It's Moonshine!

Taylor Brands was founded by Stewart Taylor in 1975 in east Tennessee.  Originally Taylor had knives made for them under their name, but they gained the reputation as a knife jobber who facilitated the manufacture of knives with different trademarks. 

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Knives of reasonable quality can be made by many manufacturers with excess capacity.  Taylor made S&W logo knives which were everyday working knives at a reasonable price.  I don’t think anyone expects to turn their working S&W knife over to a grandchild and I don’t know anyone who collects them.  But if you needed a cutting edge, S&W would work.

Many companies, for reasons better left to the studies of economics, found they could not compete in today’s market.  Taylor bought them.  Maybe the best you can say about this is brand names like Schrade, Old Timer, Uncle Henry, and Imperial knives were saved from oblivion.  It’s kind of like the Irish Elk.

Here’s where it gets complicated.  Taylor, as previously mentioned, licenses the Smith & Wesson name.  Smith & Wesson recently purchased Taylor Brands.  So they own, among other things, Old Timer, Schrade, as well as knives made in their name.

Recently I came across a Taylor made knife called the Moonshiner.  It’s a brass handled locking blade with a finger hole for grip.  The tang stamp indicates it’s a Taylor knife made in Japan of surgical steel.

I liked the finger hole but the brass handle as got to go!

I don’t know much about the knife, other than no bootlegger ever carried a knife that said Moonshiner.  The blade is stainless and I suspect it’s a 440 type.  Of the three types of 440, I suspect type C, as it’s the most common.

It came in the original box and the blade doesn’t seem to be used.  The brass looks like it’s been handled a lot.  I suspect it’s a show and tell knife, something you show off to your friends and acquaintances, like I’m doing now.