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Old 08-08-2019, 11:25 AM
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samg samg is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: Matthews NC
Posts: 666
I kind of eluded to this in Jack's thread "Dating a Randall Bowie" with my last post about an early 60's 12-9 Sportsman's Bowie. But this part of the conversation has to do more specifically with the sheath, which belongs on this thread. It's good to revive old threads from time to time.

The sheath I'm referring to is Brown Button sheath with a west facing RMK stamp.

This sheath to me, seems to be a hybrid. Looking at the front, it has the stone pocket flap (slightly rounded)of a Heiser/HKL, but a beveled edge to the sheath, like a Johnson.

Then you flip it over, it has a vertical RMK west facing stamp (Heiser/HKL) but the sewing of the butterfly with the 2 center stitch lines is more Johnson

Joint-Pics-20190808-113811

In the following photo, on the left you have an early Heiser/HKL sheath, center, an early Johnson baby dot sheath, on the right the subject sheath.

Obviously different model sheaths, Note how similar the 2 outside sheaths are. Same shape on the stone flap end. Difference in the 2 is the edge. The left is tooled, the right is beveled. The center sheath is obvious Johnson. Note the pointed stone flap end, and beveled sheath edge.

Joint-Pics-20190808-111849

In the following photo, on the back, note the left and right sheath, west facing stamp, the left has serif style model/blade numbers, the right does not have numbers.
The center sheath, Johnson baby dot with east facing RMK stamp, very characteristic of Johnson's sheaths.
Though the left and right sheaths are more similar in appearance, note the butterfly in all 3. The center and the right side are more similar.

Joint-Pics-20190808-115832

The left and center sheaths in the above photos are very different in the described aspects, but the sheath on the right has attributes of both.
I would estimate that all 3 sheathes were made within 2 years of each other.

I think there are a few scenarios to be considered in who constructed this subject sheath.

1) because of the west facing stamp, it was made by Heiser/HKL and they just uncharacteristically beveled the edge and left off the number stamps.

2) the stitch count on the subject sheath is different too. So either HKL or Johnson used a different machine.

3) Johnson early on received unfinished/ unsewn sheaths from Heiser/HKL and finished them up to include beveling the edge and not using number stamps, which we see in his early Baby dot sheaths.

4) Johnson completely made this sheath, and within a year changed his dies, reoriented his stamp, reshaped the stone flap.

5) In Randall's search for a local sheath maker, someone we don't know about made it.

I think probably the 3rd or 5th scenario is the correct one. We will never know for sure, we can only speculate, but as familiar as we all are with the styles of both Heiser and Johnson over the years, this sheath is an odd ball.
If any of you have similar sheaths, please post them.

Regards, Sam

Last edited by samg; 08-08-2019 at 11:53 AM.
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