A Catalog Reference · the contract cutler — the ghost maker of a hundred brands

Camillus Cutlery Co.

Camillus, New York · Adolph Kastor's import house that became America's great private-label cutler — and the maker whose own marks are the hardest to pin

Researched & written by Ethan Trex, a lifelong pocket-knife collector. · Reviewed August 2026

✓ Primary — read directly / record checked ~ Corroborated — reliable secondary ⚑ Archival — identified, off-line

The maker that hid behind every other name

Camillus is the brand whose own identity is hardest to pin — it made more knives under other companies' names than under “Camillus.” Its trademark is maker-anchored (Sword Brand, first used 1906 — the Case pattern) but survives only as a late re-registration; its rich patent cluster is founded on the owner's personal 1897 corkscrew-knife; its prices live under clients' brands; its number isn't coded; and even its tang stamp only dates approximately, because Camillus reused its old dies. Every one of them carries an asterisk — because it made everyone else's knives. ✓ primary · S1/S6/S9

Camillus began as Adolph Kastor's New York cutlery import house (1876); in 1902 Kastor bought a small Camillus, N.Y. knife works and turned importer into maker. Over the next century it became the country's leading contract cutler — Sears “Sta-Sharp,” Woolworth “Kent,” the hardware jobbers, and, above all, the U.S. military (13 million + knives in the Second World War). This entry follows the pre-war Camillus: the import-to-manufacture pivot, the contract business that defines it, the Sword Brand, and how you date a knife whose stamp is deliberately soft.

Drawing sheet of U.S. Patent 577,259, 'Combined Corkscrew and Pocket-Knife,' by A. Kastor, patented February 16 1897, showing a folding pocket knife with a corkscrew closed and deployed, signed by the inventor Adolph Kastor. — **The founder's own hand — the one knife that bears his name.** U.S. Patent **577,259**, “Combined Corkscrew and Pocket-Knife,” filed Sept. 14 1896, **patented Feb. 16 1897** — inventor **Adolph Kastor**, held individually, no company assignee. Granted the same year the Dingley Tariff pushed him toward manufacturing; five years before he bought the factory. For a firm that spent a century making knives under other names, this is the rare primary with Kastor's *own* signature on it. ✓ primary · S1

Corporate genealogy — an import house that became a factory

1876A. Kastor & Co. — Adolph Kastor's cutlery import house on Canal St., NYC, bringing in Solingen & Sheffield pocket cutlery. The company's later “founding year” — but an importer, not a factory. ~ S11/S13
1885Nathan Kastor opens Germania Cutlery Works in Solingen-Ohligs — the family's captive European supplier (to ~1938). ~ S13
1888Becomes A. Kastor & Bros.; adopts the Clover Brand; grows into the largest cutlery importer in the U.S. ~ S11
1894The factory's true origin: Charles Sherwood's knife works on Nine Mile Creek in Camillus — first shipment “thirty dozen” (360 knives). Not 1876. ~ S12/S14
1897The Dingley Tariff makes importing German cutlery costly — the trigger to manufacture. The same year, Kastor's own U.S. 577,259 corkscrew-knife is granted. ✓ primary · S1
1902Kastor buys the Sherwood works → the Camillus Cutlery Company; architect Archimedes Russell designs a three-story plant. ✓ primary (marker) · S9
1906The maker's own marks appear — SWORD BRAND (crossed swords, first use June 26) and the registered Clover Brand. ✓ primary (TSDR) · S7
1910~200 hands, close to a million knives a year; many workers German immigrants. ~ S11
1914–18WWI severs German imports; Camillus turns to war work — marlinspikes, scalpels, a folding knife/spoon for the Red Cross. ~ S14
1922Albert M. Baer joins as a salesman; lands the Sears account and launches the “Sta-Sharp” line. ~ S11
1942–4513 million + WWII knives — the TL-29, USN Mark 2, M3, and the USMC “KA-BAR” Mark 2 (co-developed); the 1943 Army-Navy “E” Award. ✓ marker · S9
1946→47Adolph Kastor dies (1946); the “A. Kastor & Bros.” name is retired and folded into Camillus (1947); the CAMILLUS word mark is filed. ✓ S8
2007→23Bankruptcy (2007) → Acme United → GSM Holdings (2023). The marks outlive the factory. ~ S11

