Kabar 1028 ?

[AdamFuzzyballs]

Hello, I believe this is my first post in this subforum, I don't have much experience with Kabar, but I have always found that their slipjoints are very attractive.

Today, at a large swap meet/ car show, I had found a booth with a few nonchinese "bargain" knives- mostly beat up westerns and a few German made hunters. Three times I kind of meandered through the booth, trying to look without being hounded by the seller. Everything was marked up way too rich for my blood.

But then, I found a tiny little box in the corner of a display, that said Kabar.
I asked the guy what he would take, and much to my disbelief he only wanted 15 for it. I jumped on it, and discovered that I think I got a pretty good deal considering that it's in good shape[emoji106]

Now I'd like to ask a few questions. What steel might it be? Who made these for Kabar, or did they make them themselves? Are the covers real bone or delrin, and how does one tell? And if I could get a rough date to it that'd be great! I welcome any knowledge, I'm glad I finally got a Kabar I can enjoy!

Thank you!

 

[zzyzzogeton]

Even without the box and supporting paperwork, since it has a model number on it, that puts it as a post-1966 knife. Kabar put model numbers on early (1920s/1930s) fixed blades (Gunsil seems to have them all memorized ), but didn't put them on folders back then. After Cole National bought Kabar in 1966, Kabar started putting model numbers on everything.

Since the brown Kabar boxes (and accompanying paperwork) all have "Cole National" on them and the gray/black boxes have "Cole Consumer Products", I have always put the brown box knives into the 1967-1982 time frame, and the gray boxes into the 1982 to 1991/92. The gray/green boxes with "a mountain scene" is 1992/93 to at least 2004.

The scales are Delrin. Delrin melts and bone doesn't. Real bone has "haversian canals", a bone structure for transporting nutrients. These structures can be seen with the naked eye or with a magnifying glass if you have bad closeup eyesight like I do.

The steel is most likely a 1095-equivalent. Might not have been called 1095 by the maker. Many makers had proprietary formulas that were essentially 1095 "with other stuff". Sharon Steel had a version used by Camillus and Kabar called 1095-CroVan. After Sharon went under in the 90s, Camillus and Kabar (and others) came up new. similar formulations (Sharon's was still under patent).

As far as who made it for Kabar? Good question. I'm more into the fixed blades of Kabar and Western, but Kabar's folders were made by Kabar, Western, Camillus, Case and Queen. Probably others as well. It ends up being based on models.