Western/Camillus

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sac troop

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Mar 4, 2009
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I’m back with a question for the people on this forum from Camillus. I was trying to get my hands on a 1991 Western catalog. This of course is the year that Camillus bought the rights to the Western brand. I have only been able to observe pictures of a couple of pages of this catalog. I hope that the person who got this catalog will eventually make images of it available to Larry to include it in his catalog library on “CollectorsofCamillus”.
I was able to observe a small part of the inside cover page which was more or less a letter to the public. In the picture there is a partial signature. The last name looks to be “Lyton”. From my own research I believe that during the years 90-91 the last President /CEO of Western was a Robert Hatting.
My question is; Does anyone remember an officer of the Camillus Co in the early 90’s with the last name of “Lyton” ?
 
I do have a 1993 catalog that I haven't scanned and put on Larry's site with my others. I don't have a scanner anymore but will work on that. It shows 21 knives were available starting with the WW49 for $114.50.
 
Looks like I may have stumbled across at least a partial answer to this question I posted a few months ago.
According to some information found in the June 90 issue of Blade Magazine. Bob Hatting would have been one of four investors who put in $780,000 in January of 1990 to prevent Coleman/Western from shutting down. Bob Hatting was appointed as President and CEO at that time and made the decision to change the name from Coleman/Western back to Western.

Further it appears that there were a total of five Presidents of the Western brand in the last 18 months of operations in the Longmont Colorado Plant. I don’t know the name of one of them or the complete and specific chronology of secession. Just imagine that in the first 75 years of operations there were only 3 changes at the top of Western Cutlery’s operations and those people all shared the same last name (Platts).

At sometime after Bob Hatting was President, Jim Bloom was appointed President. Jim had several years of cutlery experience with both Buck and Marksman Products.

He was followed by Phil Lynch. His is the name that is on the inside page of Western’s 1991 Catalog.
Phil was followed by Bruce Murray who from what I’ve been able to learn would have been the last President of the company before Camillus acquired the rights to the Western brand at auction in 1991.

Thanks for indulging my OCD.:D
 
It's great to see the collection grow!

Well this is a little intriguing. The knife their using in the 1993 catalog is a 1989 knife from Longmont Colorado. Also from the catalog it looks like Camillus started out still using high-carbon steel for the blades. I’m pretty sure that by the 1996 catalog they had switched to 420 stainless steel but I’ll have to check. Also from what I've seen in the last Longmont catalog 1991 they were making along with the W49, the W47,W45, and the W43.
 
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