Different as Night and Day

I had a chance to pick up two knives recently.  They are as different as you can get.

I have a friend who is getting up in years.  He’s had an interesting life, but remember, interesting isn’t always good.  He is from that generation of Americans that built bridges, marched across France to kick Hitler in the nuts and saw his children and friends beat him to the Pearly Gates.  Two years ago he organized a program to send knives to our men and women fighting in the Middle East.  I think for an old guy he’s pretty cool.

Despite everything going on in his life he still buys a knife from me once in a while.  He has often remarked he needs to sell his collection because there isn’t anyone to leave it to.  I asked him to let me know when it was time.  I wanted to buy a knife he no longer needed to remember him by.  Well he dropped one off.

It's a nice friction folder.  I like the long blade, red bone handle and the silver shield.  That shield shape always reminds me of  keystones.

It’s a nice Queen Cutlery single blade trapper (041811) in red jigged bone.  He even had the original box.  I’m very happy to have it.

Queen is an interesting company. According to the 12^th Edition of Collector Knives by C. Houston Price, Queen Cutlery was a sub rosa company at Schatt & Morgan.  Following WWI, six senior foremen started pocketing knife components during the day.  At night they assembled them and sold them under the name Queen City Cutlery.  Schatt & Morgan, who by the 1920s was having financial problems, realized they were a house divided and quickly fired the six foremen. 

I'm not a huge fan of fiction folders, but I like the way this one is made with the brass liners. Everything is flush, tightly fitted and deep red jigged bone is spectacular.

The loss of these six experienced men was like submerging a submarine and leaving the hatches open.  In 1931-32 the six bought the S&M building and equipment and moved into their old workplace, Schatt & Morgan was out of business.  It’s like Jonah swallowing the whale! 

Queen still makes knives in the old factory.  If you like the more classic lines of friction folders, check out Queen Cutlery.

I wasn’t able to find out much about this knife.  Fortunately Queen’s historian, Mr. Dave Clark, (http://www.queencutlery.com/Queen_Historian.html) was able to help me out.  

The Queen tang stamp has changed over the years making the knives more collectible.  The addition of 92 shows it was made in 1992.  Thank you Mr. Clark!

The 92 stamped into the tang indicates it was made in 1992 and since 1980, Queen has been using 440A stainless steel.  Mr. Clark believes the Rockwell value is around 56-57.  While softer than many blades on the market, it’s not a bad value for an everyday friction folder.

I was surprised about the 440A stainless.  I had expected a 1095 carbon steel.  The truth is 440A is a low cost stain-resistant steel with excellent corrosion resistance.  The carbon level is only 0.65-0.75 % but when hardened properly, it will give you good, solid everyday performance.  Can’t ask for much more in a pocket knife, can you?  And frankly, few of us need ultimate, life-or-death performance from our knives.

The other knife is a NIB Heiho from CRKT.  I bought it from a stranger walking the last knife gun show who had a very good price on it.  It’s another knife I really like.

I'm more comfortable with blades that lock open.  I just think they are simply safer!

The Heiho is a James William design aimed at the tactical office worker.  With the manual LAWKS system, the folder is billed as a “virtual fixed blade.”  

The 8Cr14MoV stainless blade is one of the newer Chinese steels that is well received in the steel community. The worst I could find about it was “a steel used by quality knife companies in their budget lines.”  It’s a little insulting, but accurate.  

The clip is mounted so the knife sits deep in your pocket.  I prefer the tip up especially with an assisted-opener.  I wear these things with the blade pressed tight against the back of the pocket where it can't open.

The knife utilizes a coin opener and is assisted-opening.  The blade has a Rockwell hardness of 58-59.

The polished G10 handle has a left/right reversible clip and the knife is carried in my favorite mode, tip up.  Engraved in the G10 are two Kanji style characters.  Oriental characters, in general, always worry me. 

I assume they are Japanese.  I assume they don’t mean, “when two men love each other, you are the one who catches.”  Of course we all know how to break out ass-u-me.

To my surprise the CRKT catalog does not explain the meaning of the characters.  

While I really like the way the fabric shows through the G-10, the Kanji characters worry me.  Could they mean 'fried rice' or something more sinister?

At this point I’m hoping they stand for something innocent like 'fried rice.'  Other websites indicate the 1^st character means soldier or military (hei) while the 2^nd pertains to technique or strategy (ho).  

Combined, they signify heiho, or method of the warrior.  That’s much better than fried rice.

Trick or Treat

Halloween has arrived and departed.  It’s one of the holidays I greatly relish because it has no significance.  It’s not like Easter/Passover or New Year’s or Independence Day.  All those holidays have deeper and more meaningful significance.  Halloween, with its rich traditions of pagan rituals, celebratory bonfires, the opening of graves so the dead can walk in the world of the living, is so out of place in the modern world.  Halloween now has become an excuse to dress up and extort candy from the neighbors.

And I love it.

For one, it’s acceptable to visit with the kids who come to your door demanding a candy tribute. That’s not anything you can do at the mall or a city playground without looking for trouble.  You can joke with strangers who walk up your driveway and laugh with them about their children. 

The older kids, whose costumes consist of their ordinary clothes and a plastic bag, smirk when they get their candy.  They think they are putting one over on you.  Little do they know we’re wise to them and did the same thing 50 (!) years ago.  The joke's on them if they think they’ve discovered something original.

It was suggested I should dress in a ghillie suit with a sniper rifle (toy, of course) to hand out candy. 

Why?

That way when I get the challenge “Trick or treat!” I could choose trick and offer to give them a head start with the advice to zig-zag. That seems a little too aggressive and probably not scary to kids raised on handsome, shirtless vampires.

I don't know about you, but I find this pretty scary!!

Best of all, I get to carve a jack-o-lantern.  I described my idea to my wife and got the old, “He’s just flapping his gums again.”  I don’t care.  We joke about pumpkin guts and draw sketches on the newspaper work surface of the eyes we want  before we select one.  It doesn’t matter how little carving talent you have, the pumpkins always seem to turn out properly spooky.

This year I turned to my S&W HRT Team knife (trust me, no HTR uses this knife) to insure my jack-o-lantern turned out right.  I didn’t carve with it.  I stuck it in its ear.  Anyone who asked about the knife, I told ‘em “Yeah, that’s my team knife.  I won’t need it until later tonight so I thought I‘d get a little use out of now.”  Most of them left wondering about that.  Nobody returned their candy, so I guess I didn’t scare anyone too much.

Ouch!  That's going to leave a mark.

My pumpkin carving is highly dependent on three things: a black magic marker that can be scrubbed off with Goo Gone, a stout pewter sugar scoop my wife doesn’t use for sugar, and her father’s Marttiini fish knife. 

There's nothing like a thin blade for cutting a face into a pumpkin.

I’ve tried other cutting implements, including a potato peeler and chain saw.  The peeler worked so–so, the chain saw not at all.  It was, however, remarkably therapeutic and satisfying to use the chain saw.  I recommend it to any of you after a tough day at work.