What’s your life game? I discovered long ago my life plan involves knives. Folding knives, fixed blades, pocket knives, survival knives, tactical knives, it doesn’t matter to me. As long as it has an edge, I’m interested. Join me as I write about life, knives and the things seen from the knife edge.
Monday, May 15, 2017
Friday, April 28, 2017
Boker Mini Kalashnikov Auto
Boker knives are some of the hidden gems in the knife
market. Mostly because they don’t have
the advertisement clout others do. But
smart thinkers and cagey knife users should be thinking about the Boker brand.
Boker traces its roots to tool manufacturing the 1800s in
Germany. Swords were the name of the
game, but they diversified into other edged products. The family owned company sent representatives
to America and opened up manufacturing in America. They both shared the “Tree Brand“ logo.
During the Second World War the Solingen plant was destroyed
and Boker USA took control of the trademark.
In the 1950s the German factory was rebuilt. Over the years the American company
closed. The German company changed hands
but in 1986 Boker reacquired the rights to the American brand and established
facilities in Denver, Colorado.
Boker has manufacturing
in Germany (of course!), Argentina, Taiwan and China and now in the
USA. They produce three basic levels
depending on the price point: Boker, Magnum and Boker Plus.
I once did a special order of a special knife to commemorate
the customer’s son-in-law’s military promotion.
It was a beautiful Damascus bladed folder. The blade was carved from 300-fold forged
Damascus steel from the barrel of a German Leopard 1 tank.
The knife came in a nice wood presentation box with the
instruction and history in German. The
buyer was very happy, as his son-in-law spoke German for the Army. I have a friend who spoke German for the Army;
he was a spy. I didn’t ask any more
questions.
So if your introduction and thoughts about Boker are from
the Magnum $7 knife pile, think again.
Boker's switchblade |
I just got my hands on the Boker Mini Kalashnikov auto. I’m very impressed. Here’s the stats:
Blade: drop point
Steel: AUS8
Blade Length: 2.5
inches
Handle length: 3.5
inches
Weight: 2.1 ounces
Handle: reinforced
nylon
Country of origin: Taiwan
The Boker website claims the handle is aluminum but they
also claim the blade is wood. Hummm,
someone’s website has been hacked.
Clip side |
The blade shows the same powerful spring action I’ve seen in
Benchmade autos. Block the blade from
completely opening and when the obstacle is removed, the spring still has
enough force to finish the opening and lock the blade in place. The pocket clip is reversible and the handle
sports a lanyard hole.
The finger grooves really provide a grip so you can concentrate on using the knife and not holding the knife |
The finger scallops fit my hand pretty good for a small
knife. And between the scallops and the
jimping on the blades spine and handle you get a very good grip. The blade release is a basic plunge lock
system. This system has been used for
many years and is very dependable if you keep it clean. But isn’t that true of all machinery?
The open back allows for easy cleanup and makes oiling the spring much simpler. |
I suspect it uses a coil spring and the knife has Torx
screws so you can replace the spring if necessary.
I have come to like auto more and more. I don’t suspect they open any significantly faster
than the assisted or many of the tactical knives. But I do think pushing a button is a
gross motor skill and doesn’t require the fine motor skills which are lost
under the influence of fight/freeze/flee conditions.
I wish I could take it for a drive, but it isn’t mine. I have no doubt it would serve me well.
It retails for about $55 but you can get it for less if you shop
around. I’ve got two for sale, but
that’s another story.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Ready…. Set… Count!
Guinness records just established
a category for the world’s largest knife collection. They decided it takes at least 2100 unique
knives to define a large collection. So
now you know. If someone asks you if you
have a large collection the answer is mostly likely “no.”
The current record holder is Luis
Bernardo Mercado (Fremont, CA.) who comes in at 2175. Congratulations, Luis!
These knives represent 6
continents, 29 countries and 400 different brands and custom makers and 50
years of collecting.
The process of documenting the
size of your collection isn’t trivial.
