SAK saved the day!

F

freekboi

Joined
Mar 3, 2006
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354
OK, so maybe "saved the day" is a little overboard, must be the MacGyver in me, but it did help out some kids. Here's my story.

The police/fire dispatch office I work at is also part of the local community center, and the dispatchers also oversee it. Well, they're having a youth group summer camp here for the next couple of weeks and so they bought a lot of board games and other toys for the kids to use. One of the games, Operation, required batteries, and to get to the battery compartment, you have to remove a small screw. Well, it seems they didn't know this, so nobody brought a small screwdriver with them. Well, the folks running the camp decided to come to the office to see if I had a screwdriver. After looking around the office and not finding one, I had a "knife moment". I had a small screwdriver on the little Vic Classic on my keychain! So, I quickly removed it from the rest of the keys, went into the game room and unscrewed the battery compartment, zipped open the batteries with the little blade, put them in the game and screwed it back on, and set the kids to playing. Nobody said anything negative about the knife (true, it is tiny, but still) and I even got a few compliments on how useful it was. :D

So let's hear how others have used a SAK to "save the day".
 
I love stories like this, us folks that carry SAK's long enough have lot's of them.

Maybe someday I will tell the one about my SAK and the strippers fishnets.... :D
 
Here is my story. Last Friday was the last day of preschool and all of us were invited to the park for an end of school picnic. There were juice bags that you poke with a straw and drink. Well the bags were too tough for the straws and couldn’t be opened. It was hot and the kids were dieing of thirst. Sak to the rescue. The point on the end of the file on my Cadet opened the holes for the straws, and everyone was soon back to running and jumping.
 
Sak story #1.

A few years ago I was out riding my Vespa in the country side. Karen was off with some family female thing, so I was a batching it for the day. I was out on some little dirt road by Whites Ferry outside of Poolsville really in the middle of nowwhere, just exploring the little road to see where it went. With no warning the Vespa started to run rough for a few minutes then quit dead on me.

Okay, how complex can a motorscooter be? All engines need three things to work;air, fuel, and spark. Pulling off the fuel line at the carb it was getting gas. With switch on it was dead, no headlight. Deciding to work from the battery back, I found the positive conector to the battery has vibrated loose on the dirt road, so I used a sak tinker to tighten it up. I had power, so I rode on and enjoyed the day. Sometimes you just need a screw driver.

Sak story #2.

A few years ago, I got tired of all the non-knife people in the family asking me for a knife on almost every occasion. So for one Christmas I made sure there was a Victorinox classic in every stocking, box, container that was under the tree.

Well last thanksgiving our niece Allissa got married, and we put on the wedding reception ourselves. Her mom, Karens younger sister Rommeli, ordered the stuff and the morning of the wedding we set about decorating the reception hall we had rented. Tablecoths creape paper banners, and candalabras need to be unpacked. Someone asked me for a knife. I could'nt let it be.

"Uh ladies" I said, getting thier attention," Does this look familier?"

I held up my own classic from my keyring.

All the women were suddenly grabing for their purses and the little saks cut open alot of boxes that day, cut alot of tape, but most of all assembled all the candalabra's that went on the tables. They came in two parts, in a heavy cardboard box and needed to be assembled the upper half to the lower half. They were held together with a small set screw in the underside, and all the women used the little screw driver on the end of the nailfile to do the job. In the end, the classics were the tool that set up the whole wedding reception.

The Victorinox classic has to be the most underestimated knife in the world.
 
