Hello Juggler! I'll try my best to answer your questions.
The LB-7 was a high production knife made for many years. As such, several (perhaps many?) tang stamping dies were worn out or broke. I am engaged in a project right now to try correlating the die changes with other ECOs (Engineering changes) in order to better use them to approximate production dates. This is an ongoing project which has borne a bit of fruit, but not enough to make "Thus Sayeth" statements. The UH signature was used earliest on the 897UH shields (circa 1967) and on the 165UH shields. Patterns in the Uncle Henry line unshielded, such as the LB-7 (and 153UH, etc.), did not include the UH signature in the stamp until later in production. Why they didn't stamp these "LB-7UH", I haven't a clue. One oddball die (a mistake?) I have found deletes the "+" from the stamp, and yet it is stainless. It was produced not at the beginning, but later in production. Perhaps it was just an accident of a broken die with no replacement on hand, and the deformed "+" which looked like a "T" or "L" was ground off until the new die could be made.
The UH Signature, as best I can tell, was added to the stamp somewhere around serial number #X30000, after the change from four visable pins to three.
Original die belonging to forum member Randy -
image reversed to be readable here.
Yes, there are differences, but from what I can tell at this time, they do not relate directly to the changes in the stamps.
Michael
