Shipping Knives: a cautionary note

not2sharp

not2sharp

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It should go without saying, but knives are sharp and therefore potentially dangerous.

Today I received a heavy bowie style knife; a good example of a custom knife made by a well know maker, but a real beater which I purchased for testing. Even without its sheath, which had been lost somewhere along the way, the knife weighted nearly two pounds with a heavy aggresively clipped blade ground from 5/16-inches thick stock.

It was pretty much what I expected. But, when I started cleaning it up and sharpening it, I noticed that the point had been folded over into a complete "U" for about a 1/16". Not a big deal and easy enough to fix; but, then it hit me that wasn't the condition of the knife when shipped. Sure enough a quick check of the packing material showed a small punture where the point had broken out of the packaging during shipping. Then it struck me that this thing had actually shipped internationally and somewhere along the way the point had shot through the packaging with enough force to fold that much steel. That kind of force could have easily caused a serious wound had it impacted with flesh.

I don't know how mail handlers are injured annually by poorly packaged knives; but, lets do our part to minimize that number. When shipping knives, double check that blade, and make sure it is secure.

n2s
 
One very good maker shipped a dozen sharpened knife blades to different people around the world. All the blades made an attempt to escape. The majority were either lost or had damaged tips.
 
It's British MoD custom (practiced by others too I'm sure) to ship knives with a "professional" edge, i.e. not sharp. I'm sure that this danger is one of the reasons.

It doesn't really seem to make much sense (to me) for makers to ship knives sharp... I can't see why it would help to have it arrive razor sharp NIB, and I can see a *lot* of ways it could hurt! ;-P
 
My Custom knifemaker FedEx's mine in sheath but I can see problems happening with unsheathed knives.
 
"professional" edge,i.e. unsharpened seems like a contradiction of terms but who knows! Kind of a nfg here myself.
 
I think the idea behind the "professional edge" is that a professional would happily sit down and sharpen his new knife just how he wants it as soon as it arrives, whereas "ordinary" people want to be able to take it out of the wrapper and cut cut cut.
 
Most of us have shipped and received sharp knives before, with and without sheaths, and done so safely. The issue is packaging. Even if the makers left the knives in an unsharpened state (hard to do since most of us no longer live on the farm nor have access to large grinding stones), they would still be very sharp when shipped on the secondary market.

n2s
 
"I wrap the knife and then tape the wrapped knife to the box."

When the knife goes without a sheath, I usually created a temporary one out of layers of heavy cardboard and tape, and then tightly pack the whole into a box. The point is to make it so that the handle cannot advance into the sheath (hence the point cannot move forward to penerate the sheath). For one heavy sheathless knife I actually wrapped the blade in polyvinyl, placed it on a strip of 1/4 inch plywood, and wrapped both in a heavy layer of packing tape. It may not have been pretty, but it was safe and secure, and not all that heavy.

n2s
 
Probably why Anza insisted on including a sheath, even though I said I didn't need one.

-Bob
 
A lot of people never end up using the knife they bought aka a safe queen. It adds in the value being able to say "never been sharpened" by me, meaning it has a factory edge on it. Even if it was used for something minor it doesn't decrease in value all that much. I personally want all the knives I buy to be factory sharpened. Otherwise you may buy a used knife that was sharpened by an amateur, aka me, and you wouldn't know until you received it. It doesn't take a genius to know if a knife is packaged correctly/safely for a trip.

IMO,
silas
 
Even if a knife is sheathed and boxed inside the shipping container, I like to pack it in there tightly. The way I test it is to shake the package up, down, and sideways to be sure nothing inside is shifting at all.
 
The Randall Shop ships all Arkansas "Toothpicks" with a small natural bottle cork impaled on its needle-sharp point, then wraps them securely: Yup, it works!
 
Last night's wine cork is a great way to cover a pointed tip. You can use some packing tape to hold it on. Duct tape will blunt the edge of a knife very effectively and yet is easily removed when the knife arrives.

A rubber band is good to hold a folding knife shut. A twist-tie from bread may work too.
 
when i ship a knife, i take a piece of ABS pipe and cap one end with a ABS pipe endcap using the proper glue. i place a thick piece of heavy rubberfoam in the end and then insert the knife (rolled up in newspaper and cardboard/tape). On the other end, glue a ABS threaded end cap and cleanout lid. no amount of brutal handling will let the knife get damaged, heck you can drop it off a cliff and it will be undamaged. Make sure your mark CLEARLY on the outside of the tube "KNIFE FOR REPAIR", so customs or whoever dont freak out when they see it on a xray scanner...
 
I wrap everything that I ship well-enough to where it almost takes a chainsaw to open the package....Packing tape is cheap.:D.
 
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