After bragging to a coworker on how you all hooked me up with the info on my WW2 Western. He produces what looks like maybe a 50's/60's Boker. After looking at it I know it's the Western split tang and looks like their L66. Checked some sites and no luck finding another. I know Western made knives for others. Anyway at the base of the blade it says H. Boker & Co., made in USA, licensed under, Pat. No. 1,967,479 (Western Pat.) Has anyone seen one of these before ?
Western made some fixed blade knives for Boker. I have one or two lying in a drawer somewhere. They are rare in that they are seldom seen.
These knives are a bit of a conundrum since they have "MADE IN U.S.A." in the stamp. Western never used that phrase prior to WW2, THAT I KNOW OF. BUT, the handle/spacer pattern is similar to several of the Lxx knives of 1941 - the L40, L39 and L66 of 1941 had the triple spacer/double handle spacing seen on this Boker, but the xW66 of 1941 did NOT have the double handle section construction; they only had a single handle segment between spacer at the ends. They also have what appears to be aluminum or nickle-silver guards. So these Boker W66s might have been made in 1941 just prior to the start of WW2 (from the US perspective) or they they were made shortly after the war ended but before brass became readily available in 1946 or into 1947.
If I was to guess, I'd put it in the 1946-1947-1948 time frame, but I'd never rule out 1941 without more proof.
What is most interesting about these Boker W66s is that they were made when wood was not a standard handle material for Western.
The first W66 was the xW66 made in 1941 and then Western did not make the 66 with a wooden handle for their own sale until 1958 or 1959. So obviously someone at Boker convinced someone at Western to put a seldom used (from Western's POV) handle material on the knives.
Prior to these Boker W66s, the only time Western used wood as a handle material was on kitchen knives made by someone else for them in the 1920s, a BSA hatchet in 1936, and the X466 and W48F of 1941.
In 1977 or 1978, they introduced added the W39, W36, W88 and the W46-8 to the wood handled line to join the W66.
