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How to date a Schrade Knife to a specific year

Hello fellow Schrade collectors. I have been collecting the Schrade open stock knives, and would like to be able to tell the year each knife was made. I can look at the catalogs and knife data to tell the span of years a certain pattern was made, but the Catalogs are not in Color and do not have enough detail to tell them apart. For instance, I have a 881, Premium Stock knife, Texas pattern; clip, spey & sheepfoot; bone stag handle; brass liners. It was made from 1952 till 1986. Is there a way to tell the year it was made ?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tom Chase on December 18, 2013 at 19:49

Ricky,

It is extremely difficult to narrow production to a single specific year, unless the knife was only made in a single year. Schrade produced so many knives over many years and they're record keeping wasn't very good either. If a knife has a serial number you can narrow it down more however, Schrade really only used serial numbers when they did the promotion for the Garrenteed against loss for one year, for the Uncle Henry knife line.

The best you can do is narrow it down to a specific year based on the Tang Stamping and cover materials.

Tom

Permalink Reply by Ricky L McConnell on December 19, 2013 at 6:36

Thanks Tom,

I suspected that , but thought I would ask anyway. I do see different colored handles, but the catalogs are all in black and white. On the tang stamps, where can I find more information ?

Ricky

Permalink Reply by Tom Chase on December 19, 2013 at 11:46

Here is a listing of the Schrade Tang Stamps and the years they were produced! I hope this helps

You can also go to this website and view the catalog pages to help narrow it down

Collector-of-Schrades-r-us

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Permalink Reply by Waggoner, Alan on February 6, 2014 at 13:09

Thanks Tom good to know.

Tom Chase said:

Ricky,

It is extremely difficult to narrow production to a single specific year, unless the knife was only made in a single year. Schrade produced so many knives over many years and they're record keeping wasn't very good either. If a knife has a serial number you can narrow it down more however, Schrade really only used serial numbers when they did the promotion for the Garrenteed against loss for one year, for the Uncle Henry knife line.

The best you can do is narrow it down to a specific year based on the Tang Stamping and cover materials.

Tom

In MemoriamPermalink Reply by Doug Webber on July 20, 2015 at 19:27

Schrade stopped using bone on production knives in the early 60's. The is no set date, it depended on when they ran out of stock for a particular model. The later Special Factory Orders, SFO's, such as the Heritage set and the Tradesman set were handled with bone that most likely came from Germany. With Schrade knives, nothing is set in stone. It has been said that Schrade made knives, they didn't keep records. Tang stamps will narrow it down some.