Blade Show: Comin’ Home

It was a long trip home.  The weather cooperated.  It was in the 80s and overcast.  More importantly, the traffic cooperated except for a little bit of the interstate south of Cincinnati in Kentucky.  KDOT closed a three lane road down to one lane and the traffic was so backed up, we got off and had to find another way.

I felt bad about leaving a day early.  I had looked forward to this show and writing about it.  I almost felt I was cheating myself.  On the other hand, I gained a day to get things (like this) under control before returning to work.

I found some interesting knives for myself.  The slender South African dagger from Safari Consulting in the previous blog just speaks to me.  I’m so glad I got it.

I picked up an unusual knife from Shadow Tech Knives.  The main edge is a straight edge, which should be easy sharpening.  The sharpened false edge is curved downward.  I don’t think it will be too hard to re-edge when the time comes.  The steel is 1095 and the blade is powder coated to help fight rust.  I like the weight and look of the knife.  Most importantly is how good the knife feels in my hand.

Shadow Tech

I met Peter Janda from FIN Designs several years ago at TDI.  I have one of his holsters for CCW and I’ve admired his work in kydex for some time.  He’s been designing knives and has found a home with Ka-Bar.  I didn’t like his early folders.  Oh, the designs were nice.  They felt good in my hand and were mechanically well made, but my thumb and his opener tended to get snared in the handle’s curves.  The FIN Velocity doesn’t have those problems.  The clip is reversible and the knife is tip up, my favorite carry position.  It’s made in China.  Oh, grow up!  It’s a world market and we have to compete.  I understand Europe doesn’t have this country-of-origin hang-up.  Perhaps that’s because they have always traded back and forth.

FIN Velocity Folder from Ka-Bar

Benchmade is advertising using Cerakote Gen II on all their BK and SBK blades made in 2011.  The coating is reported to reduce visibility ~ “…provides a visual, near infrared and thermal management….”  It’s not a Harry Potter cloak of invisibility, but if you need to control/reduce your visibility, it’s a start.  Hint:  I bet you could find a link to a studio that does powder coating with this same material.

Last thoughts:

After talking to Ed Fowler I may have to re-evaluate my thoughts on Randall knives.  Ed reports that Bo Randall wanted to make a sharp knife that didn’t break.  These properties come at the loss of edge retention.  Use it and you have to re-sharpen.   That’s not so bad.  The knife was very successful with the military for this reason. It didn’t break; it just had to be re-sharpened.  Still, 400-500 bucks for a factory knife….

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?

Blade Show: T plus One

We lined up and at the sound of the noon bell they threw the doors open and we rushed in. The land grab of 1889 had nothing on us.


First impressions – not great. Oh, the vendors were nice and the attendees interesting, but the show seemed flat to me. Maybe I’m just jaded.


Lots of Randalls, all at high prices. I understand that I can pay $400-$500 for a new one and wait 2.5 years for delivery or I can pay $700 (and up) now and walk off with one today. I’m not a collector so I tend to sooner or later use and resharpen my tools. I just can’t see those prices for a fixed blade factory knife.


We also found a lot of empty tables. That’s somewhat understandable. What’s sadder are the tables which sold out of everything before the show opened up. You thought the VIPs were first in? You forgot about the trading the night before in the hotel lobby and the selling between the dealers. If you absolutely must have the first access to the sellers, there’s only one answer: Buy a table.


We came across a German knife maker, Robert Kaufmann. This is his second trip over from Germany and each time he has sold a large fantasy knife. His most recent effort was a large take-apart fixed blade. Wow!

The sheath came apart, and the knife handle was pinned and wedged in place so it could be disassembled by hand. The handle held two matching chopsticks and each stick held a thin stiletto. My photo doesn’t do it justice. It was beautiful and a marvel to watch Robert slip the knife and sheath apart and then together.


Mantis has bought the design rights of a ringed knife from the father and son design team of Grant and Gavin Hawk. That Hawk family has some clever ideas. What does the knife look like?

Think of a donut with a hidden blade. The concept is way cool, but in all honesty, I’m not sure of the absolute function of the knife. Still, Mantis wants to rock the knife world and they are doing it.


I stopped by Benchmade to show them an auto of theirs I acquired recently. It’s a Mini-Reflex, but it’s different from the current production. The butterfly is labeled Bali-Song, not Benchmade. The blade is bead blasted not black-coated and the back of the blade says pre-production 1998.

