This will be short and sweet because arguing with 5 year old children is a waste of time. The adult reasons, the 5-year old sticks his fingers in his ears, jumps up and down, and screams "nah nah nah I can't hear you." Some people just don't seem to have the knack of discussion as a learning tool.

Joe... this is simple. You are talking in circles and have added nothing at all of substance in this line except smoke. Comprende? Huge amounts of data, including commentary, documented knives, pictures, references, contributions by other major collectors such as Gary Clinton, who laboriously went through their collections and added commentary confirming theses, etc. have been posted. And much much more.

All that massive collection of data supports the conclusions which provide an easy way to distinguish between Heiser and Johnson. This vastly simplifies the historical record and finally makes sense of what had been a period of serious contradictions and distortions. It is not required that one accept the conclusions, but it is required that they acknowledge the effect of the data, which changed the starting point of any discussion. You cannot seem to bring yourself to do even that... can you? So ....

Suddenly, out of the blue with no indication of where any of it came from, you post this about Johnson sheath characteristics:

1. Leather type
2. Leather mottling
3. Stitching on front

5. Lack of edge tooling
6. Different die used to cut sheath
7. Lack of throat flair

You have not posted a single documented, illustrated example, any backup data, any references that show these ... "features (?)" are associated with all or most Johnson's, or are unique to Johnson leather sheaths.

In short, this is just off-the-wall, obstructionist and ignorant BS. Are you next going to claim that "Johnson sheaths have an orange-color complexion" or some other just made-up characteristic? that you expect others to take seriously? Who the heck do you think you are? I'm through with you.

If Randall Knives is counting on you, and you ...

(a) "authenticate" Heiser look-alike sheaths such as you posted, calling them "Johnsons," (b) based on so-called pulled-out-of-a-hat features such as above; ... well ... I feel sorry for Randall's credibility. Credibility has a fungible quality. Like printed money it needs a sober hand on the press or..... Caveat Emptor... Unfortunately, I think I detect hyper-inflation on the horizon of the world of "authenticating."