lb7 question

Some of the best information on dating the LB-7's comes from the box and associated papers if you have them and are confident they are original to the knife. I did a survey of the knives some time back and established some approximate dates for the major changes.

A guess of the production year of your knife without seeing the packaging and the tangstamp would be circa 1982-83. I have LB-7 #Z62331, a three pin, Uncle Henry/SCHRADE+/LB7 U.S.A. tangstamp with all of the original packaging. The production year of my knife is estimated, as mentioned, by logos appearing on the packaging, to be within that timeframe. Your knife, serial #Y58634, would have been made the same or year previous to mine.

The pins went from four in the cover to three in the cover around serial #N35000 and the Uncle Henry Signature appeared on the tangstamp around serial #X29000.

It certainly would have made things less complicated if Schrade had used an actual date code, or if they had kept a production list correlating serial numbers to production dates. As far as I can tell, they either did not, or if they did, it did not survive or at least is yet to surface. We know that not long after the 1984/5 intro of the Sharp Idea box, they dropped the serials and registration.

Michael
 
I wasn't ignoring your question, but it took me a while to recover the information I did find from my research on this pattern. Last fall my computer was wiped out and I lost a huge amount of information. Recovering it and backing it up has been a nightmare.

I need to begin acquiring more examples of the LB-7 as soon as I can to complete the research. I only have a couple dozen of them spanning the years 1977 - 2004, so you can see how there would be gaps in the survey.

As far as being able to allign the serial numbers to the exact year produced, since they don't contain a code which corresponds to an exact year (i.e "A" produced in 1977), the further forward in time we progress from the original start of production, the more error we encounter because each year knives might be serialized and rejected, therefore not appearing on the year end reports as having been shipped. Percentage wise this is probably a small error, but over a period of years it accumulated. Sort of like being one degree off on a compass bearing. If you are only going a mile, the error is not significant. Over a thousand miles you could wind up in Seattle instead of Portland!
 
Hi Codger_64, I've asked this question on another thread, but was referred to doing a search, and that's how I found this older thread.
Do you have any idea of the significance of a serial number on an LB7 that has no Alpha prefix? IE; no a, b, c, d, e, f, g etc.
My LB7 which I bought brand new back in the very late seventies, or early eighties in a gun store has only four numbers for it's serial number. See image below.
Thanks in advance, and I hope you have managed to recover all your files. :)
-Bruce
standard.jpg
 
your knife was made in the first year of production for the LB 7. they first appeared in the price lists in 1978 but i think the numbers that include your knife was probably made in 1977. codger i am sure can verify this or correct the error.
found this info in an earlier post.
Serials up to 17693 were produced in 1977.

Serial numbers 17694 - 334585 were produced in 1978 when 316,892 LB7's were made.

Serial numbers 334586 - 785250 were produced in 1979 when 450,665 LB7's were made.
hope this helps.
 
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Thanks delmas2nd, Yes, that certainly does help. I suspected my LB7 was an early one, but it's even better knowing it was made in the first year of the LB7's? :D
-Bruce
 
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