L.L.Bean 2OT

Glenn, with knives in hand, i cannot see differences in the bone or bolsters. Comparing milled to non-milled knives: the bone slabs are of equal thickness and the depths of the grooves on the bolsters is the same. Also the handle pins protrude equal amounts and the 'doming' appears the same, i.e. no flatting of tops of domed pins.
Using a 9x loupe i cannot see anything to indicate a welded blade.
I agree with Hal's observations: the swage starts slightly more distally on the Bean knife and the long pull extends to the tang on the milled knife but stops 2mm short of tang on the Bean.
It's a drawn swage done by hand by the cutler. Surely difference of 1-2mm is within the range of normal variation ? Same for the long pull.
Regarding the swage, pull and blade tip, i would like to hear from a cutler with production knife experience as to how much knife to knife variation occurs.
And, has there ever been a documented case of a faked 2OT presented in this forum or elsewhere that you know of ?
It would be great to see another L.L. Bean 2OT for comparison. It it were to have milled liners then that would all but prove mine to be a re-work.
thanks, kj
 
Seeing the prices that these go for on ebay, I would have no doubt that they could be faked. When I say faked, I don't mean that they were built from scratch. The practice usually involves taking good parts and marrying them with other parts that weren't originally on the knife. Where you would see that happen most often is with the blade. The blade would tend to see the most use, so would be less than a hundred percent. Fakers will regrind a blade, or weld a full blade onto the tang in an effort to make it appear new or less used than it was.

Look at the LL Bean knife again. The main blade has no use on it, yet the bolsters are worn at the bevels, as is the bone. The bone on the second knife has nice crisp corners.

Now, it is possible that the pen blade was mainly used on the LL Bean knife, so that could be the reason for no use on the clip, but if both blades are clean, then the rest doesn't make any sense to me.
 
Glenn, i do appreciate your interest and your help here. When you say: "the bolsters are worn at the bevels, as is the bone." By "bevels" do you mean along the spine where the bone meets the liners ?
These bone edges are chamfered or bevelled at about a 45 degree angle. Again, when i hold both knives side by side the size of these bevels and the angles created by making the bevels are the same one knife to the other. But perhaps this is not the "bevels" you refer to ?
I am not being argumentative and have no need to prove this Bean knife is authentic. But if i cannot see what you are seeing i do not want to pretend i do.
If i sent you both knives then you would really be able to assess them. Going from a 2 dimensional picture that is affected by the lighting is not as definitive as knives in hand.
I'd like to hear from Eric before i ship them off.
kj
 
I am just going by the pictures I am seeing, you have the benefit of holding them in your hands. That pattern traditionally had a fairly flat cover, with sharper corners on the bone where it turns toward the liners. That is what I was referring to on the bone. Those bolsters seem to have a worn look even when fairly new, however the LL knife seems like they are more pocketworn to my eyes.

There are others that could do a better job at authenticating a knife besides me. I am no expert by any means, just have looked a fair amount of old knives. My modding experience has also helped, as I get to be able to compare newer work to that of old. The finishing techniques, while the same in theory, produce different results that are for whatever reason harder to duplicate in present day.

I'm certainly not trying to question the authenticity of the LL knife. I have never seen one with an etch like that, so have no benchmark to go from. It is fortunate to have something to compare it to though, and when it is brought up as a curiosity, well then we all tend to scrutinize it and look for things. I still would consider that knife as previously used, based on the things I have mentioned. The newness of the blade etch and the look of everything else do not match, IMO.

I have a few of this pattern, although mine are MUCH more used. I will review them and see if there is anything telling on them.

Glenn
 
Thank you Glenn, this is not the case with either of these 2OT's: "a fairly flat cover, with sharper corners on the bone where it turns toward the liners." Both have nicely bevelled bone edges, no 90 degrees here, but not 'radiused' like the vintage Sheffield. It's more as if you took a wood plane along the edge and shaved it down a bit. Main point is that it's the same on both knives.
When i bought it i thought the LLBean etch was recently applied and that the knife could be a re-work. Once i received it, i thought everything looked right except the blade tip and tang shape and etch.
Did L.L. Bean even order 2OT's ?? Seems like no one here has seen one before, so maybe there never were any ?
kj
 
kootenay joe said:
Thank you Glenn, this is not the case with either of these 2OT's: "a fairly flat cover, with sharper corners on the bone where it turns toward the liners." Both have nicely bevelled bone edges, no 90 degrees here, but not 'radiused' like the vintage Sheffield. It's more as if you took a wood plane along the edge and shaved it down a bit. Main point is that it's the same on both knives.
When i bought it i thought the LLBean etch was recently applied and that the knife could be a re-work. Once i received it, i thought everything looked right except the blade tip and tang shape and etch.
Did L.L. Bean even order 2OT's ?? Seems like no one here has seen one before, so maybe there never were any ?
kj
Click to expand...

