About four years ago a Randall comes up on e-bay. I'm a relative newbie at the time, but I know it is a 40's knife because of the riveted Heiser sheath. However, the blade looked like it had been sharpened to a former shadow of itself. This "fact" jumped out at me when I compared the blade width to the opening at the mouth of the sheath. I passed on it and if memory served it went pretty cheap. I did not bother to save the photos.
Not too long after, I pick up a copy of Beaucant's 1st edition. There on page 29 is a photo of THE EXACT SAME KNIFE AND SHEATH! I know it's not "the same" knife and sheath because the Beaucant sheath had some sort of hand tooling on the stone pocket and the e-bay sheath did not. Now I'm saying to myself that e-bay knife was not sharpened to death, that was the grind! I mentally kick myself in the butt for passing on it and move on.
Not too long after that I pick up a copy of Pete's book, and ####ed if there isn't ANOTHER example of that same knife! Of course another self inflicted butt kicking promptly ensued. I have been looking for another example to come up ever since, but nana!
Here's my take for what it's worth: I've seen a few "one-offs" made in the 40's that were either a special order or a one time experiment, but this isn't one of them. These were three separate identical knives (Blade grinds, hilts, handles, butt caps) and there may be more "out there". The features of this knife put it in an era just following the end of WWII when Bo was developing his new line of field knives: small stamp. very shallow choil, abbreviated lower quillion, peened butt cap, left side carry riveted Heiser sheath with plain buttons. My conclusion is that this knife was the Model 7 fisherman-hunter prototype that morphed into a smaller version of the model 3. Anyway, questions, comments or different opinions are welcome. If the guy who bought that example on e-bay ~ 4 years ago sees this post, please post some pics (thanks).
Best,
Ron
02-16-2007, 10:18 AM
than to frown 
!
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