Perhaps that’s a new category for Guinness: most difficult
documentation. Of course as soon as you
win this one, it’s likely the documentation of your documentation would cancel
out your win.
Luis started collecting at five,
so it may be too late for some of us to attempt to claim that title for ourself,
but he’s confident the title is only transitory as he’s the first to claim it.
Monday, April 24, 2017
Spring Sharpening
With the arrival of warm weather my
grass has redoubled its effort to make my yard an uneven carpet of green. Before getting the lawn mower out I needed to
resharpen the blade.
I’ve stopped taking it to a lawn or
garden center and getting the blade resharpened. I bought a little attachment for my Dremel
tool. The attachment screws on to the
front of the tool and come with a special diameter grinding stone. A guide helps me hold the blade angle and
lets me grind out the really dull and damaged
areas.
Start your sharpening! |
I clamp the blade down on a sheet
of plywood and run the Dremel grinding stone over the old edge several times
until the old discoloration is gone and so are the majority of nicks and gouges
in the edge. I use the plastic guide to hold
the angle, but perfection isn’t required.
A fine dry stone pulls the wire edge off the other side. I should mention my mower blade is a classic
chisel grind. I test the sharpness by
shaving the edge of the plywood board I use as a work station.
The last step before reinstalling
the blade is to check the balance. If one side of the blade was significantly
heavier, the mower would vibrate and damage itself, perhaps even break a blade. The heavy side just gets another pass and a
second balance check. Repeat as
required.
Since I was in sharpening mode I
got out my Ken Onion Work Sharp blade grinder and sharpened my hatchet.
As you know I recently discovered
my SOG camp hatchet was extremely dull but luckily my friend Derrick brought
his Gerber hatchet. Having a fire in the
fireplace as part of the evening’s entertainment and as a back-up to winter
storm power failures is a nice luxury.
The price you pay for this is splitting wood into suitable burning
size. A sharp hatchet is required and
mine needed a good sharpening.
Every fire deserves a sharp hatchet |
Before sharpening, note nicks in blade |
The blade looked good so I changed
to a medium grit. That took a little
more off and I was satisfied. But how
you really tell if your axe is sharp?
I decided performance was the only
way. I grabbed a section of a
landscaping tie and a length of pine 2X4 and tried it out. I was less than impressed.
The hatchet didn’t cut the wood
fibers, but crushed them. Definitely not
sharp. I changed the angle to 10 degrees
and repeated the process. This angle
worked better.
bye-bye nicks! |
While I was touching up the edge I
noticed the cutting edge wasn’t centered in the blade’s secondary bevel. This typically happens when one side of a
blade is sharpened more than the other.
I played with it for a while and discovered one side the bevel is flat
ground while the other is slightly convex.
This bevel asymmetry is the cause for the non-centered edge.
I worked on the edge a bit more and
called it finished. It’s not perfect,
but it’s sharper than it was. Chopping
pine boards may not be the best material to judge hatchet performance. I’ll look around for actual logs to try it
out.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Wandering Thoughts
Let's go meandering!
I just had another person ask me if my Spydercos were
real.
I’m getting tired of this.
I am an honorable knife dealer and would not sell you a knife you didn’t
want, just to make a sale. Nor would I
sell you a counterfeit or broken knife.
I buy from one of the largest wholesalers in the country and they buy
directly from the knife makers.
I’m going start telling those asking me that question, “If
you want to buy counterfeits, you’re going to have to go elsewhere.”
This is a growing problem.
Last January, Spyderco sued the Kittery Trading Post for selling counterfeit
Military and Paramilitary identified by Kittery as Spyderco clones. Now maybe you think it’s cool to own a counterfeit,
after all you paid $35 for a $100+ knife.
Until it fails, breaks or you find you have to sharpen it all the
time. Maybe you trade that counterfeit to
a buddy (who you really don’t like, otherwise why would you take advantage of
him?) for something they have or to settle a loan.
