[Jacknola]

Sam, please allow me to correct you... I covered scallops and much of the commentary concerned that feature even if the title of the pictures concerned the nuts or coolee caps. Wide hand made tear drop shaped grooves were used in the 1950s until late 1950s-early 1960s. This was changed to narrower tear drops which lasted until about 1964 or so possibly/probably overlapped by special use of the older and wider groves.

The straight line cut groves, hand made irregular spaced, such as on your knife, followed after the tear drop shapes and is generally associated with the change to the pyramid shaped coolee cap structure. The rounded tang nut for coolee caps (but not usually seen on the flanged butt caps) was introduced about 1966.

In early 1970 the hand cut straight line grooves were continued but often more widely spaced. By late 1980s more machine-controlled grooving became apparent but I really didn't follow the trends that recently. Your knife with the straight line closely spaced irregular groves exhibits 1965 and post characteristics in my opinion. Before that the groves were generally tear drop shaped.

There are other tale-tell indicators of age, especially the spacers used on ivory handles... four different sizes and compositions were used at different times. Also the change in the escutcheon plates that took place about 1960-1 or so is of importance for dating the knives. The change in the hilts is also a marker.

Anyway, nothing is lost by continuing to look so I applaud your efforts.

In that line there are more historic Bowies presented than just about anywhere. These go back to the earliest days of the Bowie. I think I transferred a good deal of commentary that may or may not be worth reading.

A more complete explanation of the whole subject was in the line on the other board, now unobtainable unfortunately. Hunt published a lot of good pictures of Bowies in Randall Military Models, though the dating of those knives is off quite a bit in some cases.