Cringeworthy Blade Misuse

I can't believe folks try cutting with the blade upside down - do they not have eyes?

Benchmade Spike, first nice knife - friend who owns nice knives and knows how to use them - asks to see it and then promptly starts stabbing a couch cushion on a concrete floor. No more tip (like 1/2" at least)... oh, yeah - he was drunk. So 2/3rds my fault I guess :doh:

I've definitely cut myself nicely showing how great the retention is for a sheath to a buddy, started shaking it up and down - mind you this was a friction fit sheath with no flap, strap, or any other means of retaining the blade. Whelp on one upward motion the knife came out and as I swung down it stabbed right into the flesh on the side of my hand. He wasn't so impressed with the retention needless to say :D
 
SharpieB said:
Caught me. :cool:

Actually, my wife remembered I had a package delivered earlier in the day while I was watching TV in bed. She grabbed it for me and I opened it right away. No fondling of knives though, just dropped the damned Knife right after I opened it.:thumbsdown: The other knife bit me while I was fondling it in the kitchen. :p
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I try not to play with knives while sitting in my lazy boy. Too many times i fall asleep with the knife in my lap and wake up, stand up and hear the clatter as my knife hits the floor. If I’m lucky the blade is closed.
 
In 1968, my dad was a Load-master on C-130's for the Air Force. Not assigned to Vietnam, but he did go there on occasion. On one deployment, a Green Beret needed a ride to Japan for some R&R. It was technically against regulation, but he offered his SOG bowie(fat guard) for passage! I was in LOVE with that knife! After he got out, it occupied a place on his dresser, and only occasionally saw any use. That is, until 1973, when my older brother, about 13 at the time, used it as a screwdriver, and broke more than 1/4" of the tip off. Now, I've seen a few SOG bowies with reground tips, and they still go for a couple of grand(around here), if done well. BUT, my dad just tossed it in the trash, never to be seen again. I still miss that one....
 
Jack_Burton said:
And this person was a scout leader? I thought knife care was a topic covered in the Scouts. o_O
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In my experience, Boy Scouts' "knife care" training was nothing more than a euphemism for "knife safety." Lessons rarely delved deeper than the cliche's of: (i) never allow anyone within your blood circle (let nobody within your wingspan while handling a knife); (ii) do not cut toward yourself under any circumstances; (iii) never carry a knife with a blade longer than 4 inches; and (iv) fixed blades are dangerous. Naturally I ignored all of these rules once I realized (around age 7) they were designed for/by suburbanite sheep. Granted, I was an unwilling resident amongst such people at the time...

Here is another tale of foolhardy knife misuse:

Fast forward six years from the abuse inflicted on my CRKT. It was the summer after my first year of law school and I was enjoying a relaxing evening with several members of the campus shooting/hunting club. The central character in this story was an older colleague who had treated us to a tasting of his whiskey/bourbon collection. After several flights of diverse bourbons, all those in attendance drew their pocketknives at one point or another to flick open while we chatted. My bourbon collecting friend noticed my well used Benchmade Rift and asked to handle it. As I handed him my Rift, I warned him that I had just (successfully) convexed the edge using my first Japanese waterstone - a King brand 1000/5000 grit stone acquired from the brazilian rainforest website. After handing over my knife, my attention was diverted elsewhere for a few minutes until the group of liquored-up students noticed a puzzling commotion in the corner of the room. Upon further inspection I learned that the amateur bourbon sommelier had sustained a grievous injury: he sported a three inch long gash down the middle of his palm, spanning the length of the webbing between his thumb and trigger finger down to the bottom of his hand. For a moment, we could all see was a uniquely sedimentary view of skin, membranes, fat, muscle, then stringy white tendons and pearlescent bone. Then the blood came. We rushed our colleague to the nearest emergency room for a dozen stitches and a four hour wait. Luckily he did not cut any tendons and avoided surgery. As we left the emergency room, I asked my wounded colleague how on earth he managed to inflict so much damage on himself. He explained that he was playing with my knife and ended up closing his hand around the blade. For some reason, he got the impulse to squeeze the blade tightly and acted upon it before he had time to think twice. I almost felt bad for chortling when he said, and I quote, "I just didn't think it was that sharp." Funny thing, he never asked to see one of my knives again.
 
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oldmanwilly said:
Here is another tale of foolhardy knife misuse:

Fast forward six years from the abuse inflicted on my CRKT. It was the summer after my first year of law school and I was enjoying a relaxing evening with several members of the campus shooting/hunting club. The central character in this story was an older colleague who had treated us to a tasting of his whiskey/bourbon collection. After several flights of diverse bourbons, all those in attendance drew their pocketknives at one point or another to flick open while we chatted. My bourbon collecting friend noticed my well used Benchmade Rift and asked to handle it. As I handed him my Rift, I warned him that I had just (successfully) convexed the edge using my first Japanese waterstone - a King brand 1000/5000 grit stone acquired from the brazilian rainforest website. After handing over my knife, my attention was diverted elsewhere for a few minutes until the group of liquored-up students noticed a puzzling commotion in the corner of the room. Upon further inspection I learned that the amateur bourbon sommelier had sustained a grievous injury: he sported a three inch long gash down the middle of his palm, spanning the length of the webbing between his thumb and trigger finger down to the bottom of his hand. For a moment, we could all see was a uniquely sedimentary view of skin, membranes, fat, muscle, then stringy white tendons and pearlescent bone. Then the blood came. We rushed our colleague to the nearest emergency room for a dozen stitches and a four hour wait. Luckily he did not cut any tendons and avoided surgery. As we left the emergency room, I asked my wounded colleague how on earth he managed to inflict so much damage on himself. He explained that he was playing with my knife and ended up closing his hand around the blade. For some reason, he got the impulse to squeeze the blade tightly and acted upon it before he had time to think twice. I almost felt bad for chortling when he said, and I quote, "I just didn't think it was that sharp." Funny thing, he never asked to see one of my knives again.
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LOL, OUCH! :eek:

