Vintage Western Fixed Blade ID

B

Bugguy

Joined
Jan 24, 2023
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First post!!

As a newbie and until I can become familiar with the forums, I'd appreciate you all indulging me this post...

I received this fixed blade Western knife as a gift 60+(?) years ago. (Link below) I've been struggling to ID and date it. The knife is 9" w/ a 5" blade. The sheath may not be original to the knife, but appears to also be Western. The leather leading to the snap seems narrower than the pictures I've seen and it has a wooden insert that takes up some of the excess space in the sheath.
Any clarification or comments will be appreciated. Thanks!

https://imgur.com/a/9yL7QYj
 
I'm afraid I don't know a lot about them, but it appears that tang stamp was only used from 1950 to sometime in the 1960's. That information is just from Wikipedia, so potential for errors of course. Hopefully someone else has some more information for you!

As a side note, I always find it interesting how many other knife manufacturers have some connection to the Case family!
 
Here is a thread I found that appears to have some dating information interspersed throughout. I just skimmed over it, but I'll link it if you want to take a closer look.

Western knives

I have noticed that Western knives often fetch very high prices on the auction site, rivalling brands like Schrade, Queen or GEC, but they rarely get mentioned on this forum. I have often wondered. Can anyone tell me why?
www.bladeforums.com www.bladeforums.com
 
Based on the size my best guess would be a W36 or L36. The main difference between those two models is the blade thickness, 0.180" and 0.120" respectively according to an old article that I have on file here. Also according to that article the blade length would be 5.5" so maybe not a perfect match, though. Oh, wait, I just realized that the pdf has a link to the original article online, so this might be of some use: https://www.hwsportsman.net/WesternKnives.html
 
It is a Western sheath. I have owned two in that style with their correct knives. The OP knife could be a 77 or a 58. This can be a little tricky for me.
 
tongueriver said:
Here is the sheath; I think they used it on a few variations of knives, but mostly variations of the 77.

View attachment 2058769
Click to expand...
It certainly looks like that's what the sheath originally was, but obviously it's been heavily modified and reshaped.

It appears that they removed the welt and belt loop, made a wooden insert, and converted this into a center seam dangler sheath.
I don't know why anyone would go through the trouble though unless the stitching and welt failed or something.
 
They made a knife modeled after a Finnish offering that had a sheath like that one. It was an earlier event. Wish I still had mine to show but it is off somewhere else.
 
tongueriver said:
They made a knife modeled after a Finnish offering that had a sheath like that one. It was an earlier event. Wish I still had mine to show but it is off somewhere else.
Click to expand...
It came that way ?
Very interesting, I never would have imagined that.
 
You folks certainly have a wealth of information to share. Thanks for the comments. I see there's one just like it w/o sheath on Ebay. He's calling it an L77. I think that's what I'll go with for the knife. The sheath... who knows.
 
It is a 1950 to 1954 L58 with correct sheath.

We know it is from 1950 to 1954 from 2 characteristics -

1 - the stamp was used from 1948 to 1954. "MADE IN U.S.A.", either as a stand-alone line or as shown here with a leading "PAT'D." is a POST-WW2 stamp.
2 - per 1948 and 1949 advertisements, the sheath for a 58 pattern was a oak leaf and acorn pancake style sheath with double stitch rows.

There are 2 primary differences between the 77 and 58 patterns -

First and most easily recognized - the 77 pattern has a fullered blade, kinda like a grown-up version of the 48A, and the 58 has an unfullered saber grind blade.

Second, and not as noticeable at first glance, the 77s have a 5 inch blade and the 58s have a 5-1/4 inch blade.
 
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