![]() It is very late production and harder to find. Knife ahs small flat button, unusual flat clip blade (similar to Edgemaster) and brass liners. Mint condition value: $265įishtail with blue swirl plastic handles and no bolsters. Knife has the small flat button, clip and brass liners. During the manufacturing process groves must be cut into the tang of the blade for locking purposes and most of the time these grooves were cut right through "PROV", usually obliterating it, though sometimes part of it is still visible.įishtail with green swirl plastic handles and no bolsters. Interestingly, all of the Colonial switchblades have the brand name over the "Colonial" over "PROV USA" stamped on the front tang, but on most of the fishtails, jacks and Snappy's all that can be seen of the bottom stamp is "USA". The Colonial handles are some sort of plastic, not celluloid. Celluloid is extremely flammable and will ignite immediately upon contact with flame, while plastic will smoke. I wanted to be sure so I did a fire test on several handles. For the record the handles on these knives were NOT made of celluloid as many collectors think. Small rounded buttons are the third generation from the mid 1950's, and small flat buttons are fourth generation and were made in the late 1950's. A large button other than brass would be second generation from the early 1950's. I call them first generation and they were made in the late 1940's and early 1950's. I like to refer to these times differences as generations, and there are four total.Those knives with the large brass buttons are the oldest. The buttons on the rest of the Colonial Shur-Snap knives help to tell us at what stage of production they were made early, middle or late. The fatjack knives, including Pronto and Jiffy, all have a smaller button with some being flat and some slightly rounded. The Jumbo Jack and Stubby knives all have large round buttons. Wirth the addition of these two important variations there are a total of 10 knives that you'd have to collect to have a good representation of Colonials' switchblade lineup. Those stamps are "Pronto" and "Jiffy" and these knives must have been made in smaller numbers because they are harder to find than the Shur Snaps. The 4 1/8-inch fatjack was made with two or more tang stampings besides the Shur Snap mentioned above. The names Shur Snap and Snappy were introduced in 1948. ![]() The eight basic patterns of switchblade knives Colonial produced were as follows: In the following list of knives I have included the length closed, tang stamp and nicknames in parenthesis. Some of my favorites are the ones associated with the Colonial switchblades. Many of the American switchblades have acquired colorful nicknames over the years. How's that for irony? The two companies in the nation who still manufactured switchblades on a large scale, could still legally make them, but could only sell them in the state where they were manufactured and both companies were located in Rhode Island! companies who were still manufacturing them on a large scale in 1958 when Congress banned interstate commerce and manufacturing for the purpose of interstate commerce, of the knives. "The Standard Knife Collector's Guide" Third editionĪntique American Switchblades, by Mark Erickson, Identification & Value Guide, published by Krause PublicationsĬolonial Knife manufactured five basic models of switchblade in the 1940's and 1950's.
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