This is just a cautionary note to some of the fellas that seem to think that a knife is a good defensive weapon. I wrote a short note on the topic of How to Stay Out of Trouble in the People's Socialist Republic of California, and in that note, recommended a 48" length of hardwood doweling. I'd like to expand on that topic for just a little. Mine is not hickory, but birch, because hickory is harder to come by.
When i got it back from Home Depot, I put it down on the asphalt driveway, and stood on it and rolled it around with my weight on it, to ding up the surface some, so it wouldn't look like dowel-rod. When I was through, it looked like it had been through at least one war, and only barely made it through. Good. Then I rubbed it up with walnut stain to darken it to the max, urethaned the surface for sealing and then kicked it around some more.
I then went to the ENCO website, and ordered a 3/8" roughing end-mill in M4-cobalt HSS (part # 325-4024) for what came to just under $12.00 at my door, and got a big old rubber crutch-tip from I forget where, and set that end-mill into the end of the stick with only about a half-inch of the roughing mill sticking out from the bottom. A drop of crazy glue locks it in place.
Then I took it to the grinder, and knocked the sharp corners of the mill off at about a 45% angle, so the area of the tip, considered as if it were just one piece, instead of four
little points, would be about 3/16" in diameter. Unless you're looking at the end of the stick head-on, you can't even see it's there. Looking at it head-on, it don't look real threatening, unless you're using some intelligence, which you don't that often encounter in the kind of rough-trade that this is designed to deal with.
The rubber crutch-tip covers it entirely. so I don't have to worry about digging holes in my friends linoleum-hardwood-parquet floor, but it comes off REAL EASY if some fool was to grab at that end of the stick. BAAD move. The fella in gonna be "in a world of hurt" no matter where he gets poked. Biceps, thigh. ribs, face, back of the hand, anyplace. It can't kill him, because it only sticks out a half inch, and if it draws blood, he won't bleed to death.
But I de-double do-declare that his whole philosophy of living is going to undergo a RAPID change of perspective the first time he gets hit. An epiphany, so to speak. His whole ambition, which only a single damn second ago was to do harm to you, has CHANGED. Now all he wants is to get AWAY from you, which is what a defensive weapon is supposed to do.
I've carried a jacknife in my pocket for seventy-three years, and in all that time I have never once used, or threatened to use it as a weapon. It sharpens pencils, cuts string, whittles, opens a BUNCH of letters and cardboard boxes, and gives me pleasure from its presence. But I got better ways to defend myself.
And I can always buy me another crutch-tip.