But you know, you’re hurting the knife community. You’re making a statement about what kind of
person you are and what kind of people you want as friends… I hope you eat shit and die on your birthday.
Thread Vs Tread
Thread means a fine cord made of two or more twisted
fibers.
Tread means to trample on or crush underfoot. It’s also the part of the tire contacting the
ground.
Language changes, so I looked them up in the Encarta Dictionary just to make
sure I knew the differences..
I just saw the back of his sweatshirt. It had a very nice libertarian statement
about being race, religion, and gender blind and emphasizing a true patriot
loves his country but not necessary his government.
I agree with many of the things sweatshirt stated. It ended with the famous quote from the
Gadsden Flag that even non-history buffs surely remember.
But the real quote is “
tread on me.” and not as his sweatshirt stated, “…thread on me.”
Perhaps it’s a quote from a historic group of embroiderers.
Kydex continues to rule in the knife sheath and gun holster
world. It has a lot of advantages and a
few disadvantages. It doesn’t stretch
out of shape, rot from exposure to water or corrode brass fittings because it
doesn’t have leather’s fatty acids and it’s strong and difficult to
puncture. I really like the puncture
resistance aspect. A fall in the
outdoors can be dangerous enough, but cutting yourself because the knife split
its leather sheath can be fatal.
Having said that, leather is quiet and doesn’t make a
scratchy sound when brambles brush across it.
I saw a kydex worker at the last Medina gun show and he had
an interesting partial solution to the holster/sheath dilemma. You know what that dilemma is, don’t you?
The problem any holster seller has is never having the right
holster or sheath and too many of the ones nobody wants. Add the problem of color or design and it’s a
small wonder anyone wants to sell holsters/sheaths.
This maker had several large clamshell-like wooden crates on
wheels containing his kydex press, sander, band-saw, buffing wheels, jig-saw
and heat source. It was like bringing
your factory to the show. Next to him he
had a table with several previously made holsters for some of the more common
guns. He had just finished making a
knife sheath when I came by. He also did
a very nice, compact holster for a Sig with a light on it.
I didn’t ask prices, but it can’t be cheap to make holsters/sheaths
during the show and have to transport all that equipment. Still it’s an interesting development.
I suspect the real answer to custom-fit holsters/sheaths
will be a laser scanner interfaced to computer driven 3-D printer. You read it here first!
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Axe And You Will Receive
I recently spent an extended weekend
in a cabin in southern West Virginia. It
is beautiful country filled with rugged trails and incredible views. The cabin had a brick lined fireplace and a
wood pile was available, so I made use of it.
In anticipation of chilly nights
and warm fires I packed my SOG hatchet.
It didn’t work very well. Despite
the small amount of cutting I did several years ago, my hatchet was dull. Using that axe really brought out the true
meaning of the expression, “Firewood warms you twice. Once when you cut it and again when you burn
it.”
Fortunately my nephew brought his
hatchet, a smaller and much sharper Gerber.
It didn’t take too much work before I realized that my SOG made fast
work of splitting quarter logs in to eighths, but was crappy for making the
thin pencil-like sticks need to build fires.
The Geber made nice pencils of wood but failed to impress the larger
quarter logs.
The Gerber is noticeable lighter and compact than the SOG |
The two hatchets would complement
each other (after I re-sharpened the SOG), but you really can’t completely
interchange them.
The Gerber has a small head
resembling a flat grind Regular Wisconsin while the SOG has what appears to be
a modified double bevel Virginia.
Gerber hatchet head |
Don’t
be confused, think of grind the same way as you think of knife grinds. Axe head style defines the shape and
appearance of the axe head. Historically,
some heads worked better than others for specific jobs. What worked for splitting long logs into
quarters or fence rails, wasn’t the best design for log bucking. Some axe heads just develop a regional
interest and became known by that name.
SOG hatchet head |
My cutting experience indicated
the Gerber might be a great hatchet for backpacking. It weighs in at 22.4 ounces and is 14 inches
long. Not a bad combination for carrying
in a pack. The small size limits its
practical use. Need to cut a tent pole
or cut down branches into small burnable size?