Benchmade tells me they used ‘pre-production’ in place of ‘first production’ which they use now. The blasted blade was used in only a few small lots and Bali-Song is long gone. The knife is somewhat of a collectible, so I will fight the temptation to carry it.


I stopped at Busse/Swamp Rat/Scrap Yard. They didn’t have much on display and were taking orders. Honestly, I’m not impressed with the line-up of these knives. It’s the same as last year, just different handles.


If you want to see different styles of knives, go to TOPS. It’s a shopkeeper’s nightmare. So many different styles or SKUs, no matter what you stocked you won’t have what the customer wants. But if you need a specific shape, use or style of blade and thickness isn’t a factor, you’ll find something there.



I stopped to watch an engraver work on a knife. He used a sharp tool, a magnifying glass and a vice. From there he carefully cut and carved his design

by pressing hard sharp steel against another piece of metal. Five booths down another engraver worked with a stereomicroscope. A camera picked up the image for an overhead screen and he used power enhanced tools to engrave a piece of steel. Modern and more traditional just feet apart. The same contrast is found with hand sharpening on fine stones and powered continuous belts. You’ll find works of art at one table and crude semi-finished knives at another. Perhaps the best thing about the Blade Show is the contrast among people as well as the knives on display.

Blade Show: T minus 1 And Counting Down

We’ve arrived at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel, the home of the east coast Blade Show. It’s a very nice hotel, big and comfortable, deserving of a big name. I’m going to call it the hotel.


The Blade Show is setting up and only vendors and display staff are allowed in the hall. Mere mortals like myself are shunned from paradise, at least until tomorrow. I’ve got two Blade VIP passes from a friend at Spyderco which will grant us early entrance tomorrow at noon. This elevated status ends at 2:00 when everyone is let in.


What does it take to be a VIP? Do you have to write an article, sell/buy $20k in knives a year? Nope, just throw money at them or know someone in the business.


Everyone thinks the best deals are made during this 2-hour interval. Nope. The best deals happened prior to the show. Buyers and sellers are just meeting to consummate the deal. It’s like an arranged marriage, but no crying on the wedding night. The second best time is tonight and tomorrow after dinner. People will wander down into the hotel lobby, drink, tell tall tales and show off knives. If you’re in the right place and time with some stories of your own and wad of cash, you could score big.


Here’s the first photo of the Blade Show, the main entrance. From this point on it will never be this empty. Tomorrow through Sunday the entrance will be alive with people.

The trip down here through the rest of Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia wasn’t bad. Hot, but overcast which is not a bad combination for travel by car. I must be used to Georgia drivers. They didn’t seem too bad, so far. Last year I almost got a ticket for safe driving, but I convinced the state trooper to let me off with a warning and a promise to never use my turn signal to change lanes. Seems the local drivers don’t know what to make of proper lane changes.

Blade show 2001

Blade Show – T minus 2

The Knife Guy is on the road. My destination is not Atlanta, Georgia but the Blade Show held just outside of Atlanta. It’s been a good trip. My wife and I stopped in Cincinnati to have dinner with my brother and then it was on to the overnight stop in northern Kentucky.


So far my biggest problem is deciding which knives to carry. The initial decision was to have travel knives and show knives. This resulted in two major decisions. (Hey! To me they were major.). This process is moving me in the wrong direction, but I’m going to stick with it.


Last year I noticed most of the attendees had several knives on them. It was the polite icebreaker to ask, “So what are you carrying?” This required you to be able to show the knife off. More than one person had a belt hatchet but I didn’t see any swords so I figured I’d be safe with pocket knives.


I selected my SOG Spec Elite and my byrd Pelican. The lower case 'b' on byrd is correct. The trade name does not have a capital letter. The Pelican with its sheepsfoot blade has been discontinued, but I still think it’s a fine knife.


The show knives were not as diverse. I selected Spyderco’s PPT and a Santa Fe Stoneworks reworked Police model in blue-dyed mastodon molar. For a third knife I selected Ka-Bar’s original TDI fixed blade self-defense knife.


Since Benchmade is going to be present, I brought a Benchmade auto that has 'pre-production' marked on the back of the blade. I hope to find out what that is about.


It’s been a hot day and beer has been iced down for about half an hour so it’s time to sign off. Tune in tomorrow for another report.

