Knife Loaning Horror Stories

Z

zeedeegood

Joined
Oct 17, 2005
Messages
156
Everyone's done it at one time or another. A pretty girl asks to borrow your knife, you politely oblige, and then watch in horror as she promptly starts jamming the blade tip into a bolt in the wall. You watch your best friend, who should know better, use your $100 knife to scrap stucco off of the side of a house or dig it into the mortar between bricks. That's exactly the reason why I now carry a $8 Husky razorblade/utility knife in addition to my regular EDC knives. It's the only thing I'll ever hand over to anyone and the smartest purchase I've ever made! I know there's got to be some better stories out there.
 
i just loaned my microtech ultratech to a friend for a few seconds and somehow he broke it..... i have used it for four years with no issues....
 
In college a friend asked to see what kind of knife i had in my pocket. I handed it to him and he threw it at a door jam. I was horrified and asked him wtf he was doing. He thought all knives are throwers, if it has a tip it should stick, right? That was the last time I let someone use one of my knives.
 
About 15 years ago I was on a motorcycle ride with six other guys (and my wife) almost all of them relatively intelligent. Guy riding the brand new, Triumph Speed Triple gets a flat, and has no repair kit. Lucky for him he's with five other, well prepared riders. Friend gives him his repair kit which consists of a hole reamer, rubber plug patch, cement and a small CO2 canister to fill the tire. Oh, and it's about 103 degrees out this day.
Found the leak, reamed the hole, applied cement and inserted plug. All O.K. so far. Victim asks if anyone has a knife to trim the plug. I carried at that time a large CRKT Apache which I use for everything (including scraping wallpaper, stucco, reaming out holes in various materials, and occasionally cutting) so I wasn't too worried about it. I do however keep it ALWAYS shaving sharp. So I throw it to him with the warning, "be careful, it's very sharp". Long story short, he tries to saw through the rubber plug and it instantly travels all the way through the rubber coming to a stop when it reaches the bone of his index finger. He falls on the ground and starts producing blood at an alarming rate. Myself a firefighter / first responder and another guy who is an EMT with a med kit apply first aid and get him laid down in the shade because now he's woozy from the "shock". It's now some 45 minutes later and he's beginning to feel well enough to finish the tire repair, which is all of airing up the tire with the CO2. The CO2 canister has this flimsy little rubber hose for connecting to the valve stem which waited until the tire was just about filled before it exploded off of the stem and into our geniuses now injured finger, causing him to roll around on the ground some more in agony and despair. I make no apologies for the ignorance and knuckleheadedness of people who injure themselves with my cutlery, and I told him so. The trip ended without further incident, but we still talk about it today.
 
"I make no apologies for the ignorance and knuckleheadedness of people who injure themselves with my cutlery..."|

0234042, what an awesome quote!! I'm definately memorizing that one for future use! I knew there had to be some good stories on this forum.
 
If you really want to lend knives and tools , first get a deposit from him equaling the replacement cost, then have him sign a paper stating that you are not responsible for any injuries !!!
 
After my wife used my Cold Steel TiLite to pry the industrial size brass staples from the snowblower crate :eek:, and a few other minor incidents with people who know not a knife's purpose, I ask a lot of questions or volunteer to perform the task myself. If you value your knife, you can also say "No". -Matt-
 
I sometimes lend knives, but I tell a story first. 8 years ago, I held a weekend demonstration at a store in downtown Québec City shop with knives on display, various materials, and sharpening knives for bystanders, all part of a Victoria Day weekend activity organized by the shop owners in that street. One of the helpers for the shop owners brought me a few kitchen knives to sharpen, including a Sabatier cleaver. I got them all razor sharp. But, since there were some steel filings on my portable bench, from handfiling a blade prior, I noticed his blades were magnetized, and told him he would have to clean them thoroughly before using them. I showed him how sharp they were too. When he got back home, he used the cleaver right away, without cleaning. He realised his mistake and swiped the blade across the back of his thigh, unaware that he had opened his trousers, and cut his leg half an inch deep by roughly two inches wide. One of his friends noticed blood on the floor and he was rushed to the hospital, requiring ten stitches...:eek: Since then, I always tell that anecdote before lending knives or handing sharpened knives to customers, telling them that I stand behind my work, but that I cannot be held liable for any self-inflicted injuries...
 
I have a couple of incidents, not exactly horror stories, but cases where seemingly ordinarily intelligent people try extraordinarily stupid things with knives.

A friend asked to see my Spyderco Delica, then started walking over towards a large wooden pillar. Before he could take his first hack at it, I took it from him and asked what he was doing. He said, "Oh, I wanna see if I can cut this thing down."

