Show us your Acorn shield GEC’s

Travman

Travman

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Jan 26, 2016
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Sometimes it is hard to remember, but Great Eastern Cutlery actually has 4 brands. Everone knows the Northfield, Tidioute, and Farm & Field brands, but it is easy to forget the Great Eastern Cutlery brand. Probably because it is the least produced brand out of the four. Let’s start a thread to see some of these beautiful knives.

Here is part of the description of the brand from the GEC website:
“…we have our Great Eastern Cutlery line of knives with blades and springs made of stainless steel. This brand, also made in classic pocket knife designs and of exceptional craftsmanship, has blades of 440C stainless Steel. It was not until the 1950’s when stainless steel started catching on with pocket knife manufacturers and consumers. 440C stainless was one of the first stainless blade steels designed for the cutlery market. It is still being used and is still one of the very best stainless cutlery steels. It attains a very high hardness when heat treated. With it’s blend of alloys that make it exceptionally tough, it can be brought to an edge easier that tool steels and can be mirror polished as good as any, and will not rust. We try to keep our Great Eastern Cutlery knives as All American as possible by using American cattle bone, American elk antlers and American hardwood for handle materials. They are easily recognizable with the Great Eastern Cutlery acorn shield.”

I’ll start us off. A 48 with American Cherry handles from 2017.
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Travman said:
It was not until the 1950’s when stainless steel started catching on with pocket knife manufacturers and consumers.
Click to expand...
Huh?
That can't be accurate. Stainless hit the pocket knife market around 1916.
A lot of big name companies used it, and consumers bought them between 1916 and the 1950's.
Some (obviously not all) US military contract pocket knives of WW2 and after, like the "Demo" knife, specified 440A blades from inception.
Seems a lot of the war era and later TL29's were also equipped with stainless blades. I don't know if all were tho, and am not claiming such.

If memory serves, 440C came out in the 1950's ... or maybe it was the late 1940's?
I know 440C was one of the first stainless high wear resistant "super steels" used in cutlery.
I remember Arkansas Oil Stones had difficulty sharpening the 440C used in the Buck 110 in the 60's and 70's, when mine, and my friend's 110 needed sharpening. (they still struggle with 440C.)

Oh well ... it be ad copy ... so accuracy is optional, I suppose. 🙄

Still great knives, even if the ad copy isn't the most accurate.
 
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440C is a favorite of mine; easy to sharpen with long-lasting hardness. Sufficient toughness with amazing corrosion resistance. A well-rounded blade steel and the reason I've been so happy to have a few acorn shielded GECs. Like this glennbad recover that a friend of mine made available.

Great Steel, Great Build, Great Eastern Cutlery!

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Big fan here, but only have a few examples. GEC are so parsimonious with their stainless offerings & haven't made ones I can get hold of, but what I have I enjoy greatly. The word is that stainless is too hard on the elderly GEC equipment so releases must be few & far between, not sure I entirely buy this one given the large runs of other knives GEC makes with carbon knives....I believe it's a company ethos. They see carbon as more fitting to their model, fair enough.

When I first started on the forum there were odd monotone voices that just went on and on that stainless isn't traditional, it won't hold any edge, was never used by grandfather so it aint being used by me and other such gibberish :rolleyes: Absolutely nothing wrong with having a preference for one steel over another but dismissing one type as not fitting the Traditional genre is absurd, I like both and different knives for different tasks. Would like to see more GEC Acorns but of course, getting hold of one would be another matter:)

Conductor 33 in very nice thin panel Stag , had this in use yesterday

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