This and the recent puukko threads have opened up an interesting rabbit hole for me. It looked like a bad and worn stamp, but it made me think about all the Frost stamps I had seen and how to date them. I have not found a good timeline for the stamps yet but I have a theory that the
E. Frost was first mark. Frost Erik Erikson lived from 1865-1924. The Frost brand lasted from 1891-2005 then merged with
KJ Ericson to become
Morakniv, The next mark is
Eric Frost, and finally
Frosts. The first mark I believe can be on the left or right of the blade. The
Eric Frist mark is on the left side of the blade if you are holding it in normal grip. The
Frosts mark is in the right side. The contemporary
Morakniv mark is on the right as well. To throw wrench in this there may be Eric Frost knives made currently with the mark on the right. I found a source
https://oldmora.blogspot.com/2021/11/Frost.html that I gleaned much of this information from. It appears that a pre 1930 knife should be a hand handmade in-house laminated steel, with all the metallurgical pluses and minuses these phrases imply. I.e. either much more to less durable than later blades even the laminated ones that were rolled and stamped. I would be curious to see if the pre-1930 knives possessed a distal taper. Interestingly there could be close to a billion of the various Frost knives floating around the world.
The first picture is from a 1911 catalogue. I cannot tell if this is a drawing or an actual picture. This is where I noticed that an
E. Frost could be on the right side as well. The second shows an
E. Frost left side stamp. The later pictures of worn knives with the simple handles are from my collection. The first of these I have carried on and off for about 20 years and may be on its third sheath with me. The new one is Kydex and may outlast me. We will see. They are all either laminated steel or a single carbon steel. The laminated ones have a higher Rockwell rating but still seem east to sharpen meaning that there are not a lot of additives to add toughness and wear resistance to the steel. I threw in a
KJ Erikson for good measure in a pattern that Frost made as well. The Mora smiths seemed to overlap a good bit.