Giveaway - Tell me a knife story

E

edmundo.gurza

Joined
May 15, 2013
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I am not a large knife collector but I now found my holly grail.. my one and only knife. The one that has the perfect grind and feel for me and my uses. Therefore I have some other knives, that are not bad at all, but my choice holds a deep meaning rooted into my recent life history. So for the next few months I will be hosting some small giveaways of knives that belonged to me and I want to send to good homes instead of staying put away in the dark or selling them (I find a gift keeps a better meaning to the one who receives it).

We are going to start with a Case Amber Bone Small Texas Jack knife in CV steel! I used this knife for less than a month so it has a very mild patina from a 5 or so apples but It will be sent very clean and ready for use. I hope who ever gets is will enjoy it as much as I did during the time I had it.

TexasJack111212.jpg

(This photo is borrowed not mine.. but it is the same knife.)

Anyone can enter.. and anyone can enter as many times as wanted and here is how: I want a brief story of an event in your life that you shared with your pocket knife. I believe the reason we like traditionals is because of the memories they bring.. so I want to hear what memories you have built with your existing knives. The story has to be at least 5 sentences long to count as a story (please don't just put a statement kind of thing. Example of what won't count: I feel off a swing and broke my head, while my knife was in my pocket.). Make me a favour and get a little emotional/philosophical about you and your knife.

I will do it the old way and for every valid entry I'll write your name and put it in a hat (literally), I'll draw a name on the last day of July. I'll be putting another knife for giveaway that day in July and those who didn't won the first one will remain in the hat for the second one.

I am looking forward to reading some good stories!
 
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In on this one.


As a young lad, I was at my Grandfather and Grandmother's farm house. My grandfather was a tough old man. He would work on the tractors, then wash his hands in gasoline to get the grease off. He was rough and tumble, and could fight, fish, and hunt.

He was a man's man, the kind of man other manly men called a man's man! He had a grip like a vice. He could squeeze hard enough to break bones.

Once, when I was older my dad and I were talking about it while visiting on the farm. Grandpa was working on a tractor, and we were there chatting. My dad bet me that grandpa could tighten a large nut with his bare hand so tight that I would be unable to remove it with a wrench. I, of course, young and strong, was an unbeliever. He picked up a large nut, fastened it. Using only his hand to tighten it. My dad handed me a wrench. I could not budge it. I was a strong teen, and he was an old man. I strained with the wrench and could not budge it. They chuckled, and he reached out and twisted it off with one hand!

When I was an adult, after years spend with hand strengtheners and lifting weights, I could explode an unopened soda can with a quick one handed squeeze. I used to do it on request of friends. My hands were still not a strong as grandpa's were, even right before he passed.


On this visit, at a very tender age, I saw him trimming his nails with a pocket knife. An old well used barlow.

When he was done, I tried the same thing with his knife (I watched where he put it).

I cut myself through the fingernail, deep into the finger under the nail! It took months and months to grow out.

At that age, I was guileless, and simply explained what I saw, and why I tried to trim my nails with grandpa's pocket knife.

My grandfather was not mad. Though he had some words about gaining an education the hard way.

I now have that knife in my possession. A treasure.

My grandfather passed about 20 years ago. We thought his pocket knife was lost, gone forever.

My grandmother, finally at 98 years old acquiesced to an assisted living arraignment (though not without grumbling).

Upon moving her in to her new apartment in the assisted living complex, my father found the barlow.

He gave it to me as the grandson who would most enjoy it!










I have many stories about my grandfather, told be his family and friends, and my own share of treasured memories, from time spent with him my self.

He could fix anything.

He was a man who "Got out and Got under!" That was the phrase that my dad used at this funeral.
 
That Case Texas Jack is one pattern I have never tried but very much would like to. So here is a story and a thank you for your generosity.

From the age of 12 to 36 (I am now 39) I carried a SAK of some form or another. I was not a knife nut, I was a SAK nut. I turned to more traditional patterns when my grandfather died. He was a one knife man for 70 plus years. His Case 31 Jack was always in his pocket. One father's day or birthday, one of my cousins gifted him with a SAK. It sat, unopened, in his kitchen drawer. One day, I found it, and I asked him why he didn't carry it (I was a firm believer in the power of the SAK. Still am...)

He said, "You don't need all that stuff. All a man needs in a knife are two good blades."

And that was that. So, on his passing, I took his advice, but before that--

I was at a bar with a buddy of mine. He was another SAKaholic. We were in boy scouts together and the SAK was part of our culture. But we were both in our thirties at this point, and the big three or four layer knives started getting smaller and smaller. That summer, we were in competition to see who could get by with the smallest knife. That night at the bar, he had an alox Executive, and I one upped him by carrying an Alox Classic.

