The nickel silver liner is what makes the knife interesting. The front and rear bolsters and nickel silver liner are all stamped from a single sheet of nickel silver, and the scales are riveted to them. I will assume that this was to speed production. Once the scales were pinned to the liner/bolster assembly the entire piece was then riveted to the real liners with the blade, backspring, and rear pins. This eliminated the time-consuming work of separately soldering four bolsters to the liners. This process eliminated four operations in the production sequence, and made the knife sturdier and just as attractive as any other.
As an interesting side note, the portion of the lever-side bolster that the lever spring would pass through on most other knives is covered. This was necessary because of the nature of the stamping process. The Germans, being the perfectionists and traditionalists that they were during this period, went so far as to nickel plate the piece that covered the lever spring to disguise the fact that it was non-traditional!
The example knife is in very good condition. I would estimate the manufacturing date as mid 1950s.
