Piercing a 50 gallon drum

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Aug 27, 2002
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OK, here's one for you military guys. I spent 21 months, 3 weeks and 6 days in the U.S. Army, 11 months of it in Vietnam. I never had occasion to "pierce" a 50 gallon drum, nor did I ever see it being done (nor would I have been anxious to do it with my Randall). So, at the risk of sounding ignorant/obtuse, why would one have the need or desire to do this? If I'm not mistaken, there are ways of removing the contents of a 50 gallon drum without resorting to poking it full of holes. Enlighten me, please!
 
I don't think there is a reason to open a 50 gallon drum with a knife. Hell they all either have a threaded plug you can twist with about a hundred different tools, or the whole end comes off like a lid once you take the band off.
I think somebody just got the idea that it was extreme, and would make people buy knives. Personally, I don't see how its all that much of a feat to punch a hole through sheet metal, or dig a hole through the fiberglass ones. But its marketing, it doesn't have to make sense. Its like cutting through a car door instead of breaking the window to get in in an emergency.
 
We have seen Microtech and the Sandshark show these demonstrations. It is simply advertising the strength of the lock on these knives. They are not recommending it as new drum opening tool. TAD drove a UT6 through a board with a mallet to show the strength of the lock, not to recommend that this is an intended use of the knife/tool. I was impressed with the demonstrations and the quality of the lock up, knowing that I did not have to be concerned with this when using the knife as a tool.
 
This is basically what I thought, logically, but how many times have we heard this........100 dozen times? I thought maybe there were, in fact, situations in which this might be necessary. Ya' never find out if ya' don't ask. ;-)
 
Your trusty SandShark OTF will poke thousands of holes in a 50 Gallon Drum before you have to sharpen it.
 
Originally posted by J-man_the_jet
Your trusty SandShark OTF will poke thousands of holes in a 50 Gallon Drum before you have to sharpen it.


Well, $hit, I'm happy as hell to know that!! Thanks for sharing. ;-)
 
Just the other day I was driving my custom Humvee to a location I'd rather not disclose on this forum for security reasons. TTO and I were scheduled to deliver two 55-gallon drums of top secret rocket fuel to the aforementioned undisclosed location. As we reached a narrow mountain pass, we were set upon by a pack of ninjas riding sophisticated assault motorcycles and brandishing a variety of lethal weapon-type devices. TTO tossed me his tactical skewer, made by a knifemaker whose name I'd rather not mention (again for security reasons) and told me to punch some holes in the drums of top secret rocket fuel. Sure enough, the tactical skewer made short work of the barrels, and with one flex of his mighty biceps, TTO hurled them into the path of the oncoming ninjas and ignited them with his very expensive lighter. Of course, the loss of the rocket fuel set research back by at least a year, but that's why they pay me the big bucks. It's also why I make sure that I always carry a knife capable of puncturing steel drums.
--Josh
 
:eek: Glad you made it out safe Josh. I hope your research gets back on track. Tell TTO I am sorry to hear he had to sacrafice his Expensive lighter
 
Wow, Josh!!! That story belongs on the back page of Tactical Knives. It just goes to restore my faith in the knife industry though. I was starting to think that all of these spec-ops black tactical folding crowbar knife advertisements were just marketing hype.
 
Dammit Josh, I keep telling you SpecOps guys whenever you pass through here that we're not ninjas, we're just a bunch of lepers in our shrouds. There we were with our canes and wheel chairs and you go splash rocket fuel on us.
 
you never know when you might be attacked by a dozen or so of those drums....or a car hood....etc
 
I never had occasion to puncture a drum, either. Most of the stuff you see a posted about military use is pure fantasy, IMO.
I was just in the infantry, though, so could be wrong. Maybe some of those desk jobs require alot of tactical knife use, heeheeeee.


Josh, that was incredibly informative, but some important details were missing...
What kind of watch did he have on?
Which Emerson custom was he carrying?
 
OwenM-- I think TTO was wearing some sort of Panerai, but it was hard to tell because it had obviously been heavily modified for covert ops. He mentioned that he had a new stellite and carbon fiber Super Commander with gold inlays made by Ernie himself, but with all the ninja fighting going on, I didn't actually get a chance to see it. I'm sure it is one sweet knife though.
--Josh
 
Originally posted by Josh Feltman
ichor--comedians? I don't understand. Fighting tactical ninjas is serious business.
--Josh

Well then, have you considered..........the ninja concept that in both physics and emotion, any wave that can nest or embed itself from inside out, can survive. since embedability can be mathematically perfected by golden ratio based recursion/branching/nesting, this literally becomes a prescription for how to make ANYTHING sustainable and thus immortal!

This PHI Golden Mean geometry is the PRINCIPLE of idealized embedding in all systems.... in practical terms this means we can tweak any chaotic oscillator, (like a heart or brain or a power distribution grid or a planet climate) toward self organization by simply nudging a critical few of it's key wavelengths toward PHI (Golden Mean) embedability...the tricky part is that whenever we do this
we are waking up a being who will become self aware and have intention.

If you haven't taken these important principles into consideration, your battle against the Tactical Ninja is doomed to pathetic failure. Just my two cents. ;-)
 
ichor, good point, but if I stopped to think about stuff like that while fighting tactical ninjas, I'd be dead. The only kind of embedding I have time to think about is embedding high speed low drag implements of destruction in ninja skulls, know what I mean?
--Josh
 
How about having to poke holes in an empty drum to light a fire to keep warm. the holes are for the air to come in to burn the wood. I know i have stood around several 55 gal drums with a fire in it to keep warm, just not sure how they poked the holes. :D
 
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