Will Schrade be coming home?

bt93 said:
I don't see Schrades being any more expensive than Buck knives. You can pick up a Buck 110 for not much and I'm sure manufacturing the folding hunter is more expensive than fixed blades. I know a lot of the Schrade knives can be had for in the 20 dollar range and their traditional knives are stupid cheap in price, but I doubt a mild price raise for a 'Made in USA' tag would hurt them.
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Ditto
 
If I had to guess, you'll probably see multiple lines of S/W knives. A cheap line of Chinese stuff for the big box store trade, then a U.S. , Japanese, or perhaps Italian line to handle the mid to higher end stuff.
 
I wonder if they will continue making the Schrade line or drop it. They probably sell now more than the S&W line.
 
How someone could think this means Shrade being made in the US is beyond me... or the even more crazy speculation that SW will drop the Shrade brand after all the work Taylor has done to build the brand... amazing.

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winchester73 said:
I'm sorry you feel merely responding to a post with thoughts is crazy speculation.
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Look at it this way, the Schrade brand name is probably the most valuable asset Taylor Brands owns. If Taylor sold everything but that name there is no way this is an 85M$ deal.

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I don't know guys but there's always wishful thinking on Schrade Cutlery coming back to the USA again for good.All they need to do now is stick 1095 Carbon Steel back on those Old Timer blades again.It would be a great sign of former USA made coming back to America(thumbs up)!
 
Frotier76 said:
I don't know guys but there's always wishful thinking on Schrade Cutlery coming back to the USA again for good.All they need to do now is stick 1095 Carbon Steel back on those Old Timer blades again.It would be a great sign of former USA made coming back to America(thumbs up)!
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As I recall, before Schrade went down and got bought by Taylor, they had a propriety stainless steel. They did have some folders with 1095, but the stainless was pretty good. I think it was called Schrade +, I'm betting a 420hc or 440 varient. Anyway 1095 is fun but it rusts.
 
You're correct on that,their Plus Steel(Schrade USA's marketing name for Stainless Steel) was actually 440A Stainless and changed to 420HC in the very late 1990's/early 2000's.Actually the Plus Steel was used had an interesting history...

*Plus Steel was used mainly for the Uncle Henry knife line and just the Schrade brand knives (for example the Lightweight Lockbacks,Cliphangers,and Switch-It Knives)For quite some time though the fixed blades of Uncle Henry were in 1095 Carbon Tool Steel which changed to Plus Steel around the time Schrade changed to 420HC.

*1095 Carbon Steel was very much the signature steel of the Old Timer line...very few models ever transitioned over to the Plus Steel in folders and fixed blades.For example the 7OT Cave Bear initially was in 1095,then became Plus Steel,then a small run in the early 90's in 1095 again,then went to Plus Steel for the duration of it's production time.Schrade USA did change the entire Old Timer line in 2001/2002 to Plus Steel to appease people who didn't understand how carbon steel worked.Mass majority of the consumer knife market was using stainless steel so those unfamiliar with tool steel a (non rust resistant steel) was a stranger to new consumers in a world of shiny blades.But getting rid of 1095 for these newer consumers (especially as a Wal-Mart vendor) also meant Schrade USA would lose a lot of business from the carbon steel disciples.1095 has just been the standard blade steel for the longest time in the American and German knife industry and people felt stainless (despite being more costly than plain tool steel) wasn't giving them their dollars worth in edge retention.

I've got some knives by Schrade USA in their Plus Steel and all I can say is I hold them at par with Buck Knives on heat treatment.I'm a big fan of Old Timer's 1095 Carbon Tool Steel but the first time I tried their stainless I was very hesitant...a lot of fellow carbon steel users claimed the Plus Steel by Schrade USA didn't hold an edge.The Plus Steel was easy to sharpen but the 1095 responded much faster on a stone and would come back sharper.As a game cleaning knife the Plus Steel was rather decent in edge retention...but the 1095 was just excellent!I usually bought Schrade USA knives in the Plus Steel when they were on sale as a weather resistant option as Schrade had good hunting knife designs.But I just wasn't sold on stainless offering more over carbon steel other than rust resistance.Stainless steel cost extra back then versus tool steel and 1095 just had a stronger value as a everyday knife steel.You'll see plenty of knives in an antique shop in carbon steel with a lot of blade life left in them.You won't see a hunting knife in 420HC used for 50 years though because most likely it's been sharpened down enough to be tossed in the trash.
 
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bt93 said:
As I recall, before Schrade went down and got bought by Taylor, they had a propriety stainless steel. They did have some folders with 1095, but the stainless was pretty good. I think it was called Schrade +, I'm betting a 420hc or 440 varient. Anyway 1095 is fun but it rusts.
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Everything rusts. I suspect after a couple thousand years even H1 will rust. If folks don't want to take even the least bit of care of their tools, I think the knife hobby may not be for them.

I will say though, my schrade + old timer has been going strong for over 20 years, including some particularly abusive teenage years.
 
It was very sad to see an empty Shrade building as I passed it fairly regularly.There used to be a large number of knife makers in NY state and a few still remain. But Dano has some good points.NY has not been kind to companies .Most of Remington has gone south, Kahr arms headquiarters is now in PA, etc.The greed of politicians never stops .I've seen many a company close or move out do to that because of both NY and Federal gov't policy.Shrade will just be a memory. S&W after all was once sold to , of all places ,England ! Buy US made knives either custom makers or makers like S!K or Becker,owned by people who know what a knife is.
 
Smokinape said:
Look at it this way, the Schrade brand name is probably the most valuable asset Taylor Brands owns. If Taylor sold everything but that name there is no way this is an 85M$ deal.

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Old Timer and Uncle Henry were much, much larger brands for Taylor.
 
Given they emptied out all the equipment from the Schrade and Camillus (Camillus made a number of the Schrade knives) factories after they closed I don't think you are going to see them open anything back there again. Camillus also burned down. I'm also not sure where you can find good slip-joint people that can make working knives at a reasonable price. It didn't work for Cannel Street. Great Eastern is doing a good job but they really don't produce knives in hardware store quantities.
 
zima2190 said:
Old Timer and Uncle Henry are Schrade brands.
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I know that. I was replying to Smokinape's comment that seemed implied that a sale of Taylor's brand properties (S&W, Schrade, OT, and UH) would be worth significantly less if the sale only included S&W, OT, and UH. If you categorize TB as only S&W and Schrade (as an umbrella brand) then that makes sense, I guess. What's confusing to me is that for all intents and purposes, all that Taylor sold to S&W is the brands. There's no infrastructure, no real property. Taylor was a glorified importer.
 
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