2 KaBar finds

M

Mjgonehunting

Joined
Aug 11, 2014
Messages
8
Picked up 2KaBars at a tag sale,in a bundle with several Pumas and a Queen!
1 is a stacked leather handle skinner,in decent condition. Cast metal butt cap and hilt.
A few small rust spots.
It seems to be a chromed carbon blade. Does anyone know when where these made with the Chromed blades?
any value as a collector or just a user?

2is a neat little cleaver with the same type of chromed carbon steel blade!
Excellent condition,with dark colored wood handle scales.
Same questions.
 
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The lower case italicized Kabar marking started in 1956. By style I think they are 1960s-70s. Really just users in my opinion, it's mostly the ones marked KA-BAR that are collectible, but there are probably some out there who collect the later knives.
 
When I ran across one of these last year, I asked in this forum if it was real. The Q was answered by Paul Tsujimoto, who used to be at a Sr Eng at Kabar, the time frame was "50s and 60s, maybe into the 70s". He stated that there wasn't a lot of documentation about the kitchen cutlery available. From other info I have gleaned here and there, when the Brown family sold Kabar to Cole International (the Cleaveland time frame of Kabar stamps), a lot of older paperwork got lost in the shuffle.

According to a thread in Levine's forum, the model number of the cleaver is P19-S.

The other one resembles the 1233. There may have been Kabars with a similar blade shape but a different size, similar to the Western 39 and 40 models, same shape, different size. Depending on dimensions, it may or may not be a pre-model number 1233. The way I understand Kabars (and I'm probably wrong) the Kabar style stamp all by itself is late 50s/early 60s.
 
Hey zy, I know Paul, met him at the Case show/swap meet several years back. He told me some of my rare KA-BAR knives on display weren't real. He had to back down when I showed him factory brochures showing the same knives. We communicated a lot afterwards and I sent him copies of my early KA-BAR outdoor knife brochures of which the factory only had one. Most of the info they now have on the older KA-BARs are copies from my collection. Sadly the factory has little in the way of any real info on their older knives, even from the 1970s. I don't really collect the Kabar marked knives but do have some info on them which is what I based my answer on. Most KA-BAR guys accept 1956 as the year they went from the KA-BAR to the italicized Kabar. The knife shown does not appear in the 1950s, I am fairly sure it is from the 1960s-1970s, and the cleaver is a really late version from the 1970s-80s. Most if not all of the knives from the Cole International era will have pattern numbers on them. I am trying to get the photos from my dead Mac into my new one, when I do I can send you a few early KA-BAR/Union Cut Co brochure copies if you like. You can see a lot of my early rare ones (knives) in the Union Cut thread on AAPK. The earliest KA-BARs show the Union Cut mark, used until the early forties, then came the KA-BAR Olean N.Y. mark started during WW2 and used for a couple of years after, then the KA-BAR USA, and finally the lower case italicized Kabar. The knives etched KA-BAR KROME are from the early 1950s.
Regards, Gene
 
Oh. Damn. Gene, I'd almost kill to get get copies of old Kabar literature.

I never see any old Kabar catalogs pop up on fleabay. And I'm ALWAYS looking for them. Very few dealers of knives (or anything else) kept the old catalogs cluttering up the place when a new version came out and Kabar apparently didn't send them out to the general public, only dealers. I know my dad and grandfather did that with all old catalogs for the farm related stuff they sold in their feed stores. Wish I still had all that old paper.

Kabars, Westerns, US Bayonets and military knives are what I primarily collect, plus any "sharp, pointy object" that catches my eye. I have several older Union Cutlery, OLCUT, etc that I have no model or pattern info on. I do have an old, worn out Olean stamp that may have been used on the knives we have.

Do you by chance know the marketing name (if any) Kabar used for their (as I call them) "bumblebee" knives or "Western Black Beauty style but in brass" knives?
 
I hope to get a Mac expert over next week to unlock my dead computer and transfer my photo album over to my new one. If you PM me your e-mail I will then be able to send you a couple of copies. I am also having scanner problems with my new Mac so I can't just re-scan them and send them now. I don't know the term for the bumblebees, most of them are from the Kabar era, mid to late 1950s perhaps into the early 60s. BUT I do have several really rare ones from the late Union Cut era with the KA-BAR markings and they have a blade etch that says "KA-BAR DELUXE", but I don't know if they were called deluxe in the later Kabar era.DSCN1359.jpgDSCN1361.jpgDSCN1362.jpg
 
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