Remington Knife

The company that began manufacturing knives branded “Remington” in 1920 started about a century before, when Eliphalet Remington forged his first gun barrel in Ilion Gulch, New York, in 1816. The young company’s rifles proved a success, and E. Remington & Sons grew steadily, soon moving to Remington’s present firearms manufacturing location near what was the a newly constructed Erie Canal.

Independently, in 1860, Marcellus Hartley founded the Schuyler, Harley & Graham Sporting goods Company, which would go on to become one of the world’s largest. Diversifying a few years later, Schuyler, Hartley &Graham purchased two small firearms cartridge companies, which it consolidated and moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1867, naming the new company Union Metallic Cartridge Co. In 1888, Marcellus Hartley and partners purchased E. Remington & Sons and renamed it Remington Arms Company.

Years later, in 1912, Marcellus Hartley Dodge became chief executive of both Remington Arms Company and Union Metallic Cartridge Company, and combined the two into one company to become Remington U.M.C. thus the reason knife collectors still find the initials “UMC” stamped along with the name “Remington” on knives, and sportsmen will find a “U’ stamped on rim fire cartridges made by the company.

Remington prospered during the early part of the 20th century but at the end of World War I, found itself with extensive manufacturing facilities and without government contracts to keep busy. The relatively new Bridgeport, Connecticut, factory was near idle and management knew that cutlery manufacture was not an entirely new endeavor since Remington had made a large number of bayonets beginning about 1915. A decision was made to enter the cutlery field, and Remington’s first pocketknives (R-103) were made in February 1920.

The manufacture of pocketknives got quickly underway and, by 1921, over 2,000 dealers sold Remington knives in most parts of the country. Further expansion came during the 1920’s and, by 1931; Remington was producing almost 3 million knives per year in as many as 1,000 patterns.

Near the end of 1922, the company announced the first “Bullets”, large trappers or folding hunters with a nickel silver shield in the shape of a.30 caliber U.S. Government 1903 cartridge and a dozen different knives of this high-quality line been produced by the end of the decade. Further success came in 1923 with Remington’s production of the Official Boy Scout Knife, the RS3333 pattern with an official BSA shield. By 1925, the number of patterns produced approached 1,000 and fixed blade or sheath knives were added to the line. Quality remained high, as did production: the Bridgeport factory made 10,000 knives per day at the beginning of the 1930’s. But the Great Depression took its toll and the failure of a large number of Remington distributors and dealers brought financial difficulty to the manufacture.

In 1933, controlling interest in the company was sold to E. I. DuPont Company. The number of knife patterns was reduced to about a third of their earlier number by 1936 and with this reduction in knife selections came a reduction in quality and some of those patterns were made under contract. The 1940 announcement of Remington’s revival of military small arms production was in keeping with the rumored $2 million loss of its cutlery division. The company’s cutlery equipment, existing parts and supplies were sold in their entirety to the Pal Blade Company.

Remington made several million knives during its initial twenty-year production period and those numbers could make one wonder why the brand is considered rare and is so popular with collectors. But, these were knives that were highly advertised, widely distributed, easily sold and faithfully used in all parts of the country. Finding an original Remington knife today may not be really difficult, but one found in mint condition is a prized possession, especially one of the rarer patterns. There has probably been no other knife type, manufactured in reasonably large quantities that can approach the “Remington Bullet” in collector demand.

Modern Remington Knives

During the 1970’s, Remington granted permission for others to produce “authorized reproductions” of the famed bullet patterns. Interest in these led to Remington’s introduction of its own Bullet knife in 1982, and a series of annual knives quickly appeared to meet an intense demand from collectors. These reproductions “Bullet” and related knives have their own following in today’s knife market.

The success of the Bullet series has since led to a diverse line of current Remington knife offerings made in America and overseas, from modern working knives to traditional collectibles and everything in between.