Factory records show how many were shipped each year, not how many had SFO etches and for whom. The Craftsman knife is different because it was shielded differently, for a major account, a significant number of knives with special features. A bade etch was a .15-.25 cent add on and most likely would have been tallied with year end records along with unetched knives of the same pattern. L.L. Bean may or may not have ordered stock pattern 2OTs with custom etched pocket blades. There is no way, more than fifty years later, to know for sure.
 
I am still comparing the pictures for fun, but I paused on the etch. While it looks official, why would L.L.Bean Inc. pay someone to make knives for them and put something other than the "trademark" "L.L.Bean" on it? I think most people would use their trademark. Just an opinion.
 
I also question why, the "Made for" etch.
Buck made knives with an "L.L. Bean" etch.

This is a very interesting post about a hand-made 55 year old knife.
There is so many questions and opinions, flying about for this L.L. Bean knife.

The difference I find in the tang and pull stand out for me,
being a collector with no interest ever, in the 2OTs. :confused:
 
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A friend of mine asked me to look at this thread
My background is like Glenn’s; I am a knife repairman and customizer. Because of our common experience our eyes tend to be drawn to the same thing. I noticed, as Glenn did that the bolsters on the L. L. Bean knife appears from the pictures to be far more worn than the second 2OT in the picture.

Something that I noticed is the kicks on both blades are very different. The kick on the non-etched 2OT is pointed, as one would expect with a new knife. There has been no need to grind that kick down because the point is proud: it’s a new knife.

If you look at the kick of the L. L. Bean knife and compare it to the other example you will see instead of being pointed the L.L. Bean kick has been filed down. This is usually done when a blade has been sharpened poorly and the point sticks up above the pocket, or when the tip of a blade has been broken and is reground the new tip will often set above the pocket. It is common practice then to file down the kick lower the tip back into the pocket.

If the L.L. Bean blade was broken and reground, how could the resulting blade be longer than the 2OT blade, if it was indeed a 2OT blade? This really throws me. The blade appears to have been retipped and for some reason the kick has been ground down, yet the blade is unused? That makes no kind of sense at all! The only way that makes sense is if the factory put an oversize blade in the knife and had to grind the kick down to make it fit. I have never seen a new Schrade knife with a ground down kick.

Upon taking a sixth or seventh look at the fourth picture, the one with both knives side-by-side with the blades open, something else jumps out at me: the tang on the L.L. Bean knife is wider than the tang on the lower 2OT. See how close to the lower corner of the bolster the tang on the L.L. Bean knife comes. Then look at the 2OT tang and its relationship to the lower corner of the bolster. It appears to me that the distance across the tang of the L.L. Bean knife is farther than the same distance measured on the 2OT.
It appears to me that the blade in the L.L. Bean knife was made for a frame with a deeper pocket than the 2OT has. It’s hard to tell without having the two knives in my hand but I suspect if you use a caliper you would see that the measure from the back of the tang to the point of the kick on the 2OT is about the same as the measurement from the back of the tang to the filed off kick on the L.L. Bean knife. The kick had to be filed down so that the larger blade could spit the 2 OT frame.

Regarding the etch: I have seen other Schrade blades with the L.L. Bean etch on them but I have never seen one that said, “Made for” L.L. Bean
 
Codger, i read that thread before i started this thread. The discussion is about a 2OT with an LL Bean etch that was on ebay March 2011. There is no description of exactly what the etch said other than it had LL Bean in it. Larry303 even asks if there were any original 2OT's with an LL Bean etch. thawk said he has seen other knives (not 2OT's) with an LL Bean etch.
I wonder if my knife which i won on ebay about 2 years ago is the exact same knife as was being discussed in that 2011 thread.
orvet, thank you for taking the time to help out and type a most informative post. I will find my calipers and measure the tangs. The LL Bean blade is 2mm shorter than the the blade in the regular 2OT.
Where is "Hoo Roo" ?
kj
 
Yes, I was disappointed to not see the etch directly quoted myself. But as I said about the etch, it can not be proven or disproven so is best ignored for this discussion. I have L.L. Bean Schrades. Some are etched, some are shielded. I don't think I have one tangstamped with their name. But it is very possible they had even a small quantity etched. And a few of the surviving 2OT today may at one time have had an etch now long gone. No way to know. However the thread also discusses sellers and mechanics of this pattern and others.
 
