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

A Number Game

All blogs no matter the topic, knife, airgun or apron wearing, all blogs attempt to attract readers. We write blog, therefore we seek an audience. And bigger is, in this case, better.


Let’s cut through the mumbo jumbo and stats we get from blogger or wherever you get your numbers.  We all feel this way sometimes.



Take it away Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine