Knife and Balloons

[reese williams]

I recently acquired a 6353 style knife with an atypical tin opener and markings. It was made by E.C. Simmons Hardware under their Keen Kutter brand. Keen Kutter was their top-of-line edged items. I have two other Keen Kutter marked 6353 type knives but both have the usual spear point tin opener. With the exception of the scales on the one shown, none have any military markings. I know Camillus and Schatt & Morgan made 6353 type knives, presumably under contract to Canada. I have several from those two makers and nearly all have a C/|\ stamp on the marlin spike.

It is hard to see in the pictures but this one has Balloon Div. 29 melted into the scale on one side and No. 29 on the other side. I haven't had much luck finding information on Canadian balloon units. The U.S. organized their balloon units into wings, squadrons and companies. If the knife was US I would expect it to read Balloon Co. 29 rather than Div. The knife came out of Canada which also makes me think Canadian issue rather than US. To the best of my knowledge the US didn't issue any knife that looked remotely like the 6353 knives. Any info or comments about ballon units or these knives gratefully accepted. It would be interesting to tie this knife to a unit history.

 

Edited 20 March , 2018 by reese williams
typo

[Dave66]

10 minutes ago, reese williams said:

I recently acquired a 6353 style knife with an atypical tin opener and markings. It was made by E.C. Simmons Hardware under their Keen Kutter brand. Keen Kutter was their top-of-line edged items. I have two other Keen Kutter marked 6353 type knives but both have the usual spear point tin opener. With the exception of the scales on the one shown, none have any military markings. I know Camillus and Schatt & Morgan made 6353 type knives, presumably under contract to Canada. I have several from those two makers and nearly all have a C/|\ stamp on the marlin spike.

It is hard to see in the pictures but this one has Balloon Div. 29 melted into the scale on one side and No. 29 on the other side. I haven't had much luck finding information on Canadian balloon units. The U.S. organized their balloon units into wings, squadrons and companies. If the knife was US I would expect it to read Balloon Co. 29 rather than Div. The knife came out of Canada which also makes me think Canadian issue rather than US. To the best of my knowledge the US didn't issue any knife that looked remotely like the 6353 knives. Any info or comments about ballon units or these knives gratefully accepted. It would be interesting to tie this knife to a unit history.

 

That's a very Unusual variant....never seen a can opener like that on one of these large folders and certainly not made to the spec as it should if an issued piece...the bottle opener only appeared in the smaller version from 39 onwards.

I also have a couple of the Simmons knives of various combinations, and often wondered if they were more interwar or 2nd world war.

 

loveley piece, hopefully someone will be pin down the unit marking puzzle.

 

Dave.

[4thGordons]

The 4th Balloon Company was assigned to the 29th Div at Cumieres on the 20th Oct 1918, at other periods the 9th Balloon Co supported the Division.

(see the History of the 29th Div AEF here)

I'm not far from St Louis - I'll see if I can find anything out about the manufacturer.

Chris

[reese williams]

Chris, Dave,

What I know about E.C. Simmons: Founded 1876, bought Walden Knives in 1901 to produce knives for E.C. Simmons Hardware. Became largest knife maker in U.S. at the time. 1920 - Simmons died, sons sold business to Winchester Firearms. Winchester opened chain of hardware stores as Simmons Hardware, gained 25% market share of hardware in U.S. 1939 - Simmons Hardware goes bankrupt and is bought by Shapleigh Hardware. Logo is changed with Shapleigh replacing E.C. Simmons in the arch over Keen Kutter. Shapleigh folds in the 1960s.

By the logo then, we can tell the knife is pre-1940.

Here is a (poor) picture of one of my other Keen Kutters.

 

 

 

You can see it follows the 6353 pattern closely. The logo is on the ricasso. Oil the joints on the tin operner. No other marks.

 

 

These are a Camillus on top and a Schatt and Morgan on the bottom. The Camillus is dated 1915 on the ricasso and both have the Canadian broadarrow stamp on the spike.

 

The Keen Kutter's similarity to the 6353 pattern and to these two knives at what makes me think the Keen Kutters were also for a Canadian contract. These three makers would have represented the apex of the American knife industry at the time. The U.S. wasn't gearing up for war yet and the U.S. was the logical place for getting material when your own manufacturing base is overloaded.  I'm going to try to research Canadian war contracts but I don't hold much hope there.

