Blade Show Day 2

Today’s my last day at the Blade Show.  I’m heading home Sunday June 2nd but the show continues most of Sunday.  I always feel sad about the end of the show.  For two days I’m surrounded by people with many of the same values I have.  Come Monday I’m back at work surrounded by sheeple.  I may have to go back to the sheep, but tonight I’m still entrenched in the knife culture.

I stopped at Spyderco.  I just love their knives.  Look, there are only so many variations on a knife: blade, handle, lock, cutting edge.  Many companies make the same knife in 30 variations.  Face it, see one Benchmade and you’ve seen about 80% of all Benchmades.  And I’m a big supporter of Benchmade!

Spyderco is a little different.  They are not afraid to try something different.  Take the Pingo Orange.  

Spyderco's Danish Pingo.  It will work in many knife intolerant US cities.

It’s a collaboration of Spyderco, Jen Anso and Jesper Voxnaes.  The two are Danish knife makers and despite their long established knife culture, Denmark has some very strict knife laws.  Citizens can’t have locking or one-hand opening knives.  The Pingo has a 2.35 inch blade made from N690Co steel and is street legal in Denmark. 

I got into a discussion about locking blades with Joyce at Spyderco.  I’m uncomfortable with non-locking blades.  I’ve cut myself a number of times when I did something stupid and the knife closed on me.  She told me about several Danish military frogmen who bought a lot of these at a dive show they were attending.

“Look,” they said. “You can do three things.  Carry illegally and hope for the best, do without, or follow the law and have something on you.”  I agree with that completely, but I’ll add we don’t know how lucky we are to be Americans!  (PS: This knife should work legally in Chicago, New York and Cleveland just to name a few.)

Also from Spyderco are a Puukko fixed blade made from CPM S30V steel and a folding Puukko also made with S30V steel called Nilakka.  It’s named after a lake where the designer Pekka Tuominen lives.   

 

Two knives showing Spderco's interest in ethnic knives.

Both are excellent knives.

I stopped off at Boker to get more information on their knives.  Boker has several different levels of knives.  Some are made in Germany, others in South America and still others made everywhere else.  I know it doesn’t sound very useful if you’re trying to match quality and price.  Boker tells me all of their knives meet the quality standards set by the German parent company and you can find some remarkable knives in the Magnum class.  Much to my error I’ve always thought Magnum class was the cheaper, junk knives.  I’ve got to admit the ones I saw felt pretty good.  But as the sales rep told me, there’s German steel and then there’s other steels.  I guess you have to read between the lines.

Benchmade was selling knives.  That amazed me!  A number of years ago Benchmade stopped selling to distributors and wanted to deal only with brick and mortar stores.  They never sold at the SHOT Show or the Blade Show.  Until now.  It was a good deal:  15% off list and free laser engraving.  The engraver was a little thing about the size of a 1200-watt microwave.  I suspect laser engraving could become so cheap you’ll see it everywhere including home hobbyist.

I was looking for a neck knife, but nothing struck my fancy.  I stopped at Danny Robinson, who prints his business card on the back of a sealed band-aid, and fell in love with his files-to-knife conversions.  

Utility converted to art.

I bought a high carbon steel fixed blade with a wood and brass handle and a blued blade.  Maybe someday I’ll have a neck sheath made for it.

Last word for tonight!

How does she keep her balance?!  Yikes!

Exposed Knives

Fast and Furious is back.  I think this is the sixth one in the series so I can assume someone is making money on the franchise. 

It’s got everything an action film should have: handsome guys, well proportioned, good-looking women, incredible stunts and of course, cars doing things that would disintegrate your car and kill the driver.  And action, non-stop action, constantly increasing action. Just in case I didn’t get the point across, more action!

I’ll catch the film when it’s delegated to TV.  It’s not that I have some intellectual bias against action films or some inability to suspend disbelief.  On the contrary, I’m still worried about the movie character with the nuclear reactor in his chest and I can’t wait to see what happens next.  It’s just I can’t get cranked up about any movie where the cars and the stars are indiscernible.

They're fast and they're furious!  How many knives do you see?

Take a look the at hottie under the “U”.  She’s wearing a knife in front on the outside of her low riders.  That’s another strike against the movie.  Pocket clip knives, when worn as knives should be worn on the inside with only the clip showing.  Wear it as a fashion statement and it will be lost by the time you need it.  Strike two. 

The knife's shape is unique.  It has to be a Spyderco Delica!

So what’s the knife?  I think it’s a Spyderco C11 stainless steel Delica.  It’s a nice knife.  VG-10 steel, large thumb hole, saber grind blade and the stainless steel handle is drilled and tapped for up/down and left/right carry.  Add a partial serration and you have some powerful cutting ability in a closed package 4.25 inches long. That's a lot of good reasons to carry a Delica.

It’s also four and quarter inches of stainless steel that will jab her in her exposed gut every time she sits down. Which should be a lot.  You gotta sit down to drive the car.

