Old Timer 8OT Senior 6.9in S.S. Traditional Folding Knife with 3in Clip Point, Sheepsfoot, Spey Blade and Sawcut Handle for Outdoor, Hunting, Camping and EDC

About this item

DIMENSIONS: 6.9 inch (17.5 cm) overall length with blade lengths of 3 inches (7.6 cm) and a weight of 2.8 ounces
DURABLE: Blades are made of reliable High Carbon Stainless Steel to maintain a sharp edge and to withstand rugged outdoor use
DEPENDABLE: Knife’s convenient size and nail pulls offer quick and easy access making it an ideal everyday carry option
BE PREPARED: Clip point blade has an extra fine point for precision tasks, sheepsfoot blade offers a rounded tip to minimize accidental piercing, and spey blade is specialized in skinning wild game with its unobtrusive point
SECURE: Sawcut handle features an ergonomic design and is built with nickel silver pins and bolsters for a solid construction and classic aesthetic
GUARANTEED: This product is covered by Old Timer’s Lifetime Warranty. For questions, please contact Old Timer's customer service

• A photographer

  This is gonna be kinda long.Being an old guy, I grew up when Schrade, Camillus, Buck and Case were the most popular pocket knives around. Buck and Case are still with us but both Schrade and Camillus went bankrupt years ago. The Schrade brands and trademarks were bought by Taylor Cutlery LLC. Taylor has the current Schrade brand knives made in China.I guess I'm one of those people who have had a chip on their shoulder for years due to the loss of Schrade and the downfall of the American cutlery industry. I would not buy a Chinese made knife for a long time. After a while, I picked up a few Chinese made knives and found the quality to be variable. Some were pretty good but most were total junk, not even worth the low prices being charged. None measured up to my memories of those US made knives from my childhood although I reluctantly admitted this was romanticizing more than accurately remembering. Well, I finally broke down and decided to give the Taylor Chinese Schrades a try. I've bought several lately and, you know what? They're very good knives and outstanding bargains.This is an updated copy of the original 8OT Schrade Old Timer. It is 3 7/8" in length closed and that makes it a very easy pocket carry knife. It's also big enough to fit into your hands and be manipulated without feeling too small you might cut yourself. It's a Stockman pattern, meaning it has three blades and it has the normal configuration of a longer Clip blade, a shorter Sheepsfoot blade and a shorter Spey blade. The Clip blade is for general purpose, has a point for piercing objects and is usually the most used of the three blades for most folks. The Sheepsfoot has a blunt tip and a flat cutting edge and it's really one of the more useful blades around for trimming objects and cutting by drawing the blade edge toward yourself. The rounded tip Spey blade was originally designed for cowboys and ranchers to use for castrating calves. Most of us knife owners don't engage in that activity very often so the Spey blade gets more general use for tasks like opening packages where you don't want to cut into the contents by accident. I'm a knife knut and the Stockman is my favorite pattern for a pocket knife. I own a couple dozen knives in this pattern.I will say right off that the current 8OT is not an immaculate collector's item. The original 8OT wasn't either but, since Schrade USA's demise, those original 8OT Old Timers have taken on legendary status and you now have to pay collectors prices for them. What the original 8OT Old Timer was was a working man's knife that sold for a reasonable price. It was made of good quality materials, put together well. It was meant to be used, used up and tossed out. Knives used to be consumable tools. Nowadays, we knife knuts have turned them into objects of worship and desire. This current Old Timer harkens back to the original purpose of the knife. It's meant for work. Use it, use it up and don't worry about it. Once it's used up, toss it out and buy another--they're cheap.This Old Timer is made with stainless steel blades whereas the original Old Timer had carbon blades. I like carbon steel blades better but I can't say anything bad about these stainless blades. The blades were middling sharp out of the box. I took out my Spyderco Sharpmaker immediately and set to work. After only a short time, I had all three knife blades cutting like razor blades. This steel can take a keen edge. Does it hold an edge well? I dunno. I've not had the knife long enough to dull it. It takes a while to dull a knife when you mostly cut apple slices for a snack or lime wedges for a beverage. The grip panels are made of a composite called delrin. Delrin has been around for a long time, it's a stable composite that holds up well to hard use. Unlike some ornamental plastics, it's not brittle. It can be dented when dropped or banged into something but it seldom gets broken. We have more modern materials these days that are often used in knife handles but delrin is a traditional material that still gets the job done. No complaints there. Materialwise, the knife is good to go.How is the fit and finish? The blades are polished a little better than the stainless blades on the current Buck 301 Stockman, not as polished as those on standard Case XX knives. There are a few small gaps where the grip panels meet the bolsters and along the liners. More expensive knives will have better fit in these areas. All areas of fit are tight enough for normal to hard use, don't sweat a few gaps here and there. The spring pins--the ones in the middle of the grip panels at the bottom--stick out a bit. The end pins fit flush. No big deal--that wooden handled Buck 301 has end pins that fit higher than the grip panels and few people complain about it. The blades open and close fairly easily but the travel is a little rough. More expensive knives open and close more smoothly but some of them are so difficult to open you can lose your thumbnail. The Old Timer is not hard to open. All blades have decent snap. I did flush out the joints of this knife because there was a good bit of manufacturing debris inside. After applying a few drops of oil to the joints and springs, things smoothed out considerably. Still, it's not as smooth as a more expensive knife.Bottom line here is that this is a knife that doesn't cost a lot but is made well and will serve the user well. You can pay 2X, 3X, even 10X more for a smoother, better built knife but this one will give the normal user just as good service as the higher priced models. I admit I like the smoothness of opening and closing of the more expensive knives. I like their better fit and nicer look and the pride I get from owning a really nice cutting tool. But one of these Chinese made Old Timers would most likely perform the tasks I undertake just as well as my more expensive knives. So, here we have a highly serviceable knife at a more than reasonable price that actually carries on the tradition of the Old Timer knives from the original Schrade company. The only real negative is that these knives are carrying on this great American tradition while being made in another country. I'm still sad and a little angry at how we Americans so easily give up our industries, traditions and our ability to make anything except money. But I like this knife and all the other Old Timer models I've tried and I recommend them to anyone who has the need for a good working tool.

