What was your first fixed blade knife?

Blackjack Anaconda, it looked like this one -

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I got it when I was 13 or 14. It came from a blow out sale Cutlery Shoppe was having on lots of old Blackjack stuff. They used to send a sale list with various things a few times a month, they were sold out of the HG Long Fairbairn and Marine Raider Stilettoes (They were $70), so this was my 3rd choice at $50. Fun knife, although it didn't really get much hard use :/ :D.
 
I don't still have a picture of the knife or the knife itself but very long ago my dad and I mail ordered a couple of knives out of the Herters catalog, the real Herters catalog. They looked like fairly cheap knives when we got them, something like a cheap kitchen knife, but probably fully functional for that era. They certainly would not have lived up to the normal hype of every product in the catalog.
 
Estwing knife and hatchet set, gifted to me a few thousand years annd another lifetime ago from my ex father-in-law. The knife sat on a shelf in my shed for several years until I dug it out last year and cleaned it up and put an edge back on it. It’s now comfy and warm in my office. The axe has been in my workshop staying nice and dry, though it hasn’t been used for a number of years, either.

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killgar said:
For me it was one of these (but not this one). A mini version of an Imperial bowie, with a blade around 4" long.

It was given to me by a friend when I was around the age of eleven or twelve back in the early 1980's. It was a prized possession. It didn't come with a sheath, I made a sheath out of bicycle inner tube and carried the knife strapped to my ankle under my pants.

As for the fate of that knife, I've told this story a few times, but I'll tell it again-

I was at the shore here in San Diego, crawling around on the side of a jetty (a flat pile of rocks extending out into the water, like a pier). I was chasing the crabs that lived in the rocks. The knife fell out of the sheath and clattered down between the rocks near the waterline. I crawled down to the spot, peered into the rocks, and I could see the knife. If I had been willing to lay flat I could have extended my arm into the crevice between the rocks and retrieved the knife, but the waves were crashing in, and the rocks were slippery, and the water there was deep, so I decided the knife wasn't worth drowning for, and I reluctantly left it there.

There was no chance that anyone else would ever find the knife or know it was there, and it wasn't going anywhere, at least not anytime soon. For many years I would occasionally think about that knife, stuck there between the rocks, slowly rusting away. I'm thinking about it right now.

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If you had lost it on Bluestone Lake near Hinton WV and it was in a small tackle box, I have your knife and would be glad to return it. Dad found the tackle box when the lake levels dropped, and the knife was inside and the only useful thing remaining after being submerged when the authorities (I don't know which ones, I was just a kid). Dad kept the knife, brought it home and cleaned it up.

Many, many years later I found a knifemaker willing to make me a duplicate but with white bone handles. Actually, they started off as stag but in shaping them he had to take off the brown texture. I had described the knife for him from memory, and it seemed to be right.

A few years later after my folks had died and I had the miserable process of sorting out their things, I found his knife - I'd nearly bet it was exactly like yours, and the only difference between it and the one I had commissioned is that I thought it was larger and so was my "replica". Everything seems larger when you're a kid.

I've never used it for anything, I was just trying to replace Dad's knife to remember him, as I don't remember how many hundred fish and squirrels he'd cleaned/gutted/skinned in front of me with that blade, and I was feeling nostalgic. When I saw the picture and before reading your post, I had to look up at your user name to make sure I wasn't posting to my own thread, that's how close your found knife and Dad's found knife are.
 
My first fixed blade was whatever the Boy Scouts used - I don't even remember it clearly but there were a few selections and later I found a big-bellied skinner that I believe was it. My well-meaning folks also bought me one of those hollow-handled "survival" knives (pre-Rambo), and I spent hours agonizing over exactly what I could fit into its hollow cavity that would save me if I was lost. It would take a decent edge, but was soft and wouldn't hold it, and the saw-edged back's edges got rounded in final polishing and were useless. The tang was so soft that it kept bending at the junction of blade and handle. As soon as I figured they'd forgotten about it, I trashed it. A nice gesture, but not something I needed.

Fast forward many years later to my 30's when they found out I was studying ninjutsu, they bought me a Bud-K class "ninja sword". You could hold it one hand, twist your hand suddenly and watch the blade writhe and wobble. I kept it in the umbrella jar in the living room until they died, just in case they asked about it. The funny part is that the ninja used those very crude blades to kill a samurai and take his nice sword. Those square tsuba swords were sometimes used for climbing, but in general they carried your basic (or fancy, depending on who they'd killed to get it) "samurai sword". In class we were taught how to use those P.O.S. blades - it's a lot of reinforced cuts using your shoulder, hip, other hand or foot to make the blade dig in, then cut with a sawing motion. In retrospect it was hilarious to watch, but also good knowledge on how to leverage a less-than-ideal cutting tool.
 
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Small tourist shop kids reindeer antler handle puukko in our lapland road trip in my childhood. I remember cutting my hand with it right away. Lesson learned.
I have tried to find it but I haven’t been able to..
 
Thorgrim said:
If you had lost it on Bluestone Lake near Hinton WV and it was in a small tackle box, I have your knife and would be glad to return it. Dad found the tackle box when the lake levels dropped, and the knife was inside and the only useful thing remaining after being submerged when the authorities (I don't know which ones, I was just a kid). Dad kept the knife, brought it home and cleaned it up.

Many, many years later I found a knifemaker willing to make me a duplicate but with white bone handles. Actually, they started off as stag but in shaping them he had to take off the brown texture. I had described the knife for him from memory, and it seemed to be right.

A few years later after my folks had died and I had the miserable process of sorting out their things, I found his knife - I'd nearly bet it was exactly like yours, and the only difference between it and the one I had commissioned is that I thought it was larger and so was my "replica". Everything seems larger when you're a kid.

I've never used it for anything, I was just trying to replace Dad's knife to remember him, as I don't remember how many hundred fish and squirrels he'd cleaned/gutted/skinned in front of me with that blade, and I was feeling nostalgic. When I saw the picture and before reading your post, I had to look up at your user name to make sure I wasn't posting to my own thread, that's how close your found knife and Dad's found knife are.
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No, mine was lost here in San Diego, California.

But thanks for the offer. :)
 
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