Our bartender was a drop dead gorgeous woman and the place was dead, so we were having a pretty good time. While making a gin and tonic, her soda gun jammed up or something. Anyway, she asked if anyone had a toothpick or tweezers or anything--

And--

EDC fail. My buddy and I both habitually reached into our pockets at the same time, but since we were Aloxing that evening, no tweezers. No toothpick.

A woman sitting across the way had a safety pin.

You win some, you lose some--
 
We buried Dad in '93 at a small community cemetery where most of my family is buried. It's out in the farmlands. I had his Schrade stockman in my pocket later when I visited the site. I decided he might need that knife on his journey. I put it under a flat rock on top of his grave. Many graves have personal items out there. 3-4 years later I was out there and thought "Why did I do that?" The knife was in no worse shape and now is my collection, where it belongs.
 
Loving these stories. I have a good one but it's about a fixed blade....
 
cool idea for a giveaway, and some great stories already. I'll have to go away and think of a knife story now :p
 
The weather gods have not been smiling upon me. Actually thats not strictly true. The one involved with rain has been laughing uproariously at poor stupid meako riding to and from work on his mountain bike.
It has rained solidly in Wollongong for almost two weeks now.I decided last Tuesday after a rather tedious and wet day of training that I was sick of being a drowned rat and that I would not ride home.It was pouring,it is dark and the traffic wants to kill me.My wife dutifully drove to the fire station to get me. I had removed my front wheel to get the bike in the back of the SWagon.With my back pack on my back I made a dash for the car as she pulled up out the front. As I tried to put the bike in I found that my backpack had somehow engaged itself round the seat post of the bike making it difficult to place the bike in the car.I had already gotten soaked as the rain was coming down like something out of Noahs weather report.I managed to solve the situation by swearing loudly at the rain and thrashing violently like a hooked Marlin until I was freed. The bike and the back pack were unceremoniously flung into the car.The soundtrack for the drive home was Cantankerous Unintelligible Growling Noises by meako and the drowned rats.
Upon arrival back at gloomy, rain sodden Schloss Meakinstein I discovered that my wallet and penknife were no longer in the back pack. I rang the station and one of the guys retreived them from the forecourt.
As this was the orange bullnose F&F I had been given by Waynorth and carried ever since I was very thankful to once again have it in my possession.The knife god was smiling on me. Or perhaps..it was the rain god. After all if it hadn't been raining so hard I'm pretty sure a member of the local society of ne'er do wells would have been out and about and picked it up. They say you can't please everyone.I would have to agree(in this case I must have offended the bicycle god) because the following morning as I removed my bike from the car I discovered the front wheel missing.It must have rolled away down the street during the disentanglement procedure . At work that night I searched the road for 200M but to no avail. Now I'm laid up with a swollen knee from a crash I had MTB riding 3 weeks ago.
I'm OK with that because the knife that was a gift is safe-all the rest can be replaced.
2013-06-27182305_zpse02c0d08.jpg
 
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When i was very young, maybe 5 or so, i I was visiting my father folks for the summer and found an old Case knife stuck in a stump while i was hunting small game in the woods behind their house, it was still relatively sharp because i nicked arm with it trying to shave arm hair . I took the little folder and continued hunting. when i got home with my squirrels and rabbits I promptly showed my grandfather who was very impressed; i didnt find out till 10 years later that he expect me to kill not a thing that day. After looking over my kills he had me dress them, so i pulled out my new found treasure and began cleaning my game. when i finished cleaning my critters my grandfather came over and looked at my knife and simply said "huh, i wondered where you were," then pocketed the knife.

Turns out that my grandfather dropped the knife out of a deer stand while cleaning his fingers a few days prior. My grand father came to acquired this very same knife in a similar fashion. The knife originally was HIS grandfathers and he lost it while hunting and my grandfather found it while hunting squirrels!!
 
A very generous giveaway Edmundo :) Please don't count me in for the Texas Jack, I already have one of these excellent knives. Here's a tale for you anyway though.

Jack


I wouldn’t say my dad was ever particularly into knives, but like almost every man of his generation, he carried one. When I was a kid, he’d have one in his pocket, a couple in his sock-drawer, and a pipe-tool in a box on the mantel-piece next to his pipes. He was happy for me to look at the knives, even as a youngster, and I’d sometimes clean his pipes for him while he was at work.

In Sheffield at the time, knives were just passed around people, given away and traded, they weren’t highly prized. One of the first knives I remember my dad having was a small pen-knife with a white handle, more likely synthetic than bone. He’d use it for various day to day chores, including cleaning his nails. He worked in a large engineering factory and when he came home, after a quick scrub-up at work, his hands would still be pretty dirty. I remember doing a similar job myself as a young ‘un, and after I quit, it took me a full six months to get my hands properly clean. The oil and grease sort of seeps into your pores.