• Nicholas Scyrkels

  My father always carried a old timer so when I saw this was cheaper on amazon then in store. I had to get it! Hair popping sharp and dig the new badging

• CB

  Not sure the code for the better built knives but this one was closer to the old days. Meanwhile the other sku knives were 3rd rate.

• Tina

  Very nice knife, I'm a big fan of uncle knives.

• huskerstat

  Great knife, great snap.

• Grant

  this is a good all-around pocket knife to carry with you, I am hardly ever caught without mine. It has good blades that sharpen well if desired and hold a good edge.I wish I would have bought the same unit but without the middle blade, I never use it, I typically use the shortest blade on one side which has the sharpest edge and best cutting ability, and the long blade for everything else where just pure cutting ability is not a huge concernSUGGESTIONLoosen up the amount of pressure needed to open and close the blades, they seem very stiff to my hands and some people really struggle to get them open at all.

• Clifford Bond

  Good knock-about knife, especially for the price. The thugs at TSA will not let me carry my knife I have carried since I was 8 (I'm now 64). I bought this one and sent it to my daughter in California so I will have one when I visit them. (I do not "do" checked baggage whenever possible.) Opens and closes very well and takes a very sharp edge. Very WELL PLEASED! It's not an heirloom, but a good value.

• Joe L. Lawrence

  I have almost always had a knife in my pocket as long as I can remember.This is the pocket knife I think of most as a pocket knife: the classic three blades and when I hold it in my hand it is the same width as my hand (perfect size). The stainless steel blades I suspect won't hold an edge as long as the old carbon steel blades but then they won't rust.This knife has a good fit and finish. It feels good and solid in the hand. It's made in china - I think they got this one right.

• KC

  This isn't like the 80T from bygone days. I had an older one that I carried until the clip point blade wore down from sharpening, and it served as a good comparison. With the old 80T, the folded sheep's foot blade is higher than the folded clip point blade. With the new one, the sheep's food blade is slightly lower. The handle of the new one is thicker than the old one, and the edges of the backs of the blades seem "sharper" than they did back in the day. Since the old one is worn, it makes an exact comparison difficult. The bolsters of the new one are slightly blockier than the old one, and examination shows it's due to design, not wear.The middle brass pin in the new one protrudes beyond the handles, but it's this way on the old one, too. The end brass pins on the new one are milled flush, where there is a slight rounding on the end ones of the old knife.The knife came passably sharp, sharper than expected. The edge of the spay blade was rolled toward the end. The grind feels rough. Sharpened the knife, and that corrected the rolled edge and smoothed out the grind.It looks like the sheep's foot blade and the clip point blade should rub, but I see no marks on the blades. On my old one, it looks like the spey blade should rub against the sheep's foot, but see no marks there, either. The blades are made different on the new one, with an offset on both the spey and sheep's foot blade to facilitate blade clearance. The old one accomplished this by a bend in the sheep's foot blade. There's some scrubbing in the action of the clip point blade on the new one, but to be honest, I've encountered such on different blades of other stockman's knives in the past.The blade metal is the unknown. The old 80T used carbon blades, and this one is a 7Cr17MoV. Don't know how it will compare in holding an edge or in wear. It seems to sharpen easy enough. The blades on the new one aren't polished to mirror perfection, but I wasn't expecting that. You can see some manufacturing marks (not scratches) on the blades.The rolled edge on the spey blade is why I hesitate to call this knife giftable. The fit and finish look sound to me, and the size it just right for my hands, and for myself, a stockman's knife was strictly utilitarian, anyway. I think my late father would have been happy to receive this knife as a gift. But that rolled edge might turn some people off.The utilitarian aspect is why I chose this knife. There are more expensive stockman's knives with fancier blades, but I tend to wear the clip point down over just a few years, and couldn't see spending a lot of money on a stockman's knife. On the other hand, I wanted something to hold up. This is why I decided to give the Old Timer 80T a try again. And we shall see what we shall see.

• dpal

  My first - and long time - whittler was the Schrade 34OT; loved it and still use it! So, I decided to get the Schrade 8OT ... the bigger version of the 34OT. It came in a nice Old Timer box and was wrapped in paper ... clearly a NIB article. Upon further inspection, I noticed (1) all three blades were noticeable dull and I spent a lot of time getting them to get to the desired level of sharpness; (2) blade movements were very stiff; (3) better attention should have been given to how the scales were attached ... one of the scales has a slight gap where it attaches; one of the middle rivets needs to be smoothed so it doesn’t catch on a pocket.Finally, made in China clearly printed on the box for those wondering where Schrade knives are made these days. This is by no means a criticism as I have many great knives made in China but included only as information.