Is and Isn’t: Memorial Day

May 30 is a grass roots holiday.  It was first started in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania in 1864 when local people decorated the graves of Civil War soldiers.  The trend spread and soon became a “ritual of remembrance and reconciliation.”  Following the War-To-End-All-Wars, Congress included the dead from the First World War.

Now the reality is that it honors all our brothers and sisters who served, many of whom died in service to our country.  We call it Memorial Day.

It never was meant as a sales promotion for Mega-Mart.

It’s a time to reflect on the sacrifice the living and dead have made for our country and, by extension, us.

It isn’t just a day off to mark the beginning of summer.

It is a time to have family around you.  The death of each of these men and women ended a family line of possibilities.  Who knows what other friends and family would gather with us if these lives were not cut short.  Their sacrifice makes us their spiritual descendents and we should honor that every day.

It’s not a time to catch up on house or yard work, but it may be a time to tend to forgotten service mens’ graves.

Use Memorial Day to celebrate your freedoms any way you want including the sale at Mega-Mart.  Just remember that someone paid the price for that freedom.  Spend it wisely.

The Unintended Collector

At what point do a couple or three things become a collection? Two birds don’t make a flock. Three people enjoying a couple beers aren’t necessarily a party. So when does a couple of cheese knives become a collection?


I think the question is better defined if we assume a collection has variation. Six identical steak knives isn’t a collection. It could be the beginning of a party, but it’s not a collection. The degree of difference is also an important component.


I have a friend who has a collection of Peterson’s “Field Guide to the Birds.”   Each copy is essentially the same, but one is hard cover with gold leaf edges. Another is a limited printing bound in leather with uncut pages. Others are the 1st through 5th editions, while others are mud stained from use and the last is the large print edition. It is the variation among the books that makes it a collection.


I can speak from experience: I have a similar collection of Sherlock Holmes books in my possession. Sherlock’s knife connection? Holmes uses a jack knife to fix his correspondence to the fireplace mantle. In modern England, he would be hard pressed to find a legal knife to pin his correspondence anywhere.


One day my wife realized she had a nice little cheese knife collection growing in the kitchen drawer.

The Arthurian cheese knife plunged into a block of cheese reads FROMAGE, or French for cheese. No surprise the blade is marked “Le Chef Sympa”. We bought that one on our way to the Finger Lakes region in NY. (Wineries were not on our tour, but the Corning glass museum was and is still an excellent destination.)


Knife number two is unknown; the blade is stamped with a simple “Stainless – Taiwan”. She got it from her mother, but it is not by any stretch of imagination an heirloom.


Knife number three is all plastic and we think we bought it at Cheese Haven in Port Clinton. We were on our way back from Camp Perry and I needed to stock up on fermented cow’s milk.


The fourth knife is another all plastic mystery knife. We bought it at a kitchen store on a trip to somewhere. Kind of tells you how impressed we are with it.


The last knife is made by Rada. It has a brushed aluminum handle which gives me the shivers every time I pick it up. It’s a little gruesome looking. If the blade were a little thicker you’d swear it was designed by Klingons for interrogating prisoners.


Which knife cuts the cheese the best? (Actually I wrote all of this so I could use that line.) The honors go to the untouchable Rada and mystery knife number 3.

Old and New Friends

I’m looking forward to seeing old friends at the Blade Show.


Santa Fe Stoneworks will be there and their work is hard to beat. I own several and I can’t bring myself to use them. They’re made to be used, but they are just too nice. I’m not one to carry an unusable knife. I recently cut my lawn and pondered the growing dandelion population. I don’t like to use weed killer, but I do. Unfortunately bad weather prevented me from dosing the lawn. My pocket knife let me cut the subsurface roots and remove the weeds. That made the blade butter knife dull. And that’s okay, 'cause they’re tools I use and I can resharpen.

Of course my favorite knife company Spyderco will be there. I like these people. I like their products, and I have a sweet spot for them. After I wrote my first article on the Bob Lum (green) Chinese Folder they mailed me a congratulations card for getting published. It meant a lot to me.

Ka-Bar is another company that has helped me and I look forward to seeing them. John Benner from TDI is a classic and I recommend his school to everyone. I hope he’s at the Ka-Bar booth. Both my wife and I look forward to seeing him.