Great! Quarter a four inch
diameter log, not so hot. Typically,
after you drive the hatchet into wood, you would pull the handle to one side or
the other to rotate the metal head to act as an expanding wedge. This action causes the crack to propagate
down the wood. The short handle made it
feel like I couldn’t produce enough torque to turn the axe head and the split
wood. The handle is a fiberglass
composite and I felt queasy about using it as a lever arm.
My dull SOG weighs in at 33
ounces and is 16 inches long. The steel
is a 1055 steel. It is too heavy for very
much backpacking. Car camping, sure
bring it along, but why not bring a three quarters length axe and really chop
wood?
The SOG’s weight and steel handle
gave me confidence I wasn’t going to break anything but the log when I twisted
the hatchet handle to pry wood apart.
The dullness made it difficult to cleanly split the wood into pencil
size kindling.
The SOG camp axe has a RC hardness
of 50-55. Not bad for a hatchet, but I
noticed that after several days of chopping wood the edge had several
dents. Clearly a sharpening stone or
file should be this hatchet’s constant companion.
Pick the right tool for the right job! |
All I could find on the Gerber
was that it has been replaced by a new and improved version. The hardness wasn’t published. But I wouldn’t be afraid to carry it into the
woods.
So, I learned I need to look
after my hatchet better and that proved what I already knew: the right tool
makes any job easier!
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
About the Show
The last Medina gun show was a
little trippy.
Right off the bat two guys comes
up to my table and point at the Benchmade knives and asked “Are they real?”
Wow, what an existentialist
question! Plato thought that everything
was an imperfect copy of an ideal object.
Somewhere there is the perfect knife which displays all the attributes,
all the knifieness that a knife should have and in perfect portions.
Astrophysicists suggests that all
matter is a hologram of an information trapped in the event horizon of a
massive black hole.
I really didn’t know how to
answer them until I realized they were asking if my knives were
counterfeit. It was a little insulting
and I should have told them to fuck off.
I usually only come to that conclusion sometime later, so I told them what
I know and suggest that if they buy a $200 knife for $50, something isn’t on
the level.
One of them asked if his Spyderco
Civilian was a knock-off. Frankly, in
many cases, it’s almost impossible to tell without doing both destructive and
non-destructive testing. They bought it
for 50 bucks off a guy who thought it was a counterfeit. I think they got what they paid for.
********
After a few sales I realized the
main advantages of not buying from the internet.
One: you can pick it up, hold it
and compare it to similar object and decide which is the best for you.
Two: you get it right now.
********
In the gun side, I was surprised
to see a lever action cowboy rifle with a bullseye type peep sight fixed to the
top of the receiver. In retrospection I
don’t see why not. Most guns are more
accurate than we are, I just don’t think of a lever action as a 500 yard gun.
********
I was filling in for my friend
John, who needed to make a pit stop.
John sells ammo among other things.
So I was surprised when someone asked if the one ounce novelty pennies
were gold.
“No sir, just copper.” I said.
Especially since they are on sale for 5 bucks.
I get similar questions about a
line of Marttiini fixed blades I carry.
People what to know if they are made from the laminated steel they have
read about. Again a simple examination
of the prices revels they don’t sell for the $500 plus that Fallkniven asks for
their laminated steel.
*************
We had a little bad news on
Sunday morning. We arrived just ahead of
the opening bell and found out our neighbors had an S&W watch stolen. They covered their table and were one of the
last to leave. Only a few other vendors
and security was left behind. It means
someone:
Knew it was there,
Waited until the place was empty,
Walked around to the back of the
table,
Lifted the cover cloth and stole
it.
You expect a small amount of
theft from the general public but not from the other vendors. (We had a inexpensive CRKT knife lifted from the table during a show.) It wasn’t an
expensive watch, but now I have to wonder if someone will do that to me?
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