Post your 165's!

This is my 165 OT that I have had since I was about 16 years old, which makes this knife 19 years old :). I bought it for cheap way back then...it lived a long time without ever seeing use...As an adult however, and a beginning collector, I discovered many a great thing about Schrade knives. I also had one of the Deerhunter orange handled jobs as well, but sadly I gave that to my brother.

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Welcome to the forum bschache! A decent user 165! I have several of them including my first one that is now... pretty old. Nearly 40 years, IIRC. There is nothing shameful at all about turning friends and relatives onto good Schrade knives. "Spreading the love", as it were (or addiction in the case of many of us).

Michael
 
Codger, Thanks for the warm welcome! Interestingly, I have been a member of this forum for a while, but mainly only read posts. But I am going to change that starting today :) I started in this thread mainly because I have a couple Schrade knives, and a honesteel (Schrade original) that I am very fond of. More pics to come, but not to worry I will place them in the right areas ;) And yes...Addiction is the right word.
 
I just became aware of the Craftsman 165 Deerslayer and I'd like to get one. How rare is that variation...was it produced in a small amount?
 
Generally Stelth, Craftsman knives show up less often. The Schrades are popular, but show up more often for sale.
 
Frank, just a guess, but the Craftsman 165's (the special order with brass buttcap) show up on evilbay about five or six times a year. I am yet to see one in original packaging, but I do have one in near-new condition. Schrade also made several runs of 1865's for Sears which follow the production details except for a blank shield and a craftsman tang stamp. No one knows at this point how many of the sfo were made, but again guessing, a few thousand at most. It would increase the odds of knowing the order quantity if we knew the Sears item number. But the knife stamp and etch do not show it, and I, at lest, have never seen the original box or an ad for them in the Sears catalogs.
 
Thanks Codger. I read one of your other threads about this model and I found the information there valuable as well. I came across a statement you made which paraphrased said the Sears/Craftsman people didn't keep any records on production and that Craftsman tool collectors didn't have much interest in these knives. I guess no one will ever know how many were made. That will make scoring one (if ever) even more enjoyable should that event ever occur.
 
When/if someone spots one in the box or in a catalog, the Sears number can be matched with the Schrade production records. Maybe. A lot of the original Schrade archives survived as did the details on a few SFOs. They do sport some unique features which Schrade never put into general production, and they did have contemporaries in other Schrade patterns, such as the 171 and possibly others. As the surviving etch shows, Sears co-opted the "Deerslayer" name of the 15OT knives for these oddballs.

The top knife which Tongueriver shows is another example of a Sears knife, but not only a "when" and "how many", but also a "who-dunit". I have a pair of those as well, plain (flat) ground, Schrade-like Staglon handles, 165UH like thumb-notches, etch but no Sears stock number and no known ads. Imperial is a best guess, but just a guess since it doesn't match any known blade pattern of Schrade or Imperial.
 
It's too bad the former players in the knife business didn't keep better records. I guess in the days before computers this kind of information was ephemeral.


Frank
 
They were in the knife business to make money, not history. That as much survives today as does is more to the credit of some dedicated employees and collectors. Most knife buyers of the past century were knife users, not collectors.
 
I understand that, but from a business standpoint, wouldn't production numbers be important?
 
They certainly were and they did keep production records and, for many years, those records do survive. But they are rather cryptic at times and not broken down into as many exact catagories as collectors today would wish. No "Rosetta Stone" exists to translate Sears numbers into Schrade numbers and visa versa. Occasionally we are lucky enough to find internal production memos regarding sfo orders and details of features and quantities of those sfos. The amount of archived papers which do survive is mind boggling, yet only a fraction of what existed at one time.
 
I can only begin to imagine the amount of paperwork a company that survived that long would gererate. It must have been mind boggling.
 
It still is. Ask lrv and Eric. And what we see is remanents. The majority of the day-to day stuff got trashed. As did most of the records of Schrade Cut Co before Baer bought it from the Schrade heirs. As did most of the Ulster records before Baer bought it from the Divine family. And most of the early Imperial records before Baer became heavily involved. Almost nothing survives of Kingston, Vulcan Safety Razor etc. Thanks to Tom WIlliams, we were a bit luckier with Camillus in many ways. He preserved a lot of Camillus history and documents, many of which pertain to Schrade (Baer) and the Kastor family.
 
Here is another find. It is A Schrade Cutlery Corp (post 1972) in the original fold-down woodgrain box, sucessor to the slip-top woodgrain box of the last Schrade Walden 165's (circa the end of serialization). The included papers are "gimmes" which have nothing to do with the knife. sheath, original box and paper insert. A close look shows them to be Uncle Henry warranty papers. The correct paper is in the background. This would be the box used until the tan and black "sharp idea" box came into use in the early eighties (about the time that Albert Baer bought Imperial and combined the companies to form Imperial Schrade), and the sharpening stone was deleted from the set.

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Michael - Very nice setup there!! :thumbup:

Does the box have the 165OT on the end(s)? Or Blank?

-- Howie
 
What you see is what I'll get. One day soon. Still in the mail. Perhaps tomorrow. It should have the gold foil printing which includes the pattern number and name, company name and address.
 
The knife just arrived and the key indicator of production era besides the tang stamp, steel and grind (discounting the irrelevant UH papers included) is the enclosed correct six-fold insert. On that insert, the latest appearing knife advertised is the LB-7. So the knife (box and insert logos agreeing) is most definately a post-1976 production and, indicated by the company name, address and box style, pre 1983. I am thinking that the only way to have narrowed the date further than the six-seven year period of 1977-83 would have been if a dated inspection or sales slip had been included, or the insert advertised a short-run pattern.

Yes, one end flap of the box is white with gold foil text:

THE OLD TIMER
WOODSMAN
165 OT
Schrade Cutlery Corp.
Ellenville, N.Y. 12428

A bonus? It came in the original white slip cover and with the original fiber blade cover and sheath polybagged.
 
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