She would have been better off with the Emerson Delica.  With Ernie’s wave incorporated into the blade, she could alternate between:

• Two handed polite opening,
• One handed thumb hole opening
• Waving it open.

The options depend on the scene.  Oh, wait that’s character development which should never interfere with the action.

Oh!  I forgot suspension of disbelief.

Blade Show and Counterfeit Spyderco

I’ll be attending and blogging from the Blade Show in Altanta next month. 

The Blade Show isn’t really a trade show like the SHOT Show.  Yes, large orders will be placed and taken by different vendors and company representatives, but it’s really a show for knife lovers.  They will also have the annual cutting contest.

It’s true.  Name an activity and somebody will make a contest about it.  I’m told that NASCAR has its roots in bootleggers outrunning the feds.  I don’t know if it’s true, but makes for a great story.

A tough lie.  It's in the rough and it looks partially buried.  Must have been soft ground.

I don’t know the roots of the Blade cutting contest, but contestants have a variety of objects that have to whacked off, cut through, bisected, and separated from the rest of it.  The knives are closely regulated.  I remember discussions with participants over the best place for a lanyard.  I remember several older winning designs that had points.  Most of the knives today have round noses because there is no stabbing event and the point was wasted knife.  They don’t look like the kind of knife you would carry for daily use.

The general comment seems to be that the cutting contest will result in the design of better steels, blade grinds and theories about how things are cut.  All of which will improve your knife.  Hmmm, that’s a lot to ask.

Tougher than you think.  A golf ball cut with a single swing.

I worked for a tire company that used to claim what they learned from making essentially 500 miles of left hand turns with tires designed differently for each of the car's wheels produces a better passenger car tire.

That’s BS.  It produces advertisement and brand recognition.  So with that background in mind let’s just say I’m cynical about blade improvement from cutting golf balls and hacking through a 2x4.

I saw this ball cut in half with a single chop.  Impressive as hell!!!!  I wonder if the ball has a cut proof guarantee?

Still it’s amazing to watch!!!!

My friend bought this at a gun show.  The seller had a box of them and was selling them significantly below wholesale.  All the knives were without boxes.  It looks like one of Spyderco’s SLIPITS.  All the markings look good.

Looks like a Spyderco SLIPIT.  For those cities and nations that think locking blades are TOO DANGEROUS  for the common man.

 

And the price!  It was just so good that he couldn’t resist.  The problem is the price was too good.  Is it or is it not a real Spyderco?

The flip side.  Still looks good to me?

I’m taking it to the Blade Show to ask Spyderco.

Stay tuned for more…………

Blade Show: T plus Two

It’s my last day. I was planning to spend all day Sunday at the show, but frankly I’ve seen enough and I’m not seeing anything I can’t live without. I’d rather save some money for making Kydex sheaths.

Okay, I admit it; I bought a few knives just for the sake of ownership. I have always enjoyed Loveless knives from his naked lady period. So I checked the prices. I hope you invested years ago. A nice, well kept Loveless from this period runs around $2400. You will not find any naked ladies from Loveless in my collection.

I did find Bossie Knives now known as Safari Consulting. I bought a little dagger with a black iron wood handle that I couldn’t resist. I bought one last year in giraffe bone. I’m not really a dagger kind of guy, but these little guys just speak to me.

I sat in on Ed Fowler’s presentation. His message to consumers and knife makers remains a constant beacon of sanity. Test your knife to destruction. No one knows what the future will bring and you may need that knife to perform far outside of its intended role. Ed bends his knives back and forth from 90 degrees to 180 degrees without breaking. He expects to be able to do that several times, hammer it flat and still have a usable knife. He differential tempers the steel to create a hard area backed up by a thick soft spine so that a crack only grows to the soft metal and still leaves you with a knife you can use. Of course this isn’t cheap. His knives aren’t very attractive, and they run several thousand. Here’s the catch: use his knife and if you don’t like it, even after you use it, send it back and you’ll get your money back.

Spyderco is always doing interesting things. They see a market in Canada, NYC, California, England even Germany for smaller and sometimes non-locking knives. Many cities are restricting blade length, as if a one-and-half-inch blade is less dangerous than a two-and-half-inch blade. I just know that we legals follow the law while criminals do what they want.

Spyderco isn’t the only company doing interesting things. Most of the knife industry is trying to get their hands on your disposable income. Kershaw is showing off some very thick fixed blades which are a radical departure. Bear Knife is introducing a tactical line complete with an auto opener. Two years ago they were telling me (of course, I’m a nobody in the knife industry) they would never have a tactical line. Things are a-changin’.

I also sat in on the cutting contest. The knives are regulated and carefully controlled in an attempt to make it a skill event. It’s a little artificial, but it is exciting to watch someone cut through a water bottle long ways starting with the cap. Chopping the 2x4 in half is one of my favorite spectator sports. Unfortunately, I’ll never see it on TV so I guess I’ll be back at the Blade Show next year.

