What's your latest Schrade? END DATE 8/12

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Michael, if you mean to the Parker-Frosts, i do not recall reading of a connection with Sears. I know you have researched and posted extensively on the Schrade/Sears relationship, and i might have missed reading some of it.
roland
 
A Wings of Victory LB7 Scrimshaw that I may have paid too much for but wanted since my dad worked on them in Europe durinng WWII, a PH-1 NAHC heritage collection knife with maple handles at a good price that made up for what I paid for the LB7 and an nice 6ot.
 
rprocter said:
Michael, if you mean to the Parker-Frosts, i do not recall reading of a connection with Sears. I know you have researched and posted extensively on the Schrade/Sears relationship, and i might have missed reading some of it.
roland
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Johnny Muskrat was a Sears furbuyer program. Eric had a stamp we identified as the muskrat.

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Sears Roebuck, like its competitor Montgomery Ward, built its business as a mail-order company. Consequently, many of its customers were farmers or at least lived far away from big cities. The majority of Sears Roebuck customers also ordered out of the Montgomery Ward catalog.

In the early 1920s, many of Sears Roebuck's rural mail-order customers wrote to the company asking them to set up a way for trappers to sell their furs. Beginning in late 1925, Sears Roebuck & Company, through the Sears Raw Fur Marketing Services, began buying furs from independent, rural trappers. Trappers would mail packages of their prepared muskrat, mink, otter, raccoon, fox, badger, beaver, weasel, skunk, and opossum pelts to a Sears depot. At first there was only one in Chicago, but the company soon increased the number of depots around the country, including ones in Philadelphia, Dallas, Seattle, Memphis, Kansas City, Des Moines, Denver, and Minneapolis.

Sears would grade the pelts and either promptly send the trappers a check or give them credit toward purchases from its general merchandise catalog. If the trapper was unsatisfied with the value Sears gave him, he could return the check and the company would return the furs. The vast Sears catalog carried a line of Victor, Oneida, and Gibbs traps, scents, and pelt stretchers, as well as firearms, ammunition, decoys, and a wide selection of farm equipment and supplies.

In this way, Sears Roebuck became one of the largest fur buying companies in the country. The trappers generally found the company's fur grading to be accurate and the prices paid to be fair, especially for good, large skins. The company had found a way to help their rural customers by giving them a market for their furs that was as close as their mailboxes. Farmers trapped for sport and recreation, but also to control the wildlife population that threatened their crops.

Sears Roebuck mailed more than 7 million copies of an annual publication, Tips to Trappers, a magazine of about 30 pages in length, written and edited by "Johnny Muskrat" (a trapper, as well as a Sears spokesman) "and his trapper friends."

Tips to Trappers had articles and photographs showing the best ways to find and trap animals and prepare their pelts, as well as letters from readers, techniques from renowned trappers, information on state trapping seasons and limits, news on the fur market, and instructions on how to prepare and mail pelts to Sears. Included in each issue were shipping tags for mailing packages to a Sears raw fur depot.

Sears Roebuck also ran the National Fur Show in different cities around the country each year from 1929 to 1958. Pelts that had been submitted to Sears depots during the year were judged at the shows and cash awards (and even new cars) were given for the "best prepared" pelts, regardless of their ultimate value. This helped promote and teach the company's suppliers and clients about the best ways to handle pelts.
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winchester73 said:
A Wings of Victory LB7 Scrimshaw that I may have paid too much for but wanted since my dad worked on them in Europe durinng WWII, a PH-1 NAHC heritage collection knife with maple handles at a good price that made up for what I paid for the LB7 and an nice 6ot.
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I don't remember the quantity of the Wings Of Victory knives made, but they are quite uncommon today.

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Michael, thank you for re-posting that part of your Sears information. Very well written and i bet very few people alive now are aware that Sears supported farmers & trappers in this way. I had not seen this before as it's so unique i would not have forgotten it.
So Parker "borrowed" the "Johnny Muskrat" name just as he "borrowed" the trade markings of defunct knife manufacturers.
If i ever see a "Tips to Trappers" on ebay, i'll try and get it for you.
It's knowing of history like this that adds much interest and depth to our knife collecting.
Thank you Michael !
roland
 
I can think of several good reasons why I need that booklet. Meanwhile, here is serial number 182 and 182. Two problems: The photographer needs to clean up his act, and number two: I really want to use that D'Holder collab, and obviously I can't do that!

