Pocket Knife Trauma

[kyratshooter]

Discounting fixed blades, lock blades, machetes, short swords and billhooks,

What is the most unusual job you ever remember you or anyone you have known to accomplish with a normal slip joint pocket knife?

Many of us spent decades in the woods without even considering the need for a fixed blade knife or any specialty knife. For many of us the pocket knife is the one single blade that will probably be available in an emergency, yet we ignore it to spend hours contemplating and talking about knives that live in a pack or on a shelf 99% of the time.

I do not think I ever wore a knife on my belt until I entered the Army, and I remember the feeling of having the knife on my belt being more strange than carrying the gun on the opposite side. I still carried a 4 blade camp knife as a backup and seldom took the fixed blade out of its sheath.

I have field dressed deer using a Barlow, built fire kits using a pen knife and dressed out a couple of rabbits using the SAK Classic on my keychain.

I think my own strangest incident was the neighbor that got his arm caught in a corn picker and amputated it himself using a 3 blade stockman. He is still alive and still farming the same fields, but would have bled out if not for the presence of a pocket knife 40 years ago.

[hunter63]

The Barlow was standard kid pocket knife....and have dressed deer and many rabbits, squirrels, fish, ducks, grouse.....was used more as a after school hunting knife.....than a fixed blade.
Never really carried a fixed blade till I was in my 20's as a hunting and camping knife, and was a Mora....always had been folder of some sort.

Most unusual, was jumping the starter terminals with a SAK while in the Blue Ridge Mountains.....when the starter was messing up.....kinda fried it.

[welderguy]

I got my first knife at 8 a SAK my brother bought me, it did everything from making wood chips for a fire to cleaning game. I acquired a fixed blade around 10 or so and hardly used it. always went to my " all around field knife" or by today's version the "ultimate survival knife"

[crashdive123]

Always had a pocket knife. While I don't recall anything particularly odd about things that were done with it, it was indispensable. Skinning squirrels, cleaning fish, making stuff (tent stakes, cooking sticks), opening cans, etc. I think we played mumbley peg almost daily.

[kyratshooter]

My Dad was one of the original "nerds" of the post war education boom, right down to the pocket protector and slide rule on the belt.

Honest To God, he wore a pocket protector and slide rule on the belt as part of his official EDC, only changing to a calculator on the belt in the late 1970s.

He never carried money or credit cards and purposely presented himself as helpless as a wounded goose to keep from having to do normal things, like take care of himself. Now remember that this was the era of the "pay phone" so Dad was unable to call home for an emergency on several occasions due to not have the necessary dime.

Along with no money he also carried no pocket knife and not even a pair of fingernail clippers. I never saw how one could go through life with no pocket knife. One of my most embarrassing moments of childhood was watching him try to open a well taped postal package with his teeth!

I offered my pocket knife for his use but was rebuffed with the certainty of "I'll get it!". There I stood, Barlow knife in hand, watching my father chew through a cardboard box like a rabid beaver.

I believe that scene warped me to the point that I go into a panic when I realize I have forgotten to carry my pocket knife, and carry multiple small and handy cutting tools, just in case.

[crashdive123]

Haha. That reminds me of a recent experience. I was purchasing a box of protein bars at a store. They were marked for individual sale, so the box needed to be opened so that a bar could be scanned. The cashier struggle opening the box. I asked her to hand it to me which she did. I pulled out my knife (small sheathed Crashblade) and opened the box. She looked at me with a panic stricken look on her face as I slid the knife back into the sheath. I must have had a quizzical look on my face because she blurted out "You can't have that in here.....it's dangerous". My response was "Lady, it's not like I took out my gun and shot the box open". I'm not sure if she still works there or not.

[natertot]

I took a two week class last summer. On the first day, the instructor passed out the brand new books still sealed in the plastic wrap. After a few seconds of struggling with the plastic, I pulled out my folder and cut a little tear which allowed me to pull the plastic off. When I pulled out the knife, the lady next to me exclaimed "Geez, weapons of mass destruction over here!". A few seconds later, she gets the plastic from her book under a fingernail and started bleeding. I looked at her and said it looks like the plastic is more dangerous than my pocket knife. She scowled for a minute not knowing what to do. Finally I reached into my bag and gave her an alcohol wipe, triple anti-biotic ointment and a Band-Aid. The rest of the class had witnessed everything that had taken place and every last one came to me to open the plastic for them!

I truly believe that a blade is the single most useful item that mankind has ever created. Firearms only replaced it for self defense because of range. I personally wouldn't be caught dead without a knife. No, really, it is in my will that I be buried with a blade!

