SCHRADE 165OT & UH153 WITH NO TANG MARKINGS, WHY ???

[MLB]

Over the years I have seen several knives made by schrade that had no tang markings. They all seem to be older knives. Below are pics of an Old Timer 165OT and a Uncle Henry UH153 Golden Spike. They do not have any tang markings, the UH153 has Uncle Henry stamped into the guard but it doesn't have a serial number stamped into the guard on the other side of the blade like they normally have. Both of the blades have been worn from use and they have both been polished, but not to the extent that it would have worn off any tang makings.

Does anyone have any info why Schrade didn't mark these and a few others that I have seen over the years?

Thanks
Mike

[lt632ret]

This is an excellant question and one which I am surprised does not pop up more often. Actually there are several reasons why these knifes are around. Let start with the UH Schrade, it originally offered a lifetime return policy on this line of knives. This lead to a lot of people abusing the guarantee, ( which by the way did not help Schrades solvency in the long run as you may imagine. ) I have known people who bragged that they immediately upon buying a UH would send in the guarantee request for another knife claiming they lost the original. This guarantee was a noble experiment but doomed since it depended on honesty. Over the years Schrade decided to try various ways to correct this. They had serial numbers which had to be included in the request if the knife was lost or stolen, then in the case of broken knives which were often sent back when after being used and worn for years the owners would intentionally break and send back ( to get a new one ) they had a strange slightly off color dye they would put on the replacement ( a dab on the end which to the inexperienced eye almost looked original ) to mark it as a replacment for when the owner sent it back again. Time after time whenever they felt they wanted a new knife. Eventually the warranty was amended to only broken returned knives then to only a one year guarantee. ( Actually Schrade's true if rather liberal policy was to just replace any knife anyone sent back. )Although they did not advertise that fact. Sometimes for a nominal fee usually to cover postage.

Getting back to the question often times mistakes were made on the line, knives moved quickly and often blades with out tangs would go through usually these in the early days were XXXXed out and became seconds . Then someone figured out that they would be good as replacments for warrantee replacments expecially for some of the buyers who continually abused the warrantee for like the dye if it came back again it showed someone had already replaced it. The 171 bowie and 153 as well as the fillet knives were the ones that you will mostly see this on. These knives were kept for this use and infact towards the end were produced this way in small numbers for this use.
While not under the same guarantee the same was true for the Old timers ect since there would also be returns on them as well and there was no sense selling them as seconds by XXXX ing them since they now had a viable use.

The longtime result of this is rather interesting since as you can imagine there are a lot less of the unmarked or dyed or even XXXX seconds around so as usual these have become sought after by some collectors who specialize in this kind of stuff. I used to have access to the employee store at Schrade where you would find all kinds of this stuff which was offered to the employees at a fraction of the original prices since the items were otherwise quite usable. This and similar venues were another way they got on the market. When any product is produced in the quantity that these were a percentage will have defects over the years this can amount to quite a large number also defects will vary from slight to major, cosmetic to technical . These were simply avenues to find uses and salvage some of these and again lead them to being passed on to consumers.

By the way over the years many reasons were sent in explaining why the knife was lost I have been told that the most commonly used one was it fell out of the boat or through the ice. hope this helps LT PS one rule of thumb I have continually said over the years is never be surprised by any rarity or unusual oddball knife you may find from Schrade in 100 years there were a lot of Monday mornings hangovers and many other reasons that you may find these odditys it is part of what makes this study fun.

[MLB]

Thanks LT. Very interesting, I appreciate the info.