This was my weekend find.  It's the larger version of the two with the stamped metal handle. As the war progressed manufacturing techques to reduce costs were tested..." (The Complete Book of U.S. Military Pocket Knives: From the Revolutionary War to the Present, by Michael Silvey) The book says these were made for WWII. 

I know there is a long thread where another knife collector and scholar has never met a WWII vet who still had one, but all logic points to these being made for WWII, not for post-war commercial sales.  Along with several books.  I'll go with the Occam's razor theory, and say it's a military model.  See that other thread for my explanation why.  

 

How did they prove that they are from WW2?

 

So far your deduction seems to be based on an opinion.

 

Do you have government documentation?

 

 

No, I'm basing it on logic and education about the facts.  Opinion is "because I never met a vet who had one...they therefore cannot be from WWII." Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.  Check the book author's source attribution.  I believe Silvey used Cole.  The 1940 military switchblade RFP to test Schrade Prestos is somewhere on this forum.  YOu can find it.  It's not very specific. 

The 1940 test document talks about the handles being made of "imitation buckhorn" which there is no such thing.  Knives were always made from jigged bone from the 1910s to WWII.  No Schrades or Presto's were made with "buckhorn" assuming that's deer (a buck) or elk.  They were always jigged bone.  A company wouldn't imitate something they don't make.  So what was the "imitation" material?  Hard to say. I hypothesize they were jigged bone at first, then mid war changed to these metal ones that are commonly found.  They've been considered WWII by many people for many generations.  No one ever came out with a catalog page from the post-war period showing Schrade selling them...that I have seen.

If my rationale is an opinion -  it's a logical opinion.  Nobody has found a document that says "change handle material to metal, 1944...or change to plastic...1947" that I know of. But it's accepted the plastic ones are post-war.  The metal to me are wartime production. 

But it makes total sense if you study what the military was doing in WWII, the numbers of metal handled knives found.  

It also makes sense that if they were made for post-war civilian production, they would be in a catalog, advertisement or company memo somewhere.  Do you have Civilian documentation?  Nobody does.  Other knives were advertised post war though. 

Finally, I'm basing this on the identical tang stamps on the metal handle ones to the jigged bone handle ones.  Later, post war, the tang stamps changes, eventually reading "Walden".  "Presto" was also dropped on the plastic handled ones that surely are post war.  

Heres one that I dont think can be disputed.

US paratroopers never were issued the long version of the Presto.

I think thats safe to say?

Besides the metal scales 

its too long. Opinion based on reading.

And studying up before I purchased one.

At around 500 + for real type... its worth the study....

 

 

 

 

 

I think we are going to have a tough time finding any knives in the Schrade catalog post war as the company was sold to Ulster and moved to Walden, NY after the war.

 

I should mention that in my due diligence of trying to track down sources, I reached out to Frank Traska, and to Greg Robinson for their input. I also logged several calls to Schrade over the years asking for documents that evidently don't exist anymore. 

 

Circling back to Cole, I only had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times, and his response to my questions about switchblades is that he tried to put as many as he could into his collector's volumes.

 

As for a lack of post war advertisements, can we find ads for tent stakes, mess kit spoons, or tank treads? There was a lot of that type of surplus out there too..,

 

Allan

I can search for more ads, but these two are interesting.  One is from a competitor, Camillus, right after the war.  They did continue to make many of these types after the war, with distinct differences like the USA was removed from the shield. The other I had on hand, I can't recall what year this was, likely between the wars.