Importer, then maker — and the “1876” correction. Camillus dates itself to 1876, but that is Kastor's NYC import house; the factory in Camillus, N.Y. was Charles Sherwood's, built 1894 and bought by Kastor in 1902. And the pivot from importing to making was driven first by the 1897 Dingley Tariff — not, as often assumed, by WWI; the war only finished a turn the tariff had already started. ~ S11/S12

The contract business — the archetype, and its epistemic twist

Camillus was the country's leading private-label cutler: for much of the century, more knives left the factory wearing other names than “Camillus.” That is the archetype — and it comes with a twist worth stating plainly: because the work is unbranded as Camillus, the contract relationships rest on collector tang-stamp and construction analysis, not on primary maker documents. So most attributions here are corroborated, not primary — and you can even price a Camillus knife, but only under the client's brand.

Client	House brand (Camillus-made)	Note
Sears, Roebuck	STA-SHARP · DUNLAP · KWIK-KUT	Sta-Sharp = the premium line (c.1927–41, master blade often etched “HIGH CARBON STEEL”); Dunlap economy (~1928–42). Camillus made the bulk of Sears pocketknives pre-1941.
F. W. Woolworth	KENT	the five-and-dime's pocketknife.
Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett	O.V.B.	“Our Very Best” — the jobber that also priced the New York Knife Co. and Case's market.
Simmons · Shapleigh	Keen Kutter · Diamond Edge	hardware house brands — each with its own entry here; and multi-sourced, so a name alone is not proof.
U.S. military	TL-29 · USN Mk 2 · M3 · USMC Mk 2	WWI & WWII contracts — 13 million + knives in the Second World War (below).

A seed corrected — “Craftsman” was multi-sourced. Sears Craftsman pocket knives were made by several cutlers — Camillus and Ulster, Schrade, Colonial, Imperial, Utica — not Camillus alone. After Albert Baer bought Ulster (1941), Sears shifted much of the work away. So “Craftsman ⇒ Camillus” is only partly true and mostly pre-1941; a positive ID needs a matching Camillus tang stamp. ~ S15

Reading a knife that wears someone else's name. The house brand (Sta-Sharp, Dunlap, OVB) is usually a blade etch; flip to the tang for the Camillus stamp (especially the four-line) — the tang, not the etch, names the maker. Construction tells help: nickel-silver bolsters/liners, a gimped center liner on premium Sta-Sharp. And the country stamp settles it — “GERMANY” = a Kastor import, not a Camillus-factory knife.

The patent cluster — the richest in the guide, and the shape tells the story

Camillus carries the most patents of any brand here — five confirmed — but their shape is the tell. The one pocket-knife patent that founds the firm is the owner's personal 1897 corkscrew-knife (the plate); the three company patents are about decoration and manufacturing method, not a grail mechanism. That is exactly the patent profile of a high-volume contract maker.

Patent	What it is	Whose
577,259 · 1897	Combined corkscrew & pocket-knife plate	Adolph Kastor — personal
888,019 · 1908	Safety razor (rotatable multi-edge)	Adolph Kastor — personal
1,980,058 · 1934	Integral ornamental shield (no face-cracking rivets)	Camillus Cutlery Co.
2,197,136 · 1940	Spring auto-opener — swings & locks the blade open and closed	Camillus Cutlery Co.
2,212,131 · 1940	Method of manufacturing ornamental penknife faceplates	Camillus Cutlery Co.

Two neighbours, two takes on the spring. The 1940 Share & Wallace patent (2,197,136) is a spring knife that swings its blade open and locks it — Camillus's turn at the auto-opener, a decade after the KA-BAR Grizzly's push-button (U.S. 1,701,027, see Ka-Bar). ✓ S2

And yet no single Camillus own-brand knife is a grail (unlike Remington's Bullet or Cattaraugus's King of the Woods). The closest “signature Camillus” is the humble TL-29 electrician's knife — millions made — and the Sword Brand stag folding hunters. The flagship of the ghost maker is a utility knife. ~ S15

The number — the least-coded in the guide

Where Case and Ka-Bar code the handle into the number, Camillus doesn't. Collectors are blunt — “there wasn't any system.” It is the least-coded numbering here, because two conventions ran at once: a factory pattern number and an office sales number for the same knife.