I used to notice the knife as a kid, and I’d handled it a few times, but then one day I remember him searching for it and he couldn’t find it. He figured he’d lost it at work, probably crawling under one of the big machine he used to fix at James Neill’s Tools. I think I missed it more than he did, and for a while I asked if he’d found the knife, “No, that’s gone, son.” He’d say.

My dad soon got another knife, given to him by his brother, but I often wondered what happened to his knife and if it’d ever turn up.

Anyway, a couple of years later, we were on holiday at the seaside, a place called Bridlington on the East coast of Yorkshire. We couldn’t afford to go on holiday every year, so it was a treat for us, and it was one of those summers like we don’t get anymore, where every day the sun shone from dawn until dusk, and the sand on the beach was hot and made you jump up and down. One particular day, we stayed on the beach all afternoon, playing in the rock pools, and watching some guy repeatedly trying to get on top of an air-bed out in the surf. We stayed until the tide was lapping against our toes, and my dad had to lift me and my sister up onto the sea-wall so we didn’t get soaked.

We were staying in self-catering rooms, and usually my mum would rustle up something for our tea, but as it was late and we were all tired, my dad said we could get fish and chips, which was a real treat. We walked along to the chip shop, me and my sister still carrying buckets and spades from building sandcastles on the beach, and my dad ordered. Us kids got a fish to share with our chips, my mum had cod roe and chips, which she liked, and my dad ordered a steak and kidney pie.

Outside the chip shop, we walked back along the sea front, we found a bench and sat down to eat our meal, still glowing from the sun we’d caught during the day, and watching the waves lapping and the gulls soaring overhead. My dad opened the parcel and shared out the food, which was served on white paper, with newspaper underneath, and me and my sister greedily tucked into our chips, the sea-air having made us ravenous. But my dad bit into his pie, and guess what was inside...
 
I see you are using my photo. That knife went to Hummpa (Andi) and I have since replaced it with a duplicate. So, this is not an entry, but thanks for the give away. That knife is one of Case's best designs and the CV/amber bone is a sweet combo.

Ed J
 
Well, here goes. Everyone kids and pokes fun about my trading at get togethers. I was at a powwow, and came across a really well made, big Hudson Bay camp knife. I couldn't tell if it was a SMKW order, whether it was a Dixie Iron Works kit knife, or whether it was a custom knife (no stampings). I traded a couple well used Buck knives for it, and took it home.

About a month later, Scott Gossman held his Gosstoberfest, and I brought the knife with me. There are quite a few custom knife collectors there that would have some clue as to what knife I had. It was getting on dusk by the time I made it over to Scott and a few Bladeforums members. After introductions, I asked if anyone knew what I had. By this time, everyone had their flashlights out, and/or headlamps. The knife got passed around, and it ended up with Scott. He released an expletive that is not suitable for this forum, but I'm sure most have heard, and started to laugh. He said that TK and Backwoodsman writer Dan Schectman had gotten that knife from maker Terry Baublitz before Terry passed. Scott finished the knife, and gave it back to Dan. At the next Gosstoberfest, Dan told me he traded it to the powwow vendor. I tell Dan he's to blame for my infatuation with everything HBC. I can't kid him too much, he has sent me a few articles he's written over the years on Hudson Bay knives, not just the camp knives.

The joke is on me, because that one trade got me hooked on Hudson Bay camp knives. I've been devouring any and all books I can find on the original HBC, and have owned a few other examples of the camp knife pattern. I only have two HBC camp knives, the Baublitz and the Condor offering, but Scott is making one for me, his interpretation of Terry's knife. Scott has said he can't get rid of that knife.

It is one of the few knives in the collection that I would never get rid of.
 
I'v had a knife in my pocket every day since I was ten, and my Grandpa gave me a Barlow.
I never was a collector of knives until I lost the knife I'd carried daily for over thirty years. Laid it down somewhere at work after cutting something, forgot to put it back in my pocket, walked away and never saw it again. It replaced the other Uncle Henry LB7 that I lost after dropping off a load (cleaned out the garage ) at the county dump. Cut something (a rope probably) and laid it on the tailgate of my truck - forgot it and drove away. When I came back maybe 10 minutes later to look for it, a grader was working the area where I'd parked. Buried and Gone. Bought that one about seven years earlier. Went to WalMart the next day and got another one (the first knife mentioned here) just like it.
The search for a replacement of a lost knife spawned the affliction I now enjoy. (As Kenny Chesney sings - " One is one too many, one more is never enough.")

Not an entry (already have a Small Texas Jack just like yours), just a story 'bout knives....
 
Yeah, there was steak and kidney in the pie! He never saw the knife again unfortunately!


whats the best thing to put on a British meat pie?
$10.00 each way.

boom tish!
 
I'm really enjoying these stories. Great thread!!!!