I remember one respected Schrade collector who paid reasonable money for an otherwise excellent condition 2OT on Ebay, except it had a badly damaged master blade.....he said to me you probably think I'm mad paying what I did, however I know where I can get another blade fitted to it.......could easily be similar scenario....or indeed this same knife......if you as a collector knew where there was a suitable newish genuine 2OT blade, and the blade would be 'professionally installed' into a genuine 2OT....would this play havoc with your collector conscience if it was your intention as I believe it was his intention, to offload at one of the knife shows he attends.......and buy something with the proceeds that he did fancy.....
No names...no pack drill...and I do not believe you will get confirmation from those that carried out the work...anytime soon!..personally I could never do this..but I've never been to a USA knife show in my life and I don't know what fun and games they get up to with each other...

My take on looking at the comparison photos and I've handled..bad pun!..maybe nine or ten 2OT's in my collecting time,...is that a blade replacement has been ""professionally"" carried out by cutlers...the blade on its own may well have been available because of that etch......was it a SFO proto blade that was not proceeded with, at the same time as Schrade were making SFO Sears Craftsman 2OT's...might it explain why the words 'Made For' appear in the L.L. Bean blade etch?...otherwise it would be superfluous to state who it was made for if L.L. Bean etch appeared on blade anyway...and blade was available/spare at the Schrade factory like so many items that saw the light of day at the factory sale.....

Kootenany, does it matter all that much if the above scenario did occur, and you have a genuine bone 2OT with a genuine contemporary 2OT blade which has been installed in say the last 6 years by cutlers/craftsman......? and probably the only one bearing a L.L. Bean etch as I have seen no others that I can recall....and questioned it at the time when 'it' was listed for sale 5 odd years ago?....that seller I recall is also involved in knife show dealing......I personally found him O.K. to deal with, but it can also be a case of a buyer keeping a seller honest displaying some knowledge of what he is buying..in a nice/diplomatic way......is it any less genuine than George Washington's original hatchet which has had three handles and two heads.....?..lol..
My discussion with the Schrade collector replacing the master blade took place maybe 2008/2009?
Positive thing is we all learn more about Schrade by having these discussions IMO...

Just my thoughts anyway....Hoo Roo
 
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Hi Roo, great post thank you. What matters to me is knowing accurately as much as i can about every knife in my collection. It's o.k. whatever the history is it helps me 'understand' the knife better. Plus, posting an oddity like this Bean knife i learn something from what others say, always. Your idea of blade inserted in factory to show LL Bean Co. to see if they wanted to order some is a possibility. So is the collector who had a 2OT re-bladed. Maybe the spare blade he had was close but not exactly the same as the original.
My initial thought was etch recently applied to mask buffing of blade, but in hand it does not look to have been buffed clean.
To me it makes a difference if 100% factory or not. Worked on after leaving factory even if by a professional cutler makes a neat knife out of a collectible.
Most likely 'Bean' knife did not exit the factory as it now is. Less likely it did.
Thanks everyone for the help. Knifin' is fun.
kj
 
love reading threads like this one. greatly increases ones knowledge of "read the knife".
one interesting thing i noticed was the tang on the 2OT was sharp and on the LL Bead it is rounded at the corner. also a quick and easy way to see if it has been welded put a magnet on it and drop some metal shavings on the area in question. if it makes a line then viola you have a weld point. that way there is no damage to the blade.
also in looking at the cataloges this knife was only made for one year? 1961 or was it made in the years missing on my reference site, 1956 to 1960?
 
Hi Del, thanks for the magnet/metal filings tip. I don't have any metal filings but when i find some will test the blade for welding.
I thought the 2OT was 1958-59, but i could be mixing it up with the first 8OT's.
kj
 
Thanks Del. The price list shows 2OT in 1961 and not there in 1962. 1961 might not have been the first year for it. Was first year 2OT 1959 ? I think it is here somewhere but i cannot find it: what is total 2OT production number ?
kj
 
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