This Sears Craftsman knife was produced by Schrade Walden. #9552 - (SW 825RB - 1966-196?).
#9552 Super Stainless Razor Blade Slim Premium Stock. Note that in order to meet Sears specs for this top of the line knife, it was given the Uncle Henry Staglon covers with the Craftsman shield. At this time, the 897UH was the only Uncle Henry pocketknife, thus the only one using this cover design.
Camillus made knives for Sears as early as the 1920's. perhaps as early as the teens, under the Wilbert Cutlery branding. In the mid 1920's, Albert Baer became the chief salesman with the Sears account and developed an ongoing business relationship with the hardware buyer, Tom Dunlap and the cutlery buyers working under him such as Frank Kethcart (who eventually went to work for Baer during WWII).
Since the SR&Co. Wilbert branding had not been specific to Camillus, Baer convinced Dunlap to buy knives from Camillus (A. Kastor & Sons) in three price ranges specifically branded for Sears. Kwik-Kut was good quality, Dunlap was better quality, and Sta-Sharp was best quality.
When Baer left Camillus in the fall of 1940 and bought Ulster from the Devine family, he introduced the Craftsman line of knives to Sears, and also Chrome Vanadium kitchen knives. At first, Craftsman was sub-branded Sta-Sharp with all identifiers limited to blade etches. Later, the Sta-Sharp sub-branding was dropped, Fulton became to lower cost line while Dunlap continued to be the middle priced line. Eventually Craftsman became a tang marking, though often on hunting knives it remained a blade etch with stock Schrade Walden tang stampings (Baer bought Schrade Cut Co. from the Schrade family in 1946 and renamed it Schrade Walden).
During and after the war years, Baer had a war of his own... with the two Kastor brothers, Alfred and Robert. As Dunlap bought more and more knives from Ulster, Camillus purchases fell.
CAMILLUS SEARS SALES
Year Dollars
1931 $13,413.36
1932 25,634.28
1933 83,215.16
1934 97,119.06
1935 126,360.16
1936 127,536.96
1937 117,138.25
1938 146,752.33
1939 142,924,38
1940 187,572.02
1941 217,727.09
1942 99,614.94
1943 147,174.51
1944 254,618.76
1945 154,527.06
1946 345,358.42
1947 6,980.49
1948 None
The Kastors declared a "war of letters" against Baer with Dunlap and even...gasp... General Wood! Their smear campaign backfired, partly because of their sour grapes letters and partly because of their ill treatment of Sears cutlery buyers who were issued "ultimatums". Wood and Dunlap did not like to be pressured by suppliers any more than they appreciated the attempts to smear Baer and by the post-war years, Camillus found itself on the outside of the Sears cutlery market. Eventually Sears began buying from them again, but not in great quantities as they had before. Baer's companies were the chief suppliers for many years.
When Ted Williams became the Sears spokesman for the Sears sporting goods department, Ted Williams signature etches became common on humting knives, replacing slightly earlier J. C. Higgins marks. Having retained significant company stocks (preferred and common) of Camillus when he left them in 1940, Baer bought out the remaining shares of Camillus in 1963 giving him full ownership. These stocks he gave to his two daughters, Margery and Betsy, but he kept an active interest in directing the company until his death in 1997, IIRC. He gave a lot of the Sears knife orders to the Camillus factory, particularly after he developed a business relationship with Sam Walton and those contracts grew larger. This would be some time in the mid/late 1970's to early 1980's. I haven't been able to pin down that end of the timeline yet as well as I have the earlier years of Sears knife production.