I'm going to just try for an overview here, rather than individual stories of the many times my SAK has saved me time and trouble. I worked as an FAA licensed Airframe & Powerplant Technician, an aircraft mechanic as I usually put it. I am a strong believer in the line of Alox (solid, checkered aluminum) handled Swiss Army Knives made by Victorinox. They include, but are not limited to, the Farmer, the Pioneer, and the Soldier. I have carried a Vic Farmer for 15-20 years probably. Many times it has solved a problem for me while working on some part of a plane without me having to go way across to another hangar or crawling out from under the instrument panel when I was wedged into an uncomfortable position just to go fetch another tool from my toolbox. While I nearly always had some basic tools with me when going to fix or check something on a plane, sometimes you still don't have just the thing it turns out you needed. Case in point: Aircraft have thin aluminum skins with dozens or scores of panels that are attached with screws (so you can take them all off when doing a periodic inspection to look for cracks, abraded wiring, rubbed tubing, corrosion, etc.). Planes get a "walk around" just before each flight. When you work around lazy pilots as I did, the mechanics usually take care of this chore, too. Vibration takes a toll on planes, especially on the screws and other fasteners. Screws shake loose! It's so easy to use the small flat screwdriver on the tip of the can opener to snug up a screw that may just need a turn or less. That flat tip is a more than adequate fit into the head of a #2 Phillips screw, as most of those were on the planes I maintained. Another use I often put my SAK to was using the awl to line up two overlapping thin parts, such as skin panels when the holes were just offset a bit. The awl works wonders on many applications, BUT ONLY IF IT COMES OUT THE END OF THE HANDLE, NOT THE MIDDLE! It makes an excellent reamer to enlarge a hole if needed, and I once even used mine to bore a hole through a stout bronze key I wanted an offset hole in. It took awhile, but it got the job done. The awl is an extremely useful tool. There are other stories, but this is enough for now.
 
Before Blade, I just ordered a Huntsman Lite and a Camper. Love those SAKs.

Good stories.
 
Back in the late 1980s I was driving on the freeway through a bad part of Oakland, CA (like there's a "good part"!) while it was raining pretty hard. Without warning, all of the lights and my wipers went dead, including the dash and headlights. I pulled off of the freeway at an exit where I saw an autoparts store and bought some fuses. When returned back to my minivan, it was still raining, very dark, and then I found my fingers were too chubby to remove the blown fuses.

Fortunately I had my SAK "Deluxe Tinker" with the little pliers. I used them like super duty tweezers to pull the old fuses, then also to insert the new fuses.

It worked!
 
A while back I was on night shift patrolling an area near Hagerman, NM (find that on a map!). I had been out trolling down backroads and through fields for about an hour, when I got a call for service that required a hasty response. I knew that I was close to a paved road, so I drove that way and found that I was on the wrong side of wire gate that was wired shut with what looked like 300 year-old wire (how many times can I use the word 'wire' in a sentence?). I used the pliers on my Vic Skipper to unwire the gate, go through, and put the gate right again. Without it I would have been up the creek, as it were.
 
My actual best SAK story, would have to be replacing the fuel pump on my truck with just a Swiss Champ.

Well, my buddy did it, I don't know one end of an engine from another, but after we hitchhiked to the auto parts store and back, he did it with my Swiss Champ, while I "supervised"! :D
 
Right after I retired from the Army I was going to the local community college on post. I pulled up for class, sorted through some books and went into class. After class I noticed that I did not have my keys, they were laying on the front seat of my 1990 Nissan Sentra. Luckily my back right window was cracked opened, the kind that only pivot out. I could not reach in to unlock the door, but using my SAK, I was able to unscrew the attachment hinge to the window. Then I could pull the window further out, reach in and unlock the door. A few more minutes and the widow was re-attached and I saved a $30 locksmith fee.
 
One time I was at a party and there was a bunch of good Czech beer and some bottles of wine that needed opening. Thanks to my SAK Tourist, my friends and I were able to get really drunk.
 
The Last Confederate said:
A most noble use of the grand SAK! :thumbup:
Click to expand...

Yeah, if memory serves me well, I think that same night I used my SAK to do an emergency tracheotomy, fixed the fuel system on a helicopter ferrying donated kidneys to patient in Zurich, and was able to rig a broken Stradivarius for the principle violin soloist in the national symphony orchestra. But really all that beer is what stands out in my mind still. :D
 
Last Sunday, my wife and I were driving to see some friends in North Carolina. We decided to stop and have lunch and a small Mom and Pop style place on Hwy 17. There was a kid trying to open an glass coke bottle with no luck. His eyes got huge when I pulled out my SAK Tinker and popped the cap off for him.
 
Too many times to count. A fair few repairs of cars, house stuff, this, that, gaining access to locked doors with keys inside, just a history of "glad I had it with me." Oh, and a share of beer and wine bottles, along with some food cans opened along the way.
 
I wonder how many emergency cricothyroidotomies (tracheotomies) have actually been done with an SAK and a piece of tubing.
 
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