Quote Originally Posted by nun2sharp View Post
If it were WWI it would probabbly be celluloid, I am going to agree with you and say 1850 and maybe then some. This is also about the same time that the phrase "Hand Forged" became a selling point while competeing with blades that were machine forged.
My WWI guess wasn't about manufacture, but refurb. I've seen a number of pictures of blades which had been sent to the British army for refurbishing in WWI, and all of them had the same style translucent horn scales. They were all also stamped with numbers and letters, but the codes were completely different.