[Rick]

I can't remember not carrying a knife. I had one as a kid. It's just an indispensable tool.

[BornthatWay]

Way to go Naterrtot. You taught a class before the class began.

[Arctic Fox]

At around 11 years old i finally convinced my parents to get me a knife. Started with a gerber and now 4 years later i have benchmade 940 that rests in my pocket any and all times I'm not at school. My family likes to tease that if anyone ever needs something while we are out and about just to ask me..... Thats fine with me though!

[Faiaoga]

Living where coconut palms grow, I parked my car in the parking lot of the medical clinic and had a palm frond fall in front of the car. By notching and slicing, I was able to cut and break off the fallen palm frond. No machete was handy, so I had to improvise with a pocketknife.

[Duece]

I cannot remember a time when i didnt carry one,it just feel strange to not feel that weight in my pocket,usually carry a small single blade SAK and a leatherman folder.lately have been torn between a ckrt assisted open and the leatherman i like the easy open on the ckrt but the leatherman is just a much better blade,half the time i just give up and carry both and feeling a little overdressed.....so to speak lol

[Old Professor]

I also can not remember a time when I did not carry a pocket knife. As a kid and an adult, my mother always said that I wasn't to be trusted with anything sharp --- and I have plenty of scars to prove she was right! Thankfully, the family no longer says that about me, ---now they say it about my son-in-law, who has out done me by a wide margin in self inflicted knife wounds. As a teenager my favorite pocket knife was a Case Trapper. Then as a young adult I started carrying a Swiss Army Knife (this was before multi-tools) which came in handy in the classroom for all those little jobs you can not do well with your finger nails. I never had a supervisor say anything about my carrying a pocket knife while I was teaching. When I was woods running, I usually added a Buck folder in a belt sheath or another pocket. Although I have owned and used many sheath knives, they were always carried for hunting and fishing purposes. My pocket knife choice today at age 74 is still a Swiss Army knife but a model called the Treckker (I believe). It is larger than a standard SAK but it has every thing on it I want and use regularly. As I start off every morning, I drop my pocket knife and keys in my right front pocket, any change in my left front pocket, my wallet in my left rear pocket and a handkerchief in the right rear pocket and I am ready to face the world!

[hunter63]

It's a wonder any one ever "survived" prior to 1982 with out a massive survival knife....Rambo Movie

[DSJohnson]

It's a wonder any one ever "survived" prior to 1982 with out a massive survival knife....Rambo Movie

Wait, didn't all you guys have a "real" Genuine Bowie knife prior to John Rambo introducing the world to the real survival knife?

[kyratshooter]

Those were the days when we were taught that one did not need a honking big knife to be a woodsman and that it was a sure sign of a greenhorn fool souse in the woods.

Bowies were fighting knives, and since we were not intending to do any fencing they were best left in museums and hanging on the wall attached to a walnut plaque.

The resurgence of the bowie has taken place due greatly to the requirements of the Knifemakers' Guild, which has a master craftsman requirement that can only be met by producing a bowie or a Roman short sword.

That and the modern trend of using a big knife in place of the hatchet and expecting it to be master of all work.

[LowKey]

I used to have a little bone handled folder as a kid. Dad got it for me at a little hardware store in town when I was old enough to go fishing. About 6 or 7 I think.
Graduated to a curved blade stainless folding orchard knife in high school. Not only did it do work in the garden and work after school, it was the best for shucking cherrystones and gutting fish. Now I just carry a leatherman. Because it is part of my work gear I can carry it places most wouldn't be able to bring a knife. But not all places and not off hours.
I'm looking at getting Skeletool cuz I really only ever seem to need the knife and the pliers.

Crash, it would have made my day to be waiting in that cashout line behind you.
That's a funny story.

[Wildthang]

My dad had a small old Timer that has 3 blades. One of the blades was small and dad always told me that that was a blade for castrating cattle. Any way he kept that small blade razor sharp so he could slice the corns off of his toes!
God it always freaked me out when I would walk out on the porch and he was doing that!

[DSJohnson]

My father always carried two pocket knives. One a very small "pen knife" to clean his fingernails and open mail. The other was a 4 blade yellow handled Case brand pocket knife. I have watched him make gaskets, whittle a wooden plug for a leaking gas tank, do field surgery (usually on me) clean fish, skin and dress deer and other game, open oil cans, clean/scrap battery terminals, and use it when he was grafting pecan trees. I watched him use his knife one time to "dig" a BB out of a gentleman's face when we had been dove hunting. He used his Zippo to heat the blade, then he slit the skin and the shot "popped" out and we all went back to shooting dove.

[crashdive123]

Your Dad hunted with Dick Cheney?

Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.