Codger_64
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- Joined
- Oct 8, 2004
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Here are a pair of Craftsman whittlers, stock #9494. The top knife is an Ulster #63, as mentioned above, which I have had for quite some time. The bottom knife is a recent find, a Schrade Walden #863.
At the moment I only have this poor ebay photo, but the Schrade Walden is an error/reject knife. It is dual stamped on the mark side "Schrade Walden NY. USA and over that Craftsman USA 9494. The back of the tang is double stamped "863".
Shall we make up a plausable story about this knife? Codger's best guess is that an error knife, a Schrade Walden 863 with double stamped pattern number was used as a "mule" to set up the die for a run of Craftsman #9494 knives.
While it has little collector value (well used and non-standard stamping), for me it is priceless in that it shows the reuse by Sears of the #9494 stock number when the supplier of these knives was switched from the original Ulster to Schrade Walden. Of course we know that often both brands were made in the same factory by the same workers on the same assembly lines. In this case, Sears kept the same stock number for the same pattern, but many times stock numbers were reused on entirely different patterns.
At the moment I only have this poor ebay photo, but the Schrade Walden is an error/reject knife. It is dual stamped on the mark side "Schrade Walden NY. USA and over that Craftsman USA 9494. The back of the tang is double stamped "863".
Shall we make up a plausable story about this knife? Codger's best guess is that an error knife, a Schrade Walden 863 with double stamped pattern number was used as a "mule" to set up the die for a run of Craftsman #9494 knives.
While it has little collector value (well used and non-standard stamping), for me it is priceless in that it shows the reuse by Sears of the #9494 stock number when the supplier of these knives was switched from the original Ulster to Schrade Walden. Of course we know that often both brands were made in the same factory by the same workers on the same assembly lines. In this case, Sears kept the same stock number for the same pattern, but many times stock numbers were reused on entirely different patterns.