For years I've been trying to search for info on original 18th century knives with crown antler handles made or traded in the Eastern U.S.
There's the one pictured on Don Troiani's historicalimagebank.com. It's dated 1759 on the leather scabbard and listed as excavated in Philidelphia. The blade (mostly covered by the scabbard in the photo) seems to be a typical 18th-early19th century ratail tanged British trade knife, with no bolster, like shown in the archaeology book by Lyle Stone, "Fort Michilimackinac 1715-1781". I believe It likely originally had a 1 piece bone or wood handle, that cracked and was replaced with the shed antler.
In 2004 I found one laying in the bottom of a plowed furrow on a local Native village site. It's a ratailed tang type, with an integral iron bolster, not a type easy to construct, tang and bolster section likely of iron, forge welded to a steel blade, touch mark on left side of blade unreadable but probably British factory made, the original handle clearly replaced with a crowned antler shed.
These 2 are all I've come up with in my search so far, both have replacement handles though and weren't found under controlled scientific conditions.
There are traders lists of British imported goods, listing "buck" handled knives, but I don't think they are referring to one piece crown antler.
The example Dennis and his Friend shared here seems to be much different, like the contemporary,"homemade" "Woodbury" style, except it has a touchmark on a guard and an extremely curved handle. If there's more info on this one it would be awesome.
