USAF Pilot's knife

I bought 6 of these once that were dated early 80's. Half were reasonably easy to get a decent edge on with a coarse stone to start with and then working to finer stones to get a shaving sharp edge. About 30 minutes per knife. The other 3 I had to use files on to re-profile the edges and took a lot of work to make them sharp. They were Camillus and Ontario knives. I ground the top of the guard off on a couple of them which made them much better utility type knives. I put them in a couple of BOB's. and gave the rest away. There seemed to be quite a bit of difference in the factory edge profiles.
 
I'd rather a USAF pilots knife than any MORA! any day.

Its far from perfect but with some work its very serviceable 5X the knife for 1.5 times the price.

Skam
 
The one thing I will say for the Pilot Knife - it's indestructable. I'm still not sure if that is a good thing or not.

20 years (almost to the day) after the Navy issued me mine, I am still scratching my head. It took the Navy 4 years and god knows how much money to train me to become a Helicopter Aircraft Commander and then they sent me to the Gulf with a knife that is arguably (and has in fact been argued here to be) one of the crappiest knives around.

I think an interesting thread would be to elicit suggestions for replacements from the knives that were known to be in production during the time these knives were commonly issued (and I hope to heck they are no longer in the inventory).
 
I carried a Pilots knife for a long time back in the 80's. Out of the box it was a very poor cutter. With a radical reprofile it can be turned into a decent cutter but you really have to take the edge down quite a bit. They are (practically) indestructable.

Once I took a group out and one of the students spotted the Pilots knife in my gear and he really, really, reeeally wanted to carry it rather than a Mora SWAK, more for the cool factor than anything else as he was a novice. Mid-trip I had them swap knives and do a few things, kind of like a mini-passaround. He liked the Mora better for everyting that involved cutting.

The sawback does cut sheetmetal and the knife can be hammered into metal to cut like a can opener. I wouldn't want to do that with a SWAK. The Pilots knife will pry out chunks of wood, unlike the SWAK as well. The Pilots knife can be used to dig out things like termite mounds (Very hard with a digging stick, terminte mounds are hard like weak cement).

Mine doesn't see much use anymore. There are better knives out there by far. If you happen to have one it can be reworked into a decent knife but IMO its wreckage cutting properites limit it as a bush knife. Mac
 
Rip a new edge bevel with a belt sander, you'll probably have to reset the the whole edge, adding a flat relief grind in effect, then sharpen as normal.

If you don't have a belt sander, then a file as Alberta Ed suggests is the way to go. The fairly soft steel files easily enough.
 
I have to agree with Mac. I reprofiled the one I got in the 70's and it was THE knife for many years. It makes a wonderful destruction tool, rips through sheet metal, chops and prys wood apart. With a little effort, the edge will easily be brought back to shaving sharp. But since then I discovered SOG, Gerber, etc and found out you can have a great sharp knife who's blade isn't pry bar thick. I still use my Pilots knife, but it's not my primary knife and there are better general use knifes.

To reprofile the blade, I eyeballed the angle using a bench mounted belt sander and then hand sharpened to a convex-ish edge.
 
I took a dremel to mine and then a few hours with a sharpener.

It has a decent edge now, but looks hideous -- every time the dremel slipped a little, it took off some of the powdercoat around the edge :(

Mostly cosmetic, but it bugs me. Ah well, lesson learned...
 
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