- Joined
- Oct 27, 2006
- Messages
- 17
I am new here. I've been lurking for awhile and I decided to jump on in today. The water's fine... nice group of people here. Anyway, I wanted to tell the story of my first Spyderco: an Endura from the G2 days.
I worked in a GM factory in Moraine, Ohio before I went into the Marine Corps. I dropped engines on the chassis line. The coolant lines were zip tied to the fan belt to keep them from dragging in the overhead steel netting as the engine made its way from the engine department over onto the chassis line. If the lines caught the netting, it could pull the engine off its hook and that would be bad because they traveled above walkways and work areas. It was my responsibility at Engine Drop to take the zip tie off after I set the motor in the chassis. The supervisors told me to yank on the tie and it would break. True enough…. sometimes. They used four zip ties connected end to end to make one long "rope". I only had to make one break, but if the ties weren’t rotated perfectly so that a connection between two of the ties was resting against an edge of the belt, they would not snap. Usually, when I yanked on it, I would pull the fan belt off and the truck would have to go to repair if it couldn’t be fixed on the line, which was most of the time. That lasted one night!
So, I came up with another idea. I decided to find a knife to use. I knew nothing of knives in the clip-it style; I just hoped I could find something that I could keep at my workstation to use. I went to the flea market in southern Ohio and found the knife sellers. I saw my first Spyderco and asked what it was all about. The guy yanked one from his pocket and had it open in the blink of an eye. Quite obviously, that was a perfect example of what I needed to be able to do and it was also nice that it could be hidden as we weren’t allowed to have weapons in the factory. SOLD! This started my passion with knives, period.
Back at the factory, I got lots of practice pulling my knife. I had to pull my Endura from my pocket, cut the tie in an underhanded pulling motion, and put it back in my pocket on every truck, provided the tie had not broken before getting to me (~10% of the time). At full production, we ran 560 trucks a night. If you averaged out the whole year with bad nights, etc., it was probably around 480-500 trucks per night. I worked 4 days a week (actually 4 on 1 off, 4 on 5 off) and had 2 years in when I quit the factory to join my beloved Corps. I had ONE Endura!!!!!!!! You can all do the math for yourselves. Granted, it got dull and has chipped teeth, but with the fully serrated blade, it was always good enough to grab the zip tie and get it split. I’m not saying it was the be-all end-all of knives, just that it was MINE. It did what I asked pull after pull, truck after truck, hour after seemingly endless hour. I sang its praises back then, but no one listened.
I still have my Endura. It is in pretty rough shape as far as the blade goes. The handle looks really good as it never saw any abuse, just sliding in and out of my pocket, more of a mild polishing than anything. I may very well have the single most opened-and-closed Spyderco ever! It sits in my collection because it is too dull to use, but it is the one knife that started it all for me and it was a hell of a trooper. I ended up getting a Police as well, many years later. I recently bought a new Endura 4, too. I cannot believe that they are into the 4th iteration of this model. Amazing… I have been away waaaaaaay to long.
I have contemplated having it factory resharpened, but it is a memory for me and I’m not sure I want to undo what I did with that knife by grinding it away. Thanks for listening to my story and the start of my knife obsession. Sorry it was so long.
I worked in a GM factory in Moraine, Ohio before I went into the Marine Corps. I dropped engines on the chassis line. The coolant lines were zip tied to the fan belt to keep them from dragging in the overhead steel netting as the engine made its way from the engine department over onto the chassis line. If the lines caught the netting, it could pull the engine off its hook and that would be bad because they traveled above walkways and work areas. It was my responsibility at Engine Drop to take the zip tie off after I set the motor in the chassis. The supervisors told me to yank on the tie and it would break. True enough…. sometimes. They used four zip ties connected end to end to make one long "rope". I only had to make one break, but if the ties weren’t rotated perfectly so that a connection between two of the ties was resting against an edge of the belt, they would not snap. Usually, when I yanked on it, I would pull the fan belt off and the truck would have to go to repair if it couldn’t be fixed on the line, which was most of the time. That lasted one night!
So, I came up with another idea. I decided to find a knife to use. I knew nothing of knives in the clip-it style; I just hoped I could find something that I could keep at my workstation to use. I went to the flea market in southern Ohio and found the knife sellers. I saw my first Spyderco and asked what it was all about. The guy yanked one from his pocket and had it open in the blink of an eye. Quite obviously, that was a perfect example of what I needed to be able to do and it was also nice that it could be hidden as we weren’t allowed to have weapons in the factory. SOLD! This started my passion with knives, period.
Back at the factory, I got lots of practice pulling my knife. I had to pull my Endura from my pocket, cut the tie in an underhanded pulling motion, and put it back in my pocket on every truck, provided the tie had not broken before getting to me (~10% of the time). At full production, we ran 560 trucks a night. If you averaged out the whole year with bad nights, etc., it was probably around 480-500 trucks per night. I worked 4 days a week (actually 4 on 1 off, 4 on 5 off) and had 2 years in when I quit the factory to join my beloved Corps. I had ONE Endura!!!!!!!! You can all do the math for yourselves. Granted, it got dull and has chipped teeth, but with the fully serrated blade, it was always good enough to grab the zip tie and get it split. I’m not saying it was the be-all end-all of knives, just that it was MINE. It did what I asked pull after pull, truck after truck, hour after seemingly endless hour. I sang its praises back then, but no one listened.
I still have my Endura. It is in pretty rough shape as far as the blade goes. The handle looks really good as it never saw any abuse, just sliding in and out of my pocket, more of a mild polishing than anything. I may very well have the single most opened-and-closed Spyderco ever! It sits in my collection because it is too dull to use, but it is the one knife that started it all for me and it was a hell of a trooper. I ended up getting a Police as well, many years later. I recently bought a new Endura 4, too. I cannot believe that they are into the 4th iteration of this model. Amazing… I have been away waaaaaaay to long.
I have contemplated having it factory resharpened, but it is a memory for me and I’m not sure I want to undo what I did with that knife by grinding it away. Thanks for listening to my story and the start of my knife obsession. Sorry it was so long.
