OK, so it's a bone handle, but.........

If this is real dino bone, I wonder if it is custom made? I don't remember Camillus ever making something like this. Or did I miss something?
 
Most folks do not know of the connection between Schrade and Camillus. Phil does, and he is a Camillus collector as well.
 
I know until I started looking I didn't realize just how interleaved American cutlery companies and labels were. I'm still a looong way behind the learning curve, but it is quite interesting how the various companies contracted runs and parts with each other. Not to mention the various ownership changes with different companies coming and going in and out of sisterhood with each other. Amazing too the levels of cooperation between the companies a lot of times. Of course it makes it crazy trying to figure out who really made a knife sometimes. But then, that's what we come running to you wise and studied folk for. Believe me, we MUCH appreciate the time and study you guys have put in and that you guys will share it so freely.

So what your really saying Codger is that as well as knowing his stuff Phil has excellent taste in knives? ;)
 
Yes, Phil knows knives. And he probably has quite a collection of Schrades and Camillus. Maybe some Westerns too. And I know he has a premier collection of Imperials.

Schrade also sold Buck knives and others. And at one time, they owned cutleries in France, Germany, England and Ireland, and as yet unconfirmed, Mexico.

The Baer brothers grew up in their grandfather, Henry Bodenheim's hardware business. By age 16, Albert Baer was working for Adolph Kastor at Kastor Bros., the company that would become Camillus. By the time he left, he owned a major portion of the company. He took the Sears contract he had nurtured with him when he bought Ulster and Schrade, then later Imperial. While Sears occasionally bought knives from other companies such as Western and Buck, the lion's share went to Schrade, or more properly Albert and Henry Baer. The cutlery world in the United States last century was like an elite brotherhood with the Schrades, Baers, Fazzanos, Paolantonios, the Mirando brothers and other owners socializing and cooperating while at the same time competing.
 
Codger;

Many years ago, I owned an Imperial pocket knife marked "MEXICO"....it is the only one I ever recall seeing. It was a senator style pen pattern, shell handle construction with "candy stripe" colored covering.
 
I have several "MEXICO" Imperial patterns myself. I just need to find more information of who and when.
 
See, that's what makes this hobby fascinating and confusing at the same time. Ya gotta love it.

Thanks for the great information as always, Codger.
 


Whacha think? It is a version of one done by Ulster in the early 1960's.



Codger
 
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