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Engineer pocket knives


dustin
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  • 2 years later...

I recently bought this, it's tang stamp only reads, "Made in U.S.A". I've seen various sources say it "could be" a Camillus or an Ulster, but I really wonder. Dustin, do you know? It has brass liners.

 

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Yes, yes, that was made by Kingston (Imperial/Ulster). Late war (1945) model having the new style of can opener. I'd suspect it has brass liners and spacers?

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  • 4 months later...

I got this all steel Camillus (4 line) at a flea market today for $15. I suppose someone cut off the bail, but it's very nicely done. Did Camillus ever do that?

 

49479301867_14c54afff0_c.jpg

 

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  • 2 months later...

I just bought a bone, two piece can opener Kingston that has an etched blade, reading "Kingston". If it's like a lot of etching done by American knife companies, it's very thin and easily polished or rubbed off. I wonder if all had this etching?

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I tend to think that knives that have the general WW2 configuration and the blade etching you describe were likely post war knives made form left over stock. I've seen a few examples from the Imperial Knife Associated Companies, ( Imperial, Ulster, Kingston), that have a blade etching, (sometimes the brand name, sometimes advertisement), using earlier WW2 parts like the wide tapered awl and the earlier can opener. At least some of those examples are definitely post WW2 commercial manufacture.

 

 

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Sounds like a possible hypothesis. I'm not sure why a company contracted by the military to make these would have held onto any completed knives or parts, they were cranking out war material. Why would there be left over stock?

 

It just as easily it could be that at least Kingston did etch their blades in WWII, like Remington and many others did pre-war. I mean, towards the end of the war didn't they go to plastic scales, from most makers including Kingston? And the early Made in USA tang stamp is said by Dustin to be only WWII. So the one I bought has bone, the 2 piece can opener that was upgraded to eagle type late war, the tang stamp, and I'll have to wait to see if it has brass liners. But it all seems to say WWII to me.

 

I'll post a better pic when it arrives. s-l1600.jpg

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Sounds like a possible hypothesis. I'm not sure why a company contracted by the military to make these would have held onto any completed knives or parts, they were cranking out war material. Why would there be left over stock?

 

 

As the war came to the end, the government would cancel contracts, sometimes without warning. They sometimes would accept the finished knives, but this would leave the knife companies (and a lot of others) with unused parts and pieces. They would either continue to make the knives post-War, or sell the parts in bulk to another knife company to use in making post-War knives. Parts knives were assembled into complete knives and sold commercially into 1947 and possibly 1948.

 

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I understand. But my point was is this knife has features of the earliest Kingstons, not the later 1945 ones, when contracts would be cancelled. Let's say this one was made in 1942-3 when the contract started. Or it's parts were. Why would those parts have never been assembled, in 1943, and shipped to the fleet/corps? Doesn't make sense. In the early stages of the war, they would have been making things as fast and getting them out as quickly as possible. Everything was in short supply, as our boot camps and schools started turning out hundreds of thousands of servicemen. Logic tells me they would not have just "stockpiled" parts in 1942-3 for "later". If these were a hodgepodge of features, early and late, then I'd believe you. But it seems to have all the correct, early war features. Surely they didn't assemble early war parts in the post-war period, skipping over all the later parts?

 

Somewhere in these threads Dustin wrote that all Kingstons maked Made in USA are wartime production. It seems the idea that this is a parts knife, post war, is a hypothesis with no basis in facts, and is just people guessing. Isn't an easier guess (Occam's Razor principle) that this is a WWII production, and they etched the blade on some?

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... The Kingston MADE IN USA is a bit easier as these knives were only produced during the war. In the immediate post war era starting in 1946 Kingston was associated with Schrade-Walden and began using the brand name Kingston...

This post I was referring to.

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Something is amiss with my account here. My avatar is gone now and every time I try to down load images I get an error, and no the images are properly sized.

Anyway what thorn6 said about Government knife contracts is generally true, and the end of WW2 saw an immediate cancellation of virtually all knife contract within weeks of Japans surrender. Some manufactures were left with massive amounts of unshipped stock as well as parts that were waiting for assembly.

The period at the end of WW2 and the next few years is very hard to come up with solid documentation to establish exactly what was going on in the American knife industry. There are clues in actual products and bits of stories often attached to them. From my own observations I feel confident that the Imperial Knife Associated Companies, (which in 1946 came to include what was renamed Schrade Walden), was still producing knives which in some cases appear to be made from all new parts and in others have parts included in them that strongly appear to be from war time stock production.

As far as the blade etching goes, it's hard to be absolutely certain as you yourself pointed out, those things are rather delicate and can and do disappear with use. All I can say is so far the only examples I've seen of Government contract knives with blade etchings have been post WW2 production items, (usually with something like "U.S. Government Property"on them. That by itself doesn't prove anything one way or the other.