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I picked up this 2OT last week for almost nothing. It's been extensively used and abused. The clip blade has been sharpened down to a nub and the reprofiled into something resembling a wharncliffe blade. The pen blade is almost as bad. The up side is that the rest of the knife is in decent shape and as long as I keep it closed it looks pretty good :thumbup:

Who knows - maybe I'll come across some NOS replacement blades someday...


 
3rdGenC641 said:
I picked up this 2OT last week for almost nothing. It's been extensively used and abused. The clip blade has been sharpened down to a nub and the reprofiled into something resembling a wharncliffe blade. The pen blade is almost as bad. The up side is that the rest of the knife is in decent shape and as long as I keep it closed it looks pretty good :thumbup:

Who knows - maybe I'll come across some NOS replacement blades someday...
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Cool. You may well find a knife with nice blades but destroyed bone covers. I have a Schrade/Sears five-blade camp utility with saw #9555 (made only one year) with a broken backspring. It is near mint otherwise. I hope to find a parts knife for the replacement spring some day. Schrade Walden production records listed the #9555 as the "SW SAW KNIFE" first in 1967.

This is a complete one in less than pristine condition. It may become the donor if I don't eventually find another.
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Were the 2OT blades used in other patterns ? I think quite likely, but i don't have one of these to compare with my Schrades of this vintage. If someone can ID the blades in other patterns, that would be the easiest way to obtain them.
There are top-notch custom slip joint makers who could (and would) mount the new blades with such skill that the re-work would not show. If you ever go this route, the honorable thing to do is have the knifemaker initial or stamp a liner so that in the future it could not be passed of as an "all original".
roland
 
Interesting point Roland,..would you suggest they also stamp 2OT on the pile side master? ..to maintain consistancy?...then what would be the purpose of the rebladed 2OT?... as a user?.. or to own an example that is more "minty"...I am aware of one otherwise "minty" 2OT with a master blade that had been used as a screw driver that I believe had the blade replaced with a genuine better master 2OT master blade with the intention of re-sale... ...<It is none of mine!> and I never saw it sold on the Bay......or know what happened to it....I believe it was a professional job.......one never really knows with a knife unless you buy it new....Bernie L's site is proof of what knife shananigans folk get up to....and apart from people like Bernie who has the experience to really know the difference....and does a rebladed 2OT with genuine 2OT blade make it any less a bona fide example of a 2OT?..<My personal opinion is, it does make it less of an example of what it outwardly represents... if is one is aware of it>...Hoo Roo
 
Larry, a rebladed knife is not an original as the reblading work is not being done by original employees at the original factory.
In this case it could give decent example of what the knife is like and by marking a liner or a blade tang it shows the knife has been re-built. This is done on occasion for rare patterns by established knifemakers upon request.
Quite likely i will never own an original Schrade 2OT so if i had the knife shown above i would be on the look-out for Schrade blades identical in profile to an original, and no neither blade should have any other markings added than perhaps the name/date of the re-builder.
roland
 
There are a few purveyors of knives that weld new blades to original tangs and they do excellent work. As far as I have seen, they do what they can to conceil their slight of hand in order to sell those knives as something they are not.
 
Two more scrimshaw LB7's to go with the Wings of Victory. The Breaking the Sound Barrier x-1plane and First Flight in the box with papers.
 
Codger
It all depends on how well I can keep hiding them from my wife. I also have the Apollo Moon Mission commemorative I bought about two years ago at a gun show around your neck of the woods. Oddly, I seem to have more luck at gun shows than on the 'bay. There's a story about that Wings of Victory LB7. About three years ago the same old gentleman I bought the Apollo knife from had that knife (the Wings of Victory)at the gun show. I hesitated and went back the next day to get it and it was gone. Could have kicked myself. After 3 years of searching,bingo. got it. I mention I'm interested in aviation history but mainly WWII history. When I got the Wings LB7, I was like a kid in a candy store.
 
Codger_64 said:
There are a few purveyors of knives that weld new blades to original tangs and they do excellent work. As far as I have seen, they do what they can to conceil their slight of hand in order to sell those knives as something they are not.
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I am not a bretting man but if I was I would wager I know at least one of these gentlemen.;)
 
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