot be cleaned and made more presentable. For starters, a little 000 steel wool and WD-40 would make those blades look a whole lot better.

That knife was probably made by Schrade Cut Co some time between 1910 and 1940.

Eric

Ziradog wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 3:12 pm In cleaning out my parents home I came across several "vintage" pocket knives that I would like information on. One is this little DE pen knife pattern in pretty rough shape (OK, it's trashed). I suspect 1960's or 70's vintage maybe based on what was with it. I was told in another post that this was made by Shapleigh. Mainly just curious about the age and history of it. I remember knives (generally) like this at the hardware store when I was a kid. I will attempt to attach pictures. Thanks.

That knife has seen some rough use, but I agree with Reverand that it is far from trashed. I have had a couple of Diamond Edge knives and I thought that they were pretty good quality knives. If you were to wanted to restore that knife because of the family connection, there are folks on this forum who do that kind of stuff.

You may be referring to a post I made, in which I said Diamond Edge was a brand name owned by Shapleigh Hardware. I didn’t say Shapleigh made them. Shapleigh did not make knives, they contracted with cutleries (like Empire, Camillus, and Schrade) to make knives with the Shapleigh owned names stamped on them. Yours maybe older than you think, since Shapleigh ceased business in 1960. (However the Diamond Edge brand has since been used by others - yours is not one of those later reproductions). As Eric said, yours looks like a Schrade product.

Ken

Mumbleypeg, sorry, I misunderstood. Thank you for correcting me.

No problem. There are a lot of nuances in the world of pocket knives so it’s easy to misunderstand. Many folks use this forum for research so I just wanted to clarify, lest a future researcher be misled.

Ken

The little information I can offer is this knife is a dogleg jack and it has celluloid "butter and molasses" handles.

I happen to have the same knife, actually the Schrade branded version, a 295K. Yours has plenty life left.

Thank you all for the information. It's hard to believe it is that old. I said "trashed" as i was under the impression that one over-sharpened this much would not be usable,

Ziradog wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2023 11:14 pm Thank you all for the information. It's hard to believe it is that old. I said "trashed" as i was under the impression that one over-sharpened this much would not be usable,

Knives are made to cut stuff. As long as there’s enough blade left to do that, they’re “usable”. The collectable value may be trashed, but as a usable tool it still has some value.

Ken