Perhaps there was nothing in the 1980’s that catapulted knife collecting so much as the infamous “Rambo Knife”. In the 1982 movie First Blood, burned out and shell shocked Vietnam Vet John Rambo waged his own personal war against a small town sheriff, eventually involving the state police, the national guard and local militia wanna-bes. His only weapon? A hollow handled saw tooth backed bowie knife.

The knife was made by Jimmy Lile of Arkansas (now deceased) specifically for the movie; Lile went on to make subsequent knives for the second movie, Gil Hibben made the knife for the third one. That knife and all the inevitable knock offs led to every adolescent boy in America (or so it seemed at the time) and a good many grown men buying hollow handled, saw tooth backed “survival knives”. As is often the case, however, the knock offs were of poor quality and the buyers were more often than not disappointed.

Now for any serious survival type, the knife in the movie seemed like a bit of overkill. I would much rather have my Ka-Bar and a 3 blade folder, but it is hard to sell that in a movie. With a 9 inch blade, a cord wrapped handle and a Phillips head screwdriver on the handle guard, the knife is supposed to prepare one for every eventuality. In the movie, Rambo makes a spear and hunts wild boar with it (do not try this at home)!

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Perhaps no piece of equipment is so anachronistic on the battlefield as the bayonet. Mention fixing bayonets and you think of Gettysburg and the battle of Little Round Top, with Joshua Chamberlin and the 20th Maine executing a right hand wheel formation… well, OK, that is what I think of, anyway.Bayonets are seldom used anymore in actual conflict, with war being a much more hands off sort of business these days. The Marines, however, are always a very hands on group, so I was tickled to see their latest version of the bayonet.

This is a very different sort of knife than the more traditional dagger we saw on the M7 bayonet, which was just a redesign of the M6 left over from WWII. I like the modified Bowie design. If you are going to go to the trouble to carry something used as seldom as a bayonet, it had better serve double duty as a utility knife; the OKC-3S fits the bill perfectly.

I think I want one to go with my Ka-Bar, upon whose design the new bayonet is obviously based.

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Personally, I would just love it if Santa could see his way clear to send me a new Spyderco Military, the last one I owned having grew legs on a recent hiking trip. However, I am a simple man.

If you could get any knife in the world for Christmas, which one would it be? Would it be a tactical folder?  A new pocket knife? A completely impractical fantasy sword?

Put your Christmas wish list in the comments. (And Happy Holidays!)

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Colonel James Bowie was a soldier and pioneer who had a huge role in the battle for Texan independence from Mexico, and died at the battle of the Alamo. However, millions of people around the world know of him only because of his knife.

In 1830, Bowie went to Arkansas blacksmith James Black and presented him with a wooden model of a knife and asked Black to make it for him. Black did, and the result was the first real Bowie knife. That first knife is lost to history, but because of all the copies that were made, we have some idea of what it looked like.

The blade was longer than six inches, with some claiming it was as long as 12 inches. Most speculate eight to ten was more likely. It has a very wide blade of an inch and a half to two inches and was around a quarter of an inch thick. (You can see, this was no small knife). The blade curved upward in a broad clip point, and the back of the clip point was sharpened for back slashing. Some reports say that the back of the blade had a strip of brass inlaid, to catch opponents blades in a knife fight, but that is uncertain. However, we do know at least some blades had such a strip.

The Bowie “knife” actually had much more in common with the saber used by the Army, and such features as the soft brass back and the wide sweeping hand guard show that fighting with such a knife was based on fencing techniques.

Having a knife custom made was no big feat in those days, and was actually quite common. In fact, the Bowie knife would have faded into history the same way countless others had were it not for the infamous sandbar duel. In 1827, Bowie was engaged in a feud with Norris Wright, who was a Louisiana Sheriff. Wright had spread rumors about Bowie, causing him to be denied a loan for a land deal Bowie was speculating in.

When they were both in attendance at another party’s duel on a sandbar outside Natchez, Mississippi, a fight broke out. The exact details are sketchy, but we do know that when all was said and done, Bowie had been shot twice, stabbed with a sword and hit over the head with a pistol, breaking it in the process. As for everyone else, Bowie killed two (disemboweling one) and wounded three more, with one of them having their forearm severed. All of this with a mere knife.

Bowie’s reputation as a knife fighter was now secured for all of history, and everyone wanted to have a knife like his. After Black made the new knife for Bowie three years later, Black was swamped with orders for a “Bowie Knife”. In a future post, I will talk about the influence of the Bowie knife on modern knives.

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Despite that it is at a domain called All About Pocket knives, it also has forums for tactical knives, fixed blade hunting knives and much more.

Also of some note is that the forum has a site for trading knives. It is a much more genteel way to swap knives that just throwing them up on eBay.

Do you have any favorite knife collecting resources you like?

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Well, that was before The Schrade company closed their doors after 100 years of being in business, and before the name was bought and slapped on cheap knives from China that bear little resemblance to the wonderful knives of our memories.

Today, there is an avid little community of folks who collect the originals, and while I am not quite avid, I am energetic, so if I see one for a good price, I will snap it up.

While surfing the internet instead of actually working,  I found this list of Schrade Old Timer models. While by the author’s own admission it is far from definitive, it is a great starting point for all of us who wish for the old days.

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The Leatherman is basically a folding pair of pliers, with a knife, screwdriver, file and other nifty tools in the handles. The whole thing folds up and fits in a small pouch that you can carry on your belt.

A lot of people think of the Leatherman as a knock off of the Swiss Army Knife, but while the Swiss Army Knife is a knife with a bunch of other tools, a Leatherman is more like a pair of pliers with a bunch of other tools.

The thing I like most about the Leatherman is the very sleek, very function over form sort of look. I apologize in advance here, ladies, but it looks like the sort of knife a man would design. No plastic handles, no frilly lanyard; just brushed steel and a leather belt pouch.

The person I think that would get the most use from a Leatherman tool would be the person who needs access to it more often than occasionally. A Swiss Army Knife may be better if you just use it every once in a while. I wonder which one MacGyver would use if the show was on now?

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As a boy, I was captivated by the Swiss Army Knife, which promised to solve any problem from picking splinters to emergency field amputation. Now, I did not actually know anyone that had a Swiss Army knife, but that did not slow me down, because I watched that most 80’s of TV shows, MacGyver. In case you don’t remember, the mullet wearing, world saving, duct-tape using protagonist saved the world on a weekly basis, often with little more than duct tape and his trusty swiss army knife. (more…)

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While surfing the internet, I came across the following description of the history of the Gerber Mark II from a Gerber customer service rep written back in 1997 or so, when Gerber was still producing the Mark II.

I especially found the tie in to the folks at Fort Lewis interesting, as well as the mention of the 5 degree cant in the original design. Other references to the 5 degree cant mention that it was for better penetration when used for sentry removal…

Anyway, here you go. After the quoted material is a picture of an early Mark II, although without the canted blade. (more…)

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In WWII, it was issued (in several variations) to various Allied special operations units, such as the British Commandos, the American OSS (precursor to the CIA) and the Marine Raiders. It was developed by William Ewart Fairbairn and Eric Anthony Sykes before the War, but it was as a killing knife on the front line that it gained its fame. (more…)

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