 

Now to the balloon part. I skimmed through the link you provided. Thank you. My question though is the syntax of the stamp. Balloon Div. 29 isn't the format I would expect from an American unit. I would think 29 Div Co A  more in line with U.S. usage. My understanding is that the balloon units in the U.S. were organized as wing, squadron, company. Based on that I would expect a Co marking rather than a divisional one.

 

How were British/Canadian balloon units organized? I haven't been able to find anything on that.

Edited 21 March , 2018 by reese williams

[Dave66]

16 minutes ago, reese williams said:

Chris, Dave,

What I know about E.C. Simmons: Founded 1876, bought Walden Knives in 1901 to produce knives for E.C. Simmons Hardware. Became largest knife maker in U.S. at the time. 1920 - Simmons died, sons sold business to Winchester Firearms. Winchester opened chain of hardware stores as Simmons Hardware, gained 25% market share of hardware in U.S. 1939 - Simmons Hardware goes bankrupt and is bought by Shapleigh Hardware. Logo is changed with Shapleigh replacing E.C. Simmons in the arch over Keen Kutter. Shapleigh folds in the 1960.

By the logo then, we can tell the knife is pre-1940.

Here is a (poor) picture of one of my other Keen Kutters.

 

 

 

You can see it follows the 6353 pattern closely. The logo is on the ricasso. Oil the joints on the tin operner. No other marks.

 

They were certainly prolific, and made high quality knives. I have their standard 6353 as you have, also a mint version without the spike.

They also produced some leather goods for the p14 equipment, I have at least one frog.

earlier I had a look through flooks British and commonwealth military knives and can find no other knife with a similar can opener, so possibly a commercial variant....I think the key to dating it pinning down the markings on the scales.

 

Dave.

 

 

[reese williams]

Certainly commercial variant is possible and as you say an explanation of the markings will help. My current suspicion, based on nothing but a gut feeling is that the variant tin opener was something they either had on hand or thought was an improvement over the spear point version. The late and greatly missed Joe Sweeney posted to a 6353 thread on the now defunct British Blades forum with some great information about the various WWI service issue clasp knives. Flook is certainly a good starting point but he missed a good bit on the 6353 and the so called gift knives. I managed to have sense enough to print Joe's comments and stick them in my copy of Flook. I'll pull them out tonight and take a look. If I remember correctly the standard called for a tin opener but did not specify the shape/design only that it be made of "best steel". That would mean that they could have varied the shape and still been within the contract, assuming there was a contract. I'm going to try to research the Canadian contracts for knives but since all three of the companies changed hands multiple times before finally disappearing I doubt there are any company records to be found. Tracing contracts through the Canadian government is new ground for me but I'm going to give it a shot.

[Dave66]

5 hours ago, reese williams said:

Certainly commercial variant is possible and as you say an explanation of the markings will help. My current suspicion, based on nothing but a gut feeling is that the variant tin opener was something they either had on hand or thought was an improvement over the spear point version. The late and greatly missed Joe Sweeney posted to a 6353 thread on the now defunct British Blades forum with some great information about the various WWI service issue clasp knives. Flook is certainly a good starting point but he missed a good bit on the 6353 and the so called gift knives. I managed to have sense enough to print Joe's comments and stick them in my copy of Flook. I'll pull them out tonight and take a look. If I remember correctly the standard called for a tin opener but did not specify the shape/design only that it be made of "best steel". That would mean that they could have varied the shape and still been within the contract, assuming there was a contract. I'm going to try to research the Canadian contracts for knives but since all three of the companies changed hands multiple times before finally disappearing I doubt there are any company records to be found. Tracing contracts through the Canadian government is new ground for me but I'm going to give it a shot.

Yes, flooks only skated over the surface with regard these, with little mention of the 1917 variations which is critical in trying to date them. He does publish the 1913 spec, but I am sure variations were substituted prior to 1917 once war had broken out and all the manufacturers were scrambling to meet ever increasing demand....I have a Thomas turner encore M&D Canada 1915 with the nickel scales, but with a commercial nickel shackle, so presumably produced very early in 15 using old stocks.

I also made notes from Jo sweeneys posts from British blades....very helpful, but there's always more questions than answers with these old clasp knives.

Best of luck on the search for the contracts.

 

Dave.