With Schrade Walden, lefthand tang stamps were more common than righthand tang stamps. Was this because lefthand sheaths were popular with consumers in the fifties and sixties? For whatever reason, the marks gradually migrated from left to right and sheaths became exclusively right handed over time.
Trying to make sense of the changes in production details is an interesting study. But a very difficult one. Major chnges sometime come in to clearer focus as to the timeline, most often in terms of a sequence, not always a date. Minor changes are a lot more difficult. We cannot depend strictly on catalog illustrations and advertisements, particularly when they are artist's renditions. Production records don't mention minor detail changes and in fact aren't records of production at all, but rather shipping records for a given calendar year.
There are a lot of plausable reasons for variations in the first production 165UH. As a SFO, like it's Old Timer counterpart, the customer might order it with either a blank or custom stamped shielding. I know that Sears did this on occasion, even leaving the factory maker's tang marking intact but adding a custom blade etch with their own "store branding" of Craftsman, Higgins, Sears or whatever, and at times an inhouse pattern name. It wasn't until later that it was more common for them to order custom tang and shield stamps for hunting knives. And even then, those were often generic so as to be used on several different patterns.
Boxed examples, when one may be fairly certain that they are original assemblages, not a group of unrelated pieces put together to make them more profitable for the seller, offer good clues to the production timeline of the knife. But except for a few limited editions, we seldom see a production year spelled out by the factory.
I and others would be interested in seeing pictures or scans of these 165UH you guys have along with good shots of all the bling. I can post them for you if you email them to me. You can find my contact info through my profile (pick my name at the top of the post for a pull down menu).
Michael