There’s a few companies not listed that I’ll miss. Blind Horse Knives doesn’t have a table or booth, nor does James Pengov. I met James at a gun show, admired his engravings and helped get him a table at the yearly WRCA Show. No, I didn’t pull any strings. I just lent him my cell phone and encouraged him to call and reserve a table. His work does the rest and I have no question about his success.

I’m not a dedicated collector. I buy, save or use knives that catch my eye, fill a need or a concern. Because of this, it’s doubtful I ever have the type of collection relatives will fight over. I take a perverse sense of pride in this. So it’s interesting to see a new venue at the show.

This year’s Blade Show, sponsored by Tactical Gear Magazine (tactical = $$$ + black), will also be the Tactical Gear Show. Your Blade Show ticket is good for the gear show which runs the same time. If you are confused about the connection between knives and tactical (I’m not, but some of you may be) check the equation above.

Blade Show Count Down

I’m thinking Blade Show.



Of course you know when it will be, right? In the days before June 10 through 12, a migration of edge lovers will converge on Atlanta, Georgia. There are great knife shows all over the country, but excluding the industry-only SHOT Show, the Blade Show is the premiere knife show in America.


I’ll be blogging about my second trip to Capital of Cut, the Empire of Edge, the Satrap of Steel. I hope you follow along. I never know what will happen. I’m staying at the same hotel as the show so I may have a better chance of interacting with the attendees.


A schedule has been released of presentations, all the better to plot your course. Of course there are a few conflicts and hidden reefs. Everyone wants to hear Ed Fowler, so the conflict between his presentation at 11am and the 11:15 demo of renaissance swords and fencing in the courtyard remains unresolved.


I’m not a Buck collector so the conflict between Jens Anso’s “How to Texture Knife Handles” and the Buck Collectors is a non-issue.


Despite my interest in Loveless knives, anytime I can hear Ernest Emerson talk, I’m going with Ernie. No question on that. He’s an interesting character (I don’t think he would mind being called a character) and a good speaker. He preaches the gospel of self-reliance and self-protection. I’m on board for that.


World War II Randalls at 11:00 sounds interesting, but I just don’t know. I just can’t get my mind around collecting Randalls, much less paying what seems like stupid money and then waiting 5 plus years to get a custom factory knife. So Practical Knife Sharpening with Ed Fowler is going win that conflict.


Surprisingly, the knife cutting competition last year was not well attended, at least from my perspective. I expected a larger crowd. I’ll be there again, but I cannot help but wonder about the practicality of it. It’s a highly specialized sport that tightly regulates the knives used. This shifts the competition to the luck and skill of the knife wielder. Most of the time that’s a good thing, but… Is the Blade Cutting Contest like Indy Car racing?


Supporters argue that the lessons learned from making 500 miles of left turns (tells you where I fall in this argument) have value to modern tire, auto body and engine design. I know a little something about Indy tires and they have no relationship to the tires on your car.


So, do the lessons learned about steel, tempering, grind and grip needed to win the cutting contest have any relationship to the knife in your pocket? I just don’t know.

Glass and Steel

One outcome of a recent trip to Florida to visit my parents was my father giving me his father’s pocket knife. The knife has come full circuit. My grandfather passed away by his own hand when I was in eighth grade. He was very sick, suffering from emphysema and was chained to a large green tank of compressed oxygen. I always felt I understood his actions as tragic as they were.



I didn’t know my grandfather very well. Relations between these two grandparents and my family were strained and I never knew what was the cause. I still don’t. It’s in the past, buried and dead.


I do remember he used to give me old foreign coins. He delivered soda to bars on Chicago’s south side and he used to find foreign coins that people tried to slip into the soda (?) machines. I’m still a little surprised about the prevalence of soda vending machines in the 40’s and 50’s. What do I know? I remember he was a junker, a collector of copper wire, lead and newspaper for scrap sale. Like many Americans he was green before the concept of recycling. At the time it was called making ends meet. He liked to make elaborate bird cages of wire that he slipped through holes he carefully drilled in little wooden bars. The cages were all painted silver and always reminded me of castles. I’m sure the birds weren’t impressed by their cages, but I was.


My father gave me the knife after the funeral. It was a three-bladed folder, with one broken blade, two excessively sharpened blades in a beat up handle. It was a crap knife then, but it meant something to my father so it meant something to me.

Where's the rest of the blade?

