Vintage Puma 8101 - "Lang" Texas Bill Fahrtenmesser

[kwakster]

Vintage Puma 8101-"lang" Texas Bill throwing scout knife from the early 1950's.
This is the slightly longer version of the original Texas Bill knife.
Definitely one of the more elusive Puma scout models, especially in this condition.
Complete with original sheath.













Texas Bill was the main character in a series of German Wild-West novels from that era:







Specs:

Overall length: 23,7 cm
Blade length: 14,3 cm
Max blade thickness (ricasso): 4,91 mm
Steel: drop-forged carbon steel
Handle materials: brass guard, leather & fiber washers, aluminium pommel with brass nut.
Weight: 136,9 grams
Sheath: leather

 

[boogerbrain]

This is a nice and apparently pretty rare knife in near mint condition ... Puma had some kind of "weird" names for their knives these days ... "Zack Päng" is one of those weirdos, too. So "Texas Bill" IS quite weird, but it could be worse ... thank you for showing also pics of the name-giving books here; I knew about the history of the name, but I never saw any of the books before.

You have some nice knives for sure!

 

[kwakster]

Well, when i bought it the knife looked & felt a bit different,

The Puma factory worker who put the knife together all these years ago threaded a too small section of the tang end, and as a result the brass nut could never be tightened fully to securely compress pommel & washers (which had also shrunk a bit over the years), so all handle parts were very loose, and the brass nut itself was also sticking out of the pommel a few millimeters.
Let's just say that quality control on this knife could have been a bit better.

Lucky for me is that this issue was most likely also the reason why the knife was never really used over the years.
So when i received it i disassembled the handle, lengthened the threading (M5), polished the guard a bit, glued all the washers back in place, lightly sanded the handle surface, polished the aluminium pommel and the (now flush) brass nut end a bit, then nourished the old leather with a few coatings of warm Ganger's wax.

Picture #3 shows the small section of threading best:



Currently i'm still thinking if i should give the knife a nice new edge or just leave the bluntish factory edge like it is.

Regarding the names on several of these blades; i think that the Puma marketing department back in the day thought these would appeal to the mostly younger male audiences these knives were targeted at.
And nowadays those names make the knives instantly recognizeable for nostalgic collectors like me,

 

[Hamurra-e]

I love those old blades. Many of them are better than some modern and more expensive ones.