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I have one of those knives in question. Kingston etched blade. It is all of the polished steel construction, no brass. It very likely may be made from surplus parts like noted above and the etching done in those immediate post war years.

 

It has been my experience with the knives from Imperial and Kingston, they started to switch back to brass liners and spacers in late 1944 through 1945. Additionally, to the new pattern can opener. This knife is a bit of an anomaly.

 

 

I have other NOS knives of the same pattern and brand, they do not have the etching. 1943-1944 time frame. So that helps determine something. The one thing that pops in my mind here is that in late 1944 the BuAer were switching to the new jackknife as procured by the Navy Department. They had on order, under their BuAer specifications, a jackknife but production was delayed and supplies were short in coming. The knife on order was this pattern and through Imperial. What I'm driving at here, is that its production spanned past the transition to the new pattern jackknife and these etched Kingston blades were knives undelivered lending to the post war theory.

The assembled knife are WWII production but never entered the service supply line.

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Great conversation and let's hope this site keeps going for many years! (I am part of a forum that is shutting down). I got the knife and it's got steel liners, looks just about mint other than a cracked scale I didn't notice when I bought. No matter, it's a nice looking knife from "about" 1943-1947 I can say, with your help.

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Here's a picture I was trying to post earlier.  Except for the one piece early can opener pretty close to the one above.

 

85595581_Kingstonpostwarknife..jpg.866fba04935578d584cf4c18d48f953b.jpg

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  • 5 months later...

Can you make out the rest of the tang stamp.  Also pictures of the can opener might also hold a clue or two.

Your right Moore isn't a name I'm familiar with for WW2 pocket knives either.  

I've seen PAL pocket knives from the WW2 period with three different can openers that cut the lid after being pushed into the lid and the cutting performed on the up stroke.  The basic can opener type common for about fifty years until the Imperial Knife Companies late War design showed up.  Besides the two already shown, I've seen PALs with a third early style can opener with a riveted pivot stud similar a type often seen on early Imperials, Ulsters, and Made in USA marked engineers knives.  I've also seen both bone and plastic scales on PALs.

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Moore has me at a bit of a loss not being familiar with it. I couldn't find anything out about that company other than a knife manufacturing company established in 1985. 

 

The PAL you posted is US Navy, they had a substantial contract for their new four bladed type with PAL.

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  • 5 months later...
On 2/4/2017 at 2:51 PM, dustin said:

No, 41J4 is a specification for the knife only. It would detail the requirements to contractors for the manufacturing of the knife. That knife from your grandad is in a technical sense, a jackknife 41J4.

Maybe you can help me on a puzzling one.  It has the same blades and blade arrangement as the Camillus jackknife above.  It also has a shackle (clevis, bail).  The scales are the early plastic FG material.  It is made by Utica and has a WWII era Utica tang marking.  The brass pins are the only thing on the knife that is NOT steel.  The bolsters, blades, liners, all steel.  I cant find any reference to this anywhere.  I assume if its all steel like this and has the build style of so many wartime knives, and the arrangement and types of the blades are also wartime standard, this should be on a record somewhere.   

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Charlie Flick
On 10/8/2020 at 4:12 PM, phantomfixer said:

and a Moore with brass liners and a later can opener, but I have not seen a Moore listed yet...postwar?

 

Phantom:

I think that Moore was the name of a retailer, perhaps a hardware or sporting goods dealer, located in Pomona, California.   The knife in question was probably made by Imperial and privately branded for Moore.   That was a common practice in years past where cutlery companies would make knives for large retailers and hardware companies who wanted their own name on the products.  (Sears Roebuck is an example of that practice where it made none of its own products.)  Camillus did that frequently as well.  My guess is that your knife is a post-war example which might explain the use of the brass rather than steel liners.  I do not think it is USGI.

 

I checked my Goins Encyclopedia of Cutlery Markings.   It's only reference to Moore was a bare listing of "Moore Pomona Co."   The "Co." is a mistake, I think, as the blade marking appears to me to be Cal., the abbreviation for California,  not Co.

I also checked my Levine's Guide to Knives.  Under the Moore listing it states "Some made by Imperial" and gives the date as "circa 1950".  It gives the location as Pomona, California and identifies the type of firm as "Retail?".

 

As you can see not much is available on the Moore firm in these leading blade resources.  Further digging on the background of Moore in Pomona back in the 1940-50s might turn up additional information for you.

 

I hope that small bit of information is helpful to you.

 

Regards,

Charlie

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  • 9 months later...

I got another 2 engineers knives from the same estate this weekend.  One is a Camillus, the other a Pal.  Both have the early can opener style.  Interestingly the PAL is slightly bigger, even when closed.  spacer.png

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  • 1 year later...

Great information Dustin  thank you for starting this thread. I just have one question what is the length on the 4 blade navy utility knife? 

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