 When I moved out to my first job, I gave the knife back to him. I didn’t know what my life would be like, but I knew I’d lose grandpa’s knife. Since it meant more to my father than me, I knew he should keep it. And he did. Some thirty years later he brings it out. The warm moist Florida air hasn’t been kind to the knife.

“Here,” he said. “Take your grandfather’s knife back home with you.” I’m glad he still remembered it.

the little pen blade - gone!

It must have been a nice knife at one time. Brass liners, a nice metal shield in the white handle and silver colored bolsters. Grandpa sharpened the blades past usefulness and somewhere snapped the pen blade. I touched up the base of the two remaining blades, but I can’t see a maker’s mark on either blade.


Sic transit gloria mundi!






I’m cleaning out my garage and ran across several old glass knives. Oh! They aren’t what you think. They look like little glass triangles.

Used glass knives....

I used to make them by scratching a thick glass bar and breaking the bar first into a square. A second diagonal scratch and a split turned the square into two imperfect triangles. If you did it right you got an incredibly sharp straight edge on each half.

Glass knives and a little bar stock

You could do it with a carbide scribe and glass pliers, but it’s easier to use a machine. The machine? It’s called a glass knife maker, of course.


The broken glass edge is so sharp you can’t find anything sharper, but it’s fragile, very fragile. What are they used for? Despite their fragility, glass knives are used to cut frozen tissue so thin you can look through it. I used these knives to cut transparent sections of tires and to shape resin blocks and samples for the cryo-microtome. With a cryo-microtome you can cut samples so thin you can shine electrons through them. That’s very thin.


A few problems with that edge. It was brittle and dulled quickly. Left overnight, the edge (from absorbing moisture) would be dull and useless. Bump the sample into it a little too hard, and the edge would explode glass shards in your face.


Still, if you wanted to cut tissue, rubber tires, plastic and so many other things so thin you could see, literally see, through your section, you needed a glass knife.




Weekend Adventure

I was unpacking my ditty bag and my little Swiss Army-style knife slipped out and splashed into the water-filled sink. I keep a little Kershaw with the ditties because of its multi-functions: two small blades, sturdy little scissors, nail cleaner and file, good tweezers and the all important fruit peeler. A hair blower and a little oil and the knife is as good as new.


I was unpacking from an overnight expedition to Camp Perry for the pop-up spring pistol match. It’s a fun match to raise money for the Friends of Camp Perry and run by the Ohio Rifle and Pistol Association or ORPA. The goal, worthy in my mind, is to improve the lot of service men and women stationed at Perry for tune-ups before shipping out. A very worthy goal.


It’s a fun match. Seven half-size humanoid plastic targets pop up and down forty times controlled by computer.

Nuff said!

Target rich environment

At most, two targets stand and you have to shoot them down. You get about 5 seconds per group, which is plenty of time to tactically engage each target with a pistol. Tactical come from a Latin word meaning ‘shoot the closest one.’ There are several scholars who believe the word actually comes from a different root meaning ‘make it black and cost more.’ What do I know?


I used to believe the targets had a steel plate behind them that sensed the impact and took the target down. This trip I stood in back of one (before the shooting started) and saw no plate, just holes.

It appears the plastic is a ‘self-healing’ material and the impact of the bullet vibrating the target is sufficient to trigger a response. It seems to work for .22 cal through .45ACP. Still, starting with a partially punctured green guy, adding 8 or more holes per target each relay, the 14th or 30th relay shooter starts to wonder, “Am I missing or am I shooting through a hole?”

No matter the score, it’s a fun time and we managed to eke out a dry and warm day. Friday was cold and rainy and Easter Sunday is cool and rainy, but Saturday was warm and sometimes sunny. But the wind!!

If you go to Camp Perry which is pressed into the shores of Lake Erie, be prepared for wind, wind and MORE WIND!

But truth be told (shooting anything .22 or bigger from 10 to 30 meters at a half-humanoid target), the wind isn’t a significant factor. I had a great time.

So is the Kershaw the only knife connection? Of course not. I know in our little group every shooter had at least one pocket knife.



SOG Spec Elite in pocket - Mouse gun in hand
(I asked...)



So I’m estimating there were at least 100 blades, maybe more at Perry. I know I had two.