#5369 → #5 #25 #31 #32

one factory pattern number (the toothpick/fish knife) → four office sales numbers. There is no key to decode — only a catalog to match.

A “/1” or “/2” suffix = blade count, not material. And numbers were reused across eras — No. 10 was a two-blade trapper early on, a Barlow by 1950 (borne out by the priced page below). So you date a Camillus by its stamp, not its number. ~ S15

Patterns & the Sword Brand — a top line, and a utility-knife signature

The own-brand line is SWORD BRAND — the crossed-swords mark (1906), always “the top of the line.” Its genuine-stag folding hunters and whittlers are the closest thing to a collectible Camillus; the ubiquitous TL-29 is the closest thing to a signature.

Pattern	What it is	Note
Sword Brand 26	Folding hunter	genuine India stag on the “Prestige” grade; blade etched “Sword Brand Hand Made.” “Big Jack” is a 1970s name.
TL-29 (~57)	Electrician's / lineman's knife	spear master + a locking screwdriver/wire-scraper; the Signal Corps “TL-29” spec ~1919. Camillus's most iconic pattern.
Sword Brand 72	Whittler	a Sword Brand #72 dealer-dated “1930s–1941.”
4006	Four-blade scout	the “semaphore” scout, ~1930 — unlicensed (official BSA knives began only 1947).
5369	Toothpick / fish knife	the numbering example — one pattern number, four sales numbers.
No. 10	Standard Barlow	the priced datum (1950): brown bone, spear & pen, $18.00/doz; stamped CAMILLUS / TIP TOP.

Handles: jigged bone is the workhorse (genuine bone a pre-war tell); genuine India stag is the signature of the premium Sword Brand folders; also mother-of-pearl (dress/pen) and period celluloids (cracked ice, waterfall, candy stripe — celluloid instability is itself a period tell), over nickel-silver/brass liners.

Two cautions. “Kingston” is not a Camillus brand — WWII Kingston knives are the Ulster–Imperial joint venture (1943); kept off this page until a primary says otherwise. And Delrin handles mean post-1960 — the 1982 Remington Bullet reissues Camillus made used it — so a Delrin knife is never pre-war. (Nor is “Pyremite” a Camillus material; that's Remington's celluloid.)

Dating a knife by its tang stamp — a real chronology, read with one caveat

The one caveat that governs the rest. Camillus never discarded its old tang-stamp dies — they sat on a shelf, and an old die was occasionally pulled by mistake. So a Camillus stamp gives an approximate, earliest-plausible date — not a hard one. Anchor firm claims on the trademark first-use (1902/1906) and dated catalogs; treat stamp styles as strong-but-soft. It is the least self-documenting maker in the guide. ~ S15

The tang reads…	Date	The tell
A. KASTOR & BROS. (U.S.-made)	~1902–1947	the Kastor name; dropped after WWII. (“…GERMANY” = a Kastor import, not Camillus-made.)
Three-line stamp with an ACTUAL YEAR + U.S.A.	pre-1915	the best hard tell — a stamped year is the year (Camillus stopped dating after 1915).
Arched cursive Camillus	~1902–1915	the earliest style.
Three-line straight block	~1916–early 1930s	the inter-war stamp.
CAMILLUS CUTLERY CO. / CAMILLUS, N.Y. / U.S.A. (four-line)	~1919–1946	the pre-war workhorse. All blades stamped = pre-1941; master blade only = 1941–46.
CAMCO	1948+	postwar — not pre-WWII, however old it looks.

