Hi Mike,

No need to feel like the Lone Ranger: No one I know of can identify for certain those sheaths that appear to be from the late 50's and very early 60's that are not marked Heiser. For sure Heiser and Stockman were making sheaths for Bo during that era and some believe that Johnson was involved before 1962.

Johnson became extremely good at duplicating Heiser sheaths in a relatively short period of time (Stockman never got that good IMO). If you take a Heiser sheath from '61 and a Johnson sheath from '63 and lay them face up, they are hard as heck to tell apart.

With regard to these sheaths that have surfaced with brown metal snaps: It seems to me that there is a higher probabability that they were all made around the same time as a result of the supply of brown buttons being depleted for a short time as opposed to them being used over a several year span. If one assumes the former, then we have an interesting mixture of sheaths made at the same time:

1. Bernie's 2-5 with a Randall stamp.
2. My 3-6 sheath with no stamp.
3. My 3-6 with a Heiser stamp.
4. Rhett's 1-7 with a Heiser stamp.

The "odd man out" is Bernie's 2-5 sheath with a Randall stamp! All the knives that we've seen paired with these sheaths to include the 2-5 have blade grinds (primarily choils) that indicate they were ground prior to 1962 when Johnson reportedly first arrived on the scene. We can easily rule out Stockman as the maker, so that leaves just Heiser as the maker of all four sheaths to include the 2-5 (Unless you want to believe that Johnson was involved prior to '62). Continuing this line of reasoning, there should be other Heiser sheaths with a Randall stamp. Sure enough we see sheaths that clearly have more Heiser charcteristics than Johnson such as Stephen's sheath in the middle of his photo as well as knives and sheaths that have date provenance prior to 1962 such as the double hilt 3-7 on page 169 of Bob Hunt's book "Randall Military Models".

I know I'm making a leap of faith assuming that all four sheaths were made at roughly the same time and that they were all made prior to 1962, but given there is no hard evidence to the contrary I'm leaning towards the belief that towards the end of Heiser's reign, Bo got them to agree to ship unmarked sheaths to the shop and the shop stamped a Randall logo on them.

Best,