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Model #16 with Brown Canvas Micarta |
There are not many examples of brown Canvas micarta on early full tang knives. The author has seen a small number of extended tang knives with the easier to recognize straight wood grain textured material, (See Randall Military Models, p.85, but the existing number of its apparent contemporary, brown canvas micarta, which is recognized by its reddish-brown tone, is rare. The first documented use of canvas micarta that has come to the attention of the author is on a Model #14 with the then experimental full tang without extension, but held in place by two bolts. The knife described here, is handled in brown canvas micarta which shows the color variation from the normal standard brown and is held in place by two bolts. The blade and the guard are typical, but the handle does not carry the normal configuration of extended tang, but rather the thong hole drilled through the handle with the handle covering the entire tang. This was soon thereafter to become a design change and this knife, obviously of transitional type, retains the bolts but not the tang extension. |
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Note the sheath design, which is narrow, and uses a diagonal guard keeper rather than the handle keeper and represents a design change that was eventually adopted for this model. One should remember that there are several types of sheaths that have carried these early Divers, a knife that at one time wasn’t recognized as having much in the way of variation, knife or sheath.
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The blade is name etched with the date 1958 and is in the collection of Bob Gaddis.
Additionally, the knife is handled with a material that preceded the brown micarta of wood grain texture, as there is no evidence of it being used after this period, but interesting to note that this same material has surfaced on at least two knives produced at the same time as this Diver. The first is depicted in RMM, on page 101, and is in the collection of Peter Cuervo, and the second, a Diver of the exact same design as the one featured in this article, is in the collection of Dick Raynor. Dick’s knife is stamped with the double “SS” which serves to reaffirm the date of this material’s use as late 1963 or 1964. 