The trademark dates the maker — but survives as a re-reg. Read from USPTO TSDR: SWORD BRAND first used June 26 1906, CAMILLUS first used 1902 — maker-anchored, the Case / Ka-Bar pattern, not the revival marks on the New York Knife Co. and Cattaraugus pages. But the surviving registrations are late re-regs (1948/1964/1967), all now dead and owned by Acme United (2007) → GSM Holdings (2023). The 1965 Sword Brand “first use” is a re-registration artifact — the mark is 1906. ✓ S6/S7/S8

What a knife cost — priced, but late, and under other names

No pre-1930 digitized Camillus price exists — no house catalog before 1944/46, and those printed no prices (Camillus used separate price lists). The nearest image-verified, dated price is a jobber page: The W. Bingham Co. (Cleveland) 1950 catalog, p. 897 — the No. 10 “Standard Barlow,” $18.00/doz (= $1.50 each), stamped CAMILLUS / TIP TOP; the Pruning No. 1 and Fishermen's No. 5 at $24/doz. It is post-war and PD-not-confirmed, so it earns only a qualified check. The deeper truth: Camillus prices mostly exist under clients' brands — a Camillus-made Sta-Sharp in the 1930 Sears catalog — never as “Camillus.” ✓ image-verified · S10 ⚑ 1950 / jobber

A small corroboration: that 1950 No. 10 is a Barlow — matching the “numbers were reused” finding, since No. 10 had earlier been a trapper.

In period print

Camillus was a contract cutler — its knives reached buyers as “Sword Brand” or under other firms’ names — so the maker’s own name rarely appears in period pocket-knife ads. What the press preserved instead is the company: a big, busy cutlery works and its skilled hands. Each item was read on the original page; all are public-domain.

In the news · 1922

“One of the biggest producers, the Camillus Cutlery Co.”

A business column ranks Camillus among the country’s top cutlery makers — hiring more hands and raising wages.

Seattle Star, Wash. · Sept. 22, 1922. Library of Congress →

In the news · 1922

“President, Camillus Cutlery Company.”

Adolph Kastor writes a New York daily asking Congress to revise the cutlery tariff — the firm’s own voice in print.

The Evening World, New York · July 28, 1922. Library of Congress →

In the news · 1904

“expert cutlers, employes of the Camillus Cutlery Company.”

The earliest press notice — a labor case documenting the factory and its skilled German cutlers.

New-York Tribune · Apr. 17, 1904. Library of Congress →

Trade directory · 1906

“Camillus Cutlery Co. … Camillus, N.Y.”

Listed among the cutlery makers in the Hardware Manufacturers’ Association roster — an established maker by 1906.

Hardware Dealers’ Magazine · Oct. 1906. Internet Archive →

Sources

Primary sources are documents read directly; secondary are reliable leads. Full metadata (identifiers, URLs, quotes) lives in data/camillus.json.

U.S. Patents — 577,259 (“Combined Corkscrew and Pocket-Knife,” Adolph Kastor, 1897, the plate); 888,019 (Kastor razor, 1908); and three company-assigned — 1,980,058 (shield, 1934), 2,197,136 (spring auto-opener, 1940), 2,212,131 (faceplate method, 1940). Google Patents · PD · all opened; 577,259 corroborated by datamp.org. ✓ S1–S5
USPTO TSDR — SWORD BRAND (Reg. 826,063 explicitly owned by “Camillus Cutlery Company”; Reg. 775,330, first use June 26 1906) and CAMILLUS (Reg. 502,844, first use 1902). Read directly. ✓ S6–S8
Pomeroy historic marker (2018) — “PURCHASED IN 1902 BY ADOLPH KASTOR … REC'D 1943 ARMY-NAVY PRODUCTION AWARD.” A physical primary. ✓ S9
W. Bingham Co. 1950 catalog, p. 897 (Building Technology Heritage Library scan) — the No. 10 Barlow price. Page image read; 1950, PD-not-confirmed. ⚑ S10
Secondary / leads: Wikipedia; the New York Pocketknife Historic Information DB; Collectors of Camillus (Dexter Ewing); “Knife Talk”; AllAboutPocketKnives / BladeForums (tang-stamp chronology, numbering, the contract roster, Goins); the 1944 Lief company history & 1946 catalog; BLADE Magazine. ~ S11–S18