Here's my story. It's not about my favorite folder, it's about my favorite fixed blade that has been with me through thick and thin since 1993 when I went and lived in Papua New Guinea for 3 years doing Medical Research in some very remote areas of the Sepik River. I carried this SOG Navy Seal with me as my constant companion while I lived in the jungles of PNG. My job was collecting blood samples from villagers from 10pm - midnight, which was when Filaria worm larvae are released into the bloodstream by Filarial Worms that live in people's lymph nodes. I was counting the number of larvae in the blood as a baseline survey to see the infection rates in the area. The larvae would be released into the blood from dusk top about 2 am to coincide with the most active mosquito biting time. Mosquitoes carried the larvae to the next person.... So this might sound bizarre but I would drive a Land Cruiser or take long dugout canoes along with a crew of guys that would carry these large containers of liquid nitrogen. I would collect the blood and then put the samples into these containers so they could be transported to the provincial center and then be taken to the Institute for Medical Research. That was my job for 3 years. Just going from village to village collecting blood. I travelled with a british researcher who was mapping the villages with a GPS and a researcher from Burkina Faso who was collecting mosquitoes and marking them with ultraviolet colors to try and track their movements. He'd release the mosquitoes colored with ultraviolet fluorescent colors and then return the next night and collect them again and see how they moved from house to house and hamlet to hamlet.

As you can imagine a knife gets used often in an environment like this. This SOG built shelters, cut open countless coconuts for drinking and eating, cleared brush, cut up large yams, gutted fish, bush rats, killed a 17 foot python that was cruising through my camp, and killed and prepared much bush meat, including small 3 foot crocs. As you might imagine, this knife and I had a strong bond. Not only is it an excellent knife but every other knife you can buy in Paupa New Guinea is just cheap chinese stuff and machetes. I carried a Machete too, everyone did, and unfortunately this was before I new anything about different steels, ESEE, Swamp rat, etc!

Anyway, that's just the background. The real story is that one night while I was in a village collecting blood my knife was stolen from my vehicle. I had it connected to my EDC bag and it was sitting in the truck and the window was left open. This was dumb, because in PNG theft is common place. Stuff got stolen all the time and there was kind of a cultural acceptance that if you stole something and got away with it, then it's yours... Tourism is PNG is almost non-existent due to the constant robberies of tourists in broad daylight. It's kind of a wild west kind of place.... Well, I was pretty pissed off and I spoke to the village leader about it. He was embarassed and he called the village together in a large open area and basically lectured everyone on how this was so embarrassing for their village and so on. Of course, no one came forward with my knife... In the morning, when no one had returned the knife and we were getting ready to leave I had one last conversation with the village leader. I told him that my knife had been imbued with a powerful spirit by a sorcerer from my home town. Now in PNG, belief in sorcery and spirits in inanimate objects such as carvings, places, etc. is VERY STRONG. In fact, if a person believes that he has been poisoned by a Sanguma (sorcerer man or woman) that person may die, just because they believe it. Then again, I saw and experienced some weird shit myself so maybe people did get poisoned by Sanguma... That's another story altogether... But I digress!

I told the village leader that the knife was possessed by a spirit that was my friend and my guardian. This was done by a powerful Sanguma in my home town who was my friend. The spirit in the knife protected me and made me a powerful warrior. I told him many US soldiers had these types of spirits which was why they were so powerful. The thing I was really worried about though was that the last time someone had stolen my knife from me the spirit of the knife drove him mad. It possessed him and made him crazy "long long" and he ended up killing his family and friends in his village. He was found dead with my knife in his hand but they couldn't find a wound on his body. The knife was returned to me after that. The village leader's eyes were about the size of baseballs and his jaw was on the ground. I told him very quietly that he HAD to find that knife and that people's lives depended on it. As I drove away I told him that the spirit would start making the thief crazy in about 2 weeks....

The next day a villager came to the gate of the compound I was staying in near the district government office. One of the guards came to my office and brought me the knife, telling me that some guy came and told them to give it to me. I was overjoyed!!! I told the guards about it and we had a good laugh. Over the next few months word of the Sanguma-knife (spirit knife) spread around the area. A friend of mine in a nearby coastal town asked me about it when I ran into him one weekend. He asked me if I had heard about the Sanguma knife and I told him the whole story. Like an urban myth people were telling stories of how the knife possessed someone in a neighboring province who had stolen the knife from me and how he had killed everyone in the village. When I was in villages I had never been in before men would come and ask me if they could see the knife. The fact that it was unlike any knife they had ever held probably added to the aura of it. They had these cheap steel chef's knives and machetes and this SOG was like nothing they'd ever seen. Some kids would shy away from it like it was evil... Anyway, I never had any trouble after that. Never had anything stolen from me in the next year and half that I lived there either....


IMG_8250 by maprik, on Flickr
 
Edmundo, if I have two or four stories do I group them all together or do I post each in a separate response?
 
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