Remington

Bradford's rival from Bridgeport · the 1920–1940 window, the Bullet, and the tang stamp that dates it

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

For twenty years the gun-and-ammunition giant was also the country's biggest cutler — turning idle post-WWI capacity at its Bridgeport ammunition plant into an empire of six hundred to a thousand patterns at a time. This entry follows that run: the corporate story that put “UMC” on the tang, the R-number code that reads a knife, the premium Bullet line, and the stamp key that dates one — with the ever-present trap of the 1982-onward reissues.

Corporate genealogy — a gun-maker becomes the country's biggest cutler

Two things to fix up front: the knives were made at the Bridgeport, Connecticut ammunition plant, not at Remington's famous Ilion, N.Y. gun works; and the “UMC” in the tang stamp is a corporate name (Union Metallic Cartridge), not a knife brand.

• 1816E. Remington & Sons founded at Ilion, N.Y. — firearms. Bankruptcy 1886; the arms business bought 1888 by the Marcellus Hartley (UMC) partnership → Remington Arms Company. ~ S12
• 1912Remington Arms + UMC merge → Remington Arms–Union Metallic Cartridge Co. The merger that puts “UMC” on the tang stamp. ~ S15
• 1919–20Cutlery Works organized at Bridgeport to use idle post-WWI capacity; first knives (pattern R-103), February 1920. ~ S10/S11
• 1921Remington's own account: a brand-new venture — “started with a clean sheet” — made at the Bridgeport plant, ~300 operations to a two-blade jack knife. ✓ primary · S1
• 1922The R1123 “Bullet” (Jumbo Trapper) — the rifle-cartridge shield that ties the knife to the guns. ~ S7
• 1923The Official Boy Scout knife, RS3333. ~ S6
• 1927The Cutlery Division line, priced per dozen in the Albany Hardware & Iron jobber catalog (above). ✓ primary · S2
• 1928Remington bills itself “Manufacturers of Arms, Ammunition, Cutlery and Cash Registers” (Hardware Age); HQ 25 Broadway, N.Y.C. ✓ primary · S3
• 1933DuPont buys a controlling ~60% interest. ~ S12
• 1940Cutlery ends — reconversion to WWII .30-cal ammunition; the Pal Blade Co. buys the tooling & designs c. Jan 1941. Every genuine Remington pocket knife is now bracketed 1920–1940. ~ S7

The R-number — a different decoder from Case

Remington's numbers are coded, but not like Case's: the “R” is a type prefix (folding knife), the last digit is the handle material, and the middle digits are the pattern.

The proof it's coded, not sequential: R1123 (bone) and R1128 (cocobolo) are the same trapper — only the last digit flips with the scale material; likewise R1303 (bone) vs R1306 (stag). Leading-digit families: R1–2999 single jacks · R3000–5999 double/stock/scout · R6000+ pen knives & whittlers. A CH suffix = an attached chain. (The seeded “RC” prefix is unverified; the real ones are R / RH / RS / D / K / F.) ~ S6/S14

The last-digit handle key (four digits image-verified on the 1927 catalog)

The Bullet knives — the rifle-cartridge shield, and the reissue trap

Remington's premium sporting patterns wore a nickel-silver shield shaped like a round-nosed rifle cartridge — the tie to the guns, and the reason they are the most-collected Remingtons. They got the best steel and the best scales (genuine stag was “hardly ever used” on anything else). Remington claimed “some twenty-six variations”; collectors count ~11–13 distinct patterns across the handle materials. ~ S6/S7

Seed corrected: R1615 is not a confirmed original — it surfaces only as reissue-era product (a 1988 “Fisherman,” a 2001 “Mariner”). The genuine pre-war toothpick bullet is R1613. ~ S6

Original (1920–40) vs. reissue (1974 / 1982+) — the crux

The same R-numbers were reissued as commemoratives — 1974–76 “authorized reproductions,” then an annual Bullet series from 1982 (made under license by Camillus, later Bear & Son, Buck, GEC). A bare number tells the pattern, not the era. The tells:

Dating a knife by its tang stamp — there is no trademark to lean on

Because Remington never registered a cutlery mark, the tang stamp is the dating tool. The higher grades carry the “REMINGTON UMC” circle stamp; economy knives get a plain straight-line stamp. The rule of thumb inside the 1920–1940 run: “UMC” present = earlier; UMC dropped = later (it went when DuPont wound the old name down).

Grade tell: a circle stamp = a better-grade knife; a straight-line stamp = economy. Both are still 1920–1940. The four date windows are collector consensus (AAPK, the script variant from Goins), not pegged to a dated die. ~ S6

What a knife cost — 1927, wholesale per dozen, image-verified

Unlike Case, Remington's line was printed and priced in the trade books. These come straight off the 1927 Albany Hardware & Iron scan (the plate above) — genuine Remington-branded, dated prices.

✓ primary 1927 Albany Hardware & Iron Co. catalog, pp. 360–361, image-verified (S2). Higher-grade pearl patterns ran up to ~$45/doz (OCR, same section); the 1928 Hardware Age ad lists pen knives at $24–$42/doz (S3).

In period print

How Remington sold its pocket knives in their own day. Remington Arms advertised its Camp Knife by name, and dealers tied the knives to the very plants that made Remington guns — each quote read on the original page; all are public-domain newspapers.

Sources

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

1. “Life Story of an American Pocket Knife,” Remington Arms Co., Aug. 1921. Internet Archive LifeStoryOfAmericanPocketKnife · PD · opened & quoted (Bridgeport; “clean sheet”; ~300 operations). ✓ S1
2. Remington Pocket Knives, 1927 Albany Hardware & Iron Co. catalog (Cutlery Division section, pp. 360–372). Internet Archive RemingtonArmsCoKnives1927 · PD · prices & handle code image-verified. ✓ S2
3. “Remington Pen Knives,” ad in Hardware Age, Vol. 122 (Sept. 13 1928). IA remington-hdwe-age-vol-122-sep-13-1928 · PD · “Arms, Ammunition, Cutlery and Cash Registers.” ✓ S3
4. U.S. Patent 2,391,732 (“Can Opener,” Imperial Knife Co., 1945) — shows the scout-knife can-opener blade was a licensed Imperial patent; concrete proof Remington held no era knife patent. ✓ S5
5. Dated 1935 sheath-knife ad (remington-sheath-knife-1935) — fixed blade, no price, copyright-caveated. ⚑ S4
6. Secondary / leads: AllAboutPocketKnives (the numbering key, handle materials, tang-stamp windows, Bullet roster); Remington's own Big Green Blog; SMKW & oldpocketknives (Bullet history); Connecticut History; Knife Talk; Funding Universe (DuPont 60%); the Hagley Museum finding aid (the corporate archive); BladeForums (2nd source on the handle code); and the standard books — Stewart & Ritchie, Remington Knives Past & Present, and Levine's Guide to Knives. ~ S6–S16