For the past couple of weeks now, I've been sticking to the Wenger SI and have come to some conclusions.
The basic scout pattern has done everything I needed without the need of carrying extra tools like keychain screwdrivers and P-38's. It's also been re-teaching me some of what I had learned but semi-forgotten so long ago.
Back when I was a scout, somehow me, and Dave, and Ev, and even Bobby Ryerson got by with this same pattern. We'd take off on adventures with some sandwiches and a few pieces of gear in our old canvas Yucca packs that were carried in the basket on our balloon tired Schwinn bicycles. We'd explore every acre of woods within bicycle range, sometimes camp out, and our only piece of cutlery in those days were our scout knives. I guess life was simple back then, and one single pocket knife was all we needed for some reason. Now that knife was one of our greatest treasures on earth, don't get me wrong, and it seemed like there was little we could not do if we had our pocket knife and some twine along. Even Mr. Van, with all those little 3 and 3 1/4 serpintine jacks that he used for the detail whittling of faces in napkin rings, carried his old Remington on a belt hook for most of his use.
In the couple of weeks I had carried the Buck stockman as my only edc, I had a vague feeling of something missing. Like the faint feeling of disquiet you get, driving off on the start of a trip feeling there is something you have forgotten, but can't remember just what it is.
There was a post not too long ago where a poster asked what pattern of knife do you feel identified with. Asked that same question now, I would have to answer "a scout knife". When I stop to thik about it, I now realize that it is the pattern I have carried most of my life. Sure I played around with sodbusters, stockmen, some peanuts, but since the age of 12 there has been a scout knife around, someplace in some way, shape, or form, including a sak. All those years where I had something in my right front pocket, there was always the belt pouch with the Victorinox tinker or or the old Wenger SI packed piggy back with a small AA or single AAA flashlight.
Maybe it was just so familiar, that it was like it became part of the background, and unnoticed exept for the times I needed one of its tools, or the wide spear blade that spread peanut butter or cream cheese better than a slim clip point. Maybe after so many years it was so old, that it did not have the glamore that the "new" knife did when I was experimenting with a new pattern. Certainly it was old with me.
I figure I started at age 12 with a scout, and never really stopped. When I left home to join the army, I left my scout knife dad had given me home, lest it get stollen in the barracks. I used the service issue Camillus for years till one day at a Oshmans Sporting goods store in San Antonio I saw and bought my first sak. It was a good knife, and it got carried many miles in one of those O.D. green nylon web pouches we made back then to keep from loosing the knife from a fatigue pants pocket. Then while stationed in Germany, I saw my first all metal handle Wenger SI and traded a German soldier out of it for my Camillus. I don't know why he wanted a Camillus, I think I got the better end of the deal. But that Wenger got placed in the web belt pouch from then on. By now its been 55 years I've had a scout or sak on me, no matter what else I've had or been experimenting with.
So I guess I've now learned something from this experiment. I now know that with a scout type pattern, I've come home to where I started off. Maybe we really are shaped by early experiances.
)
If I win the give away/trade, I swear I'll never use the word "slippy" again. 