Ha! You guys are just too fast for me anymore!
The seller's first problem is that he bought the former owner's story. In part, I can understand this because he knew and respected the owner who, according to him, had some expertise in military knives. However, knowledge of military knives, like Schrade knowledge, has grown by leaps and bounds over the past ten years.
Seller took the owner's I.D. stickers at face value. WWII is stated on the knife sticker. Schrade Walden didn't exist until Baer bought the Schrade Cutlery Company in 1946, after that war. Sheath sticker is no closer. And I am not so sure it is even the correct sheath. My knife like this has the "deer-fish-bird" embossed sheath with foldover belt hanger. As I think we all realize, collectors often pair knives with wrong sheaths, more often with estate sales when non-collecting family members sell the collections.
Staglon, not bone is right. This particular example seems to have some dye fading of the Staglon when I look at both sides.
Yes, the extra guard spacers are a pretty good tell of the SFO customer. The stock production knife had only the single metal guard. This one adds three spacers to the guard mirroring the butt spacers. My unbuffed example has the etch Larry mentions which is a clincher, Ted Williams signature followed by EVERLAST EDGE over Tungsten Carbide. And it does have the tungsten carbide coated blade right edge.
So the Schrade Walden pattern number is 148STC, produced beginning in 1967 using the Robeson FlameEdge process where the tungsten carbide was fired at high speed and impact-adhered to the edge.
My only real remaining question is about the "pits" the seller mentions. No doubt his example has been buffed back to "Kentucky mint", but my knife has it's original factory surface and also shows some tang pits on blade right, opposite the tang stamp. Shall I speculate about these? It obviously isn't corrosion. My best guess is that the tangstamp die struck the bottom plate in the press leaving marks in it which then transfered to the blades when they were struck with the die, or... the bottom plate was just not well polished to begin with, or...tungsten carbide bits contaminated the base plate during production. Another possibility is that the clamping jig used by the vendor who applied the tungsten carbide coating (Union Carbide?) was not polished well (or had some TC residue on it) and left those marks. They aren't very apparent except under strong light.
I'll look for something more challenging next time but good work guys!
Oh, and the airplane wasn't the Cessna 150 I learned to fly in, it was a L19/O1 Birddog:
I saw a movie once where a birddog pilot dropped grenades from his observation plane, so I guess it was a bomber. There airplanes were made for the U.S.Airforce by Sears in their airplane factory next door to their knife factory.