I wish I was able to get my blades laser beam sharp like this. As of more recently, with LOTS of practice, I have FINALLY been able to attain a functional, respectable edge on most of my blades w/out spending hundreds of dollars on 3 or more Japanese stones. (I just have a couple basic 2 sided stones, a manual Worksharp diamond / ceramic combo and some tungsten carbide sharpeners that I occasionally use extremely lightly (not the pull-thru kind) and a full-size leather barber-style strop. I've dabbled w/ sharpening for years and had mediocre results w/ all the methods previously listed. But as much as I wish I could, I have NEVER been able to attain that elusive, damn near surgical scalpel sharpness. :(
 
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Glad I was taught: Knives are always sharp and guns are always loaded. Never point a gun or bow at something you don't want to kill.

I mean really, testing sharpness on yourself? Knock, knock Darwin's calling.
 
Icehawk said:
Glad I was taught: Knives are always sharp and guns are always loaded. Never point a gun or bow at something you don't want to kill.

I mean really, testing sharpness on yourself? Knock, knock Darwin's calling.
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I test sharpening by shaving arm hair. Oh and I don't believe in Darwin. :D
 
Darwin was a man, (historical record confirms that, btw) who had a theory. To disbelieve in him as a man would be a rejection of fact. To disbelieve his THEORY, however, is well within your rights. But everything else in the universe evolves, to include the design of cutlery, even ideas evolve. I don't find us as a species to be anything particularly special, considering the size of the universe, and how much we don't know. It is, however, or at least should be, obvious to anyone willing to look around, that some ideas don't evolve. Even the idea of intelligence is kinda iffy, in my opinion. In my defense, that idea is AMPLY supported by Youtube videos, second-hand anecdotes, and urban legend. Some of us are just incredibly dumb. And even I have my days...
 
justjed said:
Darwin was a man, (historical record confirms that, btw) who had a theory. To disbelieve in him as a man would be a rejection of fact. To disbelieve his THEORY, however, is well within your rights. But everything else in the universe evolves, to include the design of cutlery, even ideas evolve. I don't find us as a species to be anything particularly special, considering the size of the universe, and how much we don't know. It is, however, or at least should be, obvious to anyone willing to look around, that some ideas don't evolve. Even the idea of intelligence is kinda iffy, in my opinion. In my defense, that idea is AMPLY supported by Youtube videos, second-hand anecdotes, and urban legend. Some of us are just incredibly dumb. And even I have my days...
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It was just a joke mate. Relax.
 
Grayzer86 said:
I have a few but no major stupid abuse.

A few years back a coworker hauled a bunch of our wire scrap to the recycler, and while dumping it in a bin, he saw a knife in the bottom of the bin. He managed to fish it out, and asked the workers if it was theirs. It didn’t belong to them and they said nobody had used that bin in weeks, so he put it in his pocket and brought it home. He was telling me it seemed like an ok knife, and asked me to look at it. Turns out it was a Spyderco Caly3 with CF scales and the ZDP198 laminated blade. I told him it was a fairly expensive knife with very good steel. The same afternoon he comes back and shows me the knife with 1/4” of the tip missing. He was trying to pry/cut heavy zip ties off something and snapped it the first day. I regroups it for him and saved it but it still made me shake my head.

I also had a customer this summer bring back a knife because the steel was “coming apart, Like pieces are falling out”. This made no sense to me, it was a monosteel blade in 1095, how could it be coming apart? When I saw the knife, it was rusted all to hell. Apparently it was used, and left wet and bloody in the leather sheath in the door of his truck where it stayed for several months. The pieces of steel “falling out” of the blade were pits, from rust eating INTO the blade. I ended up doing a regrind to fix most of it but it just blew my mind that someone didn’t understand that it was rusted from abuse and neglect. He honestly seemed to think that the steel was just somehow falling apart with little dots going missing. The fact that it was brown and orange would have been my first clue.
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First story: I would’ve just offered the guy $50 bucks right when he found it, but hindsight is 20/20 True that the knife is worth 3 times that but you would have saved the knife and he likely wouldn’t have known or cared about the difference, $50 probably would have been more than he earned in a day, judging from his stupidity.
Last story has got to be the funniest and dumbest customer I’ve ever heard of. How did you manage not not to ridicule this customer into either walking out or buying a stainless blade?
 
Cringeworthy Blade Abuse
Let me tell you a story of a knife, born in a shop, shipped in a box, taken out of the box, and put in a safe, never to have seen the sun or do what it was born to do.
Admired rarely, ( past first few days) never let loose to cut, just owned.

Every knife deserves FREEDOM, all the stories told here, pale in comparison to a life of darkness and captivity.
 
Pomsbz Pomsbz : Mine was also supposed to be a joke! Apologies for my dry and somewhat cryptic sense of humor, it's actually possible I was TOO relaxed when I posted it...
 
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