Spent most of today cleaning up a very special gift from the brother of a friend of mine.  I tend to give away just about as many knives as I buy.  When he and his wife were visiting my friend, I gave him and his wife a custom knife from my collection.  They were both blown away (was the first time I had met them).  Anyway, when the got back to Florida, he packaged up and sent me a very special gift.  It was the Schrade Walden Parachutist's Snap Blade Knife (MIL-K-10043) he was issued in the 1950s.  While he told me that it was issued to him in 1955, that date may be a tad off, as I believe they didn't start producing this particular model until a year or two later.  Regardless, I was touched by gift.  Needless to say, he used the knife quite a bit during his military service and the knife show it!  Handle had quite a few burn marks, nicks and other unidentifiable marks on it.  The pins and blade were quite discolored.  the main blade did, however spring open nicely (though there is a bit of up and down blade wobble in the locked position).  What is really amazing is that, while the knife looked like it received "A LOT" of use, the blade did not appear to have ever been sharpened.  Anyway, put a lot of work into cleaning it up today.  Handle looks almost new now and the blade is clean, shiny and sports a hair whittling, mirror polished edge.  Hopefully, this weekend, I will have some time to take some pictures.  Just wish my excitement would have let my brain kick in sooner ... as I didn't take any before pics!!!  But trust me, it was pretty rough!  Thank goodness for a Dremel, various polishing and cleaning compounds, and lots of elbow grease!  In the meantime, was hoping that someone might know the type of stainless steel Schrade was using on these knives.  Based on the date, this would have been the first MIL-K-10043 model produced after the M2.  Would love to have that info for my collection data base.  My searching online has turned up nothing.

Thanks,

Dennis in PA