What, you don’t think that it’s much of a sport? Okay, here, you try it: With a single stroke, cut a tennis ball into two pieces. Okay, now do it while the ball is rolling. How’s that working for you?

Fine and Fancy Knives at Christmas

Another Christmas has arrived and departed and on the whole it was pretty good.  Not to say it couldn’t be better, but Lord knows it could have been worse.  I was with family of which most are friends; the food and drink was good, and the weather was good for traveling.  We were all warm and had homes to return to and jobs waiting for us today.  Having spent two Christmases in the last eight years unemployed I cannot tell you how nice that is.

I had a chance to handle a spicy little knife from Santa Fe Stoneworks.  The handle isn’t stone (surprise!) but dyed wood.  It’s from their Kaleidoscope collection.  Santa Fe still has a few pre-bankrupt Camillus brand 3-inch lockbacks which they are using up.  It’s a nice knife, especially since you can get it for less than 50 bucks.

Santa Fe Stoneworks Kaleidoscope

 

I was waiting for my mystery knife.   The clues consisted of a generic policeman and a woolly mammoth.  My Spyderco Police model with blue and green dyed woolly mammoth molar grip arrived!

Hurray!

It arrived as a fully serrated edge and not the plain edge I ordered.

Booo!

Molar from a woolly Mammoth - amazing, just amazing!

Still, it is a spectacular knife.

 Banging on the Door

Had a minor incident the other night.  Banging on the front door at twilight brought me around to the side door.  A fellow with a hard sell about shoveling and a calcium chloride treatment tried to convince me I wanted his services.  I wasn’t interested, but he didn’t want to take no for an answer.

One of my concerns is the “criminal interview.”  It’s like a shark bumping into you to determine if you’re lunch or another shark.  His hard sell felt like a shark bump.  Of course, standing there with a sharp CRKT Crawford/Kasper folder in his blind spot (with my thumb on the stud) made it a lot easier to bump back.

As my friend Tom says, “No blood, no foul.”

Lanyard Making

My wife has gone back to her oval-hole Benchmade Ascent.  It was made with an opening stud as well as a round thumb hole.  She has both the round and oval hole versions.  She has also discovered how nice a lanyard can be for retrieving the knife.  Since I like to do knotting and such she asked me to make her a lanyard and I was happy to do so.

First we picked out the colors and the pattern (square or spiral) and I went to work.  A lanyard should be fitted to the person and knife, so I started, first with a fitting to make sure the lanyard would lie flat when the knife was in her pocket.

Size does matter!

After a few trial and error starts I got the size of the loop on the knife right and then we were off to the races.

I’m reasonably happy with the way it turned out.  So is she!

103 Stories High

The glass observation ledges at the Sears Willis Tower lived up to their reputation. It took a little internal pep talk to step out on to the glass floor 103 stories in the air. First it was toes over edge followed by heels on edge. I figured if the glass started to crack I’d have a 50-50 chance of hurling my weight backwards into the building.

The Edge- Willis Style

Finally I got both feet out into space and the teenager next to me started to jump up and down. He almost got a busted nose for that stunt.

It's the next best thing to walking on air and not as windy!

It was vey nice to look out into space and see my college an apparently short distance away. UIC formerly known as UICC has undergone significant changes and it’s easy to see them from the Ledge. Gone are the second story walkways and the addition of dorms is very noticeable. Not so noticeable to the hard science people (because we didn’t spend much time there) is the completion of the Arts and Humanity building. The campus ran out of money and built only half the building. They had a staircase to the second or third floor that ended in a blank wall.

It was slightly overcast, so we could only see a couple miles in any direction, but it still remains one of the great overviews of Chicago.



These feet belong to the reason I'm standing out here.
















Later we experimented with the subway and surface buses. People were very nice to us and helped with directions and instructions. My only complaint was that the bus/subway card vending machine only takes cash in dollar amounts. No credit cards! You always end up losing odd bits of money as fares are never whole dollar amounts. Many of the stations are dirty, noisy and congested but proved useful to get around.


I just got my new 2011 Spyderco catalog. Quite a few interesting knives, but it does bother me to see the knife industry cave in to the liberal notion adopted by many cities and a few countries. Of course, Spyderco is not the only company making these knife changes.

The liberal notion? It seems to be a belief in mechanical voodoo. At the core of the matter is the belief that evil spirits live in objects like tools and by making them less safe or harder to use the evil effects are diminished. By requiring that knives can close on your fingers, can’t be opened with only hand, and not clipped to pocket, the crime levels will go down. Told you it was mechanical voodoo.


I like Barrett’s stance on his 50 BMG rifle and California. He will not sell them to California police because the state has outlawed them to the general population. He accepts delivery of these rifles for repair and modification, but will not ship them back to the state agencies. They have to pick them up themselves.


Keep your edges sharp and your wits about you!