Cosmoline Adventure

Everyone likes getting mail, so when the package arrived, I couldn’t wait to get it open. I suspected it was the sailor’s knife I recently won on eBay. I opened the package and found a cocoon of newspaper. When I sell stuff on eBay I try to pack the item so no damage can occur. After all, once it sells, I am sending it to its rightful owner so I want to be careful. So, seeing the wad of paper, my first thought was “wrapped the way I wrap things!”


Unrolling the knife revealed a grease covered slathered oval shaped object.  Well, there was so much cosmoline I wasn’t sure there was a knife present.


The time honored method of cleaning cosmoline from rifles is to stand in a hot shower in your skivvies and scrub the rifle with your toothbrush. Yuck…


I knew I needed a different way. I did find a site what showed a hot steam method and listed other methods of cleaning cosmoline.


http://www.surplusrifle.com/shooting/cosmoline/pdf/cosmoline.pdf

Partially cleaned - Now for the soak!

The best I’ve seen was a large two-tub ultrasonic unit at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot. You just opened the bolt and placed it in one tub for half an hour and then into a second bath which contained a rust inhibitor and light oil for a second half hour. When you came back your rifle was waiting for you. The cost was around 25 bucks and everyone who bought a surplus rifle thought it was a deal!


I wiped the majority of cosmoline off with old newspaper and submerged it in a solution of equal parts:


Mineral spirits,
Clenzoil,
WD40.


Between an old toothbrush and a spare turkey baster, I cleaned off most of the cosmoline. The blade compartments were too deep for my brush, so I cut a strip of cardboard and scoured them out. Still, it required a lot of soaking. If I were smart I would have left it in the solution overnight, but I was too impatient to wait.

Nothing Like a good soak

I finally got the gunk out of all the nooks and crannies. My cleaning solution went from a nice clear green to a muddy, turbid gray. I was afraid to use it on anything else, so I disposed of it.


It took a lot of wiping with rags followed by paper towels but I got most of the solvent removed. I suspect it will have to wait for a sunny hot summer day when I can wrap it in newspaper and leave it in the sun while I work around the yard. It would not surprise me if more cosmoline worked free in the heat.

Well at least I don’t have to worry about oiling it or protecting the blade for awhile.

Benchmade VS Spyderco

People ask, “What should I buy?  Spyderco Delica or Benchmade Mini-Griptilian?”

Good question, and as of now I don’t know which I would recommend, the Delica or the Mini-Griptilian.

First let’s ignore price.  It isn’t that I don’t want to get embroiled with deutschmarks, yen or dollars, but really,  the difference in money isn’t that much.

Also let’s ignore the stud option on the Griptilian.  That’s one less factor to compare.

	Delica	Mini-Griptilian
Handle	Flat, easy to nestle in pocket	Round, more natural feel
Lock	Spine, requires changing grip	Axis, just needs a free thumb
Clip	Movable to all 4 positions	Movable, left or right only
Steel	VG-10	154 CM, option of 440C
Weight	2.5 oz	2.56 oz
Blade Length	2.87 in	2.9 in
Handle length	4.25 in	3.87in

Well, that certainly makes it easier, right?  

Benchmade Mini-Griptillian with the cool reptile shaped blade

Truthfully, no.  I like the natural feel of the Mini-Griptilian.  The handle swell fits my hand and my wife’s hand equally well.  I like the flat thin Delica as it fits my pockets better.  Both knives open well but the Mini-Griptilian has a slightly smoother opening and a much better closing.

I prefer tip-up carry and I match the knife to either right or left pocket.  Either knife works for me.

Blade length?  If I can’t get most of the jobs done with either blade length, then the job calls for a specialized knife.

Weight?  If you can tell the difference between the knives based on weight, you are one sensitive dude.

I’m not a steel junkie.  Yes, there are some very special steels that give you incrementally better performance, but could you tell in the double blind cutting test?  I’d wager you could with sophisticated testing equipment.  By hand?  Nope!

Spyderco Delica

So where does this leave me?  I gotta go Spyderco.  Mostly for emotional reasons, these knives are tied to me.  The Delica was my first tactical knife.  My first published article was about a Spyderco.  My favorite tactical teacher carried Spyderco.  The first knife I gave my wife was a Spyderco.  And most important, they are completely dependable.

Benchmade, it’s a great knife.  My wife carries them and loves them.  So it remains your choice.  If you can’t decide, well, that’s nature’s way of saying buy them both.

Mini-reptile, not Griptilian.   Hard to fit in pocket or open