80th Anniversary, 280 pattern, bone Daddy Barlow and friends

bladecollectorr · Mar 14, 2018

In 1984 Schrade celebrated its 80th Anniversary with two daddy barlow knives. The more commonly seen staglon ones and peach-seed bone versions. I have bone-version #254 and it's a favorite Schrade for sure.

These feature brown jigged bone handles, mirror-polished Schrade+ blade with the three names of Schrade and the years they were in use. They didn't stop there though. Engine-turned back-spring and liners is a super-classy extra.

The icing on this cake though is the file-work on the blade. It starts off as a complex vine and then morphs into a wave-like pattern like rippled reflections through water. The metal flows and is very natural. It's not at all forced looking.

I would love to see pictures of more examples of these knives if anyone cares to add them. I am most interested in seeing variations in the file-work patterns. They seem like they were each individually free-handed making each knife all-the-more unique.

315 · Mar 14, 2018

Amazing looking!!

tongueriver · Mar 14, 2018

delete

bladecollectorr · Mar 14, 2018

Yup! That's the full-on class. Even the "kick" is done. Thanks for adding it. I like his treatment of the liners on his fully done-up folders. Great frame for the vines. Old-school.

Codger_64 · Mar 14, 2018

IMHO, every serious collector should have at least one of his knives as a heritage piece.

delmas2nd · Mar 15, 2018

i do agree and i am lucky enough to have obtained the full set of the LB's not to mention the 51OT, 225OT and a LB6 with a gut hook on it.

bladecollectorr · Nov 11, 2019

This same 280 pattern was done up as an SFO for Mac Tools 47th Anniversary. Here are pics of my example.

Bling may or may not be all original because the sleeve serial doesn't match the knife serial and there is no Mac Tools branding on the lid as I've seen in other examples. Nice big knife nonetheless.

bladecollectorr · Jun 15, 2021

A little while back I acquired serial #072 as a second example.

Since the blade and the bone handles were in near-perfect shape, ephemera was very complete and I liked the different thorny-vine and spade file-work, I decided to grab it. Sadly, it had been stored improperly and there was 3D corrosion building up on the pins and liners. There was black crud crawling into the jimping too.

I soaked it in mineral oil overnight to re-hydrate the handles and to hopefully loosen the crud. It didn't loosen anything so I spent a lot of today laboriously hand polishing it back to its '80s glory. I'm happy with the results. Scanner shows I missed a couple spots but life goes on.

It came complete with everything except the plastic bag for the knife itself. The wood-grain outer cardboard box was an added bonus you don't see too often. The large mirror-polished blade made my scanner struggle but I did the best I could.

Regarding the file-work, I still haven't seen two of these that are exactly the same... but I certainly haven't seen them all.