Another time, I was practicing martial arts with another friend I've known for years. He is also a cop. He noticed the mini-Stryker clipped to my pocket and before I knew it, he snatched it, one-hand opened it very quickly, started doing some flashy dexterity moves by twirling it in his fingers, then promptly stabbed it into a very solid wooden wall support. He didn't jab it hard enough, obviously, and he let go of it and it dropped straight onto the hard floor. He simply stepped back with a dumb smile on his face and his hands behind his back. Luckily it landed sideways and nothing was affected on the knife, but it was a very stupid and thoughtless thing to do. Now I'm always wary and never allow someone to touch my knife except for one older friend who also likes knives and often carries higher-end stuff himself.
Jim
 
I`ve had plenty of "thrower" friends,but my favorite way of judging a man`s IQ is to hand him a FB and see him unsheath it and then never fail to put it back in the sheath the wrong way,suspected morons should be given a curved knife in a kydex rig where you clearly see the matching shape of the blade and sheath and watched sticking it in the other way.
 
I made a sheath knife for a guy and before handing it to him and told him three times it was very sharp.....So, he laid it flat on his arm to shave the hair off...Opened up his arm three inches.....He bled all over the place.....Had to go to the hospital to have many stitches put in his arm....Plus he was in a bow and hunting shop in front of 5 guys....His reputation was ruined..carl
 
I don't know what it is, but I can have a knife for two or three years use it every day with no problems and somone borrows it once and will break a blade or the tip. No, I don't let people use my knives or Leathermans anymore.
 
It`s funny,but women tend to do a lot less stupid things with a knife handed to them,they just hold it with 2 fingers like it`s a snake or a scorpion and then hand it back to you with a shudder.It`s the guys who feel they have to immediatly do something flashy and macho with a knife who end up going to a hospital.
 
blub said:
I don't know what it is, but I can have a knife for two or three years use it every day with no problems and somone borrows it once and will break a blade or the tip. No, I don't let people use my knives or Leathermans anymore.
Click to expand...

Yup, blade tip here also so that was it. I also do not lend out anything from my tool box that I value. I will lend out my 2nds or trunk travelling tools, that is it. Tired of having to chase people down for stuff, then find a rusted P.O.S.
 
I asked a fitter friend of mine if he was any good at shapening knives" Oh yeah no problem "he said,so I took a brand new black coated fixed blade of mine across to the workshop where he worked.
When I went back to collect it a week later he said it was not quite finished so asked to see it.To my horror it looked like he had dragged it down the highway from the back of his car....totally scratched to hell all over the blade!!!
I found out he had tried to sharpen it on a big stone wheel grinder and said it kept bouncing around cos it was so hard.Don't worry I'll finish it he said.Little to say I declined his offer and did the job myself !!!

The knife in question can be seen here,scroll down to post #59
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4167462#post4167462
 
Two stories with the same knife.
In college i bought a mini-stryker. I proudly rebeveled the angle and got it scary sharp the first day that i had it. Our RA walks in and asks what I was doing and then asked to see my knife. I gave it to him closed telling him to be careful because it was extremely sharp. Genius opens the knife and starts rubbing his thumb up and down the blade all the while telling me that it was the dullest knife that he had ever seen. 2 seconds later blood is pouring out of his thumb and he is in shock over the whole thing.
Several months later while doing an internship I was over at a families house for dinner. The dad and I are talking in his shed before dinner as he is trying to get this small tire off its rim. He is cuttting away with a knife that is as dull as a butter knife and asks me if I have a knife on me. Stupidly I hand him mine and he begins trying to cut through. I hear strange scraping sounds and after a minute he returns my knife and says "well I guess I need to use that hacksaw after all." He was trying to cut through a STEEL BELT!! Dulled the knife down so bad it took me forever to reprofile the edge.
Don't lend your knives to people. People are dumb.
 
As a kid, I was out playing with my first real knife I bought with my own money. A 'lifeknife trailmaster' survival knife. A more modern rendition of the 5" air forces pilot's survival knife, with an external compass in the handle. My brother asked to see it while playing in the backyard, and proceeds to start to throw it into the garage. He makes it a few times, and misses a few times. All in the course of about a minutes worth of throwing, did I realized that the times he hit the back of the handle, it was the compass taking the hits. When I got it back, the compass was blown out and destroyed.
Fast forward to 6 december, 2003. I was going overseas, and didnt really plan on making it back alive. So I gave my practical katana to my neighbor and good friend. (he didnt know the first thing about how to properly take care of an edged weapon, like most people, but i grew up with him, and i didnt really think id be coming home in anything other than a pine box, so screw it.)
Well I made it home, and that sword had all sorts of chips in the blade from him using it as a machete out in his backyard. Even the handlewrap was coming undone. I cant imagine what you could do with a katana, to make the handlewrap come undone, and get soo frayed like that?? Once I seen how molested that sword was, I just told him to keep it. I will never let anyone else use a knife of mine.
 
It's pretty funny that the people who do the stupidest things with knives and abuse knives in the worst, most dangerous ways tend to be those who are "afraid" of knives or ask the dumbest questions, such as, "Why do you need to carry that big machete in your pocket?"
Jim
 
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