Tell me about 'yeller'

J

jamesbeat

Joined
Jul 26, 2009
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314
What's the story behind yellow Delrin scales?
I see a lot of manufacturers offer some kind of yellow plastic scales, but rarely any other colors.
It's usually a choice of stag, maybe wood, various colors of bone, and yellow plastic.
Don't me wrong, I think the yeller knives are very attractive, and have owned one or two in the past, just wondering what the historical reason behind this scale option is?
 
Simple.

Take two identical knives into the woods, one yellow Delrin, one brown classic bone.

Drop them.

Which one can you see?
 
Lol well put!
That did occur to me, because I've seen a lot of photos of old fishing knives that had yellow scales, but in that case, why don't we see dayglo orange or whatever like we see on more modern styled knives?
(apart from the fact that that would look horrible)
Has it become more of a tradition rather than a practical thing?
 
Sword and Shield said:
Simple.

Take two identical knives into the woods, one yellow Delrin, one brown classic bone.

Drop them.

Which one can you see?
Click to expand...

99.9% of the time, I'd whole-heartedly agree. Unfortunately, at least one still got away.

My dad & I used to go trout-fishing up in Colorado quite a bit, during the '70s & '80s. For all that time, my Dad carried a yellow 'Sabre' model 624 fishing knife (Japanese made). Cleaned a LOT of Rainbows, Browns and an occasional Cutthroat with that knife over the years. The knife built it's own mystique, for me, over that very impressionable period of my youth. I was hoping to inherit that knife someday.

Dad continued to carry & use that knife, during his retirement, spending even more time up at the river. This was long after I'd left home and joined the military. It came as a punch to my gut, when he told me that he'd laid the knife down in some tall grass one day, after cleaning some fish, and forgot about it. He never found it, once he realized it was missing. I don't know what it was worth to him, he doesn't let on much about how he feels about these things. But I'm still mourning that loss, to this very day.
 
Case made a bright orange in G-10 as well as the classic yellow. In fact, I think they even had a new super bright yellow in G-10 as well. If memory serves.....
 
I've seen Case Tested XX era knives with bright yellow cel scales (circa 1920-1940), and there are a number of yellow cel scaled knives made in the post-WWII era too, before Delrin came along. I have one in my pocket right now - a bright yellow cel three-eye Eye Brand congress from the late 1950's. I guess it's just a color that works -- looks good, bright, eye catching. As I understand it, bright yellow is close to our peak visual color response on average (I think a bright chartreuse yellow is supposed to be closest to our peak response).

The choice of bright yellow may also originally have something to do with which bright color dyes were readily available and were colorfast and suitable for coloring cel and later Delrin. But this is just speculation.
 
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