What's the WORST way you've ever lost a knife?

G

Gwinnydapooh

Joined
Jan 20, 1999
Messages
641
My personal worst was an Opinel (a french knife kinda like the CS Twistmasters but, IMHO, cooler.) I took it to the YMCA daycamp where I worked last summer for daily chores (I was the only counselor who took "woodcraft" to the next level. Picture Marine Force Recon throwing mudballs at canoes from cover) Anyway, while attempting to cut a kid's God's Eye out of a tree that overhung the lake, I managed to plop it into about 10 feet of water. All you Illinoisans might have heard about the Leptospirosis outbreak in Lake Springfield; I'd have been fired if I'd gone in after it, though I still thought about it.

My little sister once recieved a small SAK from my dad as a gift on a camping trip. She took it with her to the outhouse in the dark for some reason (stubborn zipper?) and managed to drop it into the deep tank of sewage below. Again, we thought it better to let it go!

 
Back in my foolish days when I had horses, one of them ate my sandwich lunch which contained a ham sandwich, apple and my little Victorinox knife. The knife was closed.
I spoke with the vet who suggested an objectionable method of retreival. I just blew it off.
The next spring I found the knife in dried droppings.
I kept that knife around until about a year ago when I gave it to my (soon) ex wife
wink.gif

Bill

[This message has been edited by Bill McWilliams (edited 02 February 1999).]
 
My friend lost hisknife in a pond in Texas once, and I was standing there with him (we were fishing off a dock). Passionate about knives and new to Texas, I took my shoes off to jump in and get it no matter what it took. My friend literally grabbed me by the tail of my shirt right before I jumped in and yelled "stop!". He then pointed into the water and there were water moccasins swimming around. I was just a dumb city boy, good thing I had a Texas country boy with me.


I lost my Endura at a theater. I thought I heard a thud below me and didn't investigate, then got home to find out it was gone out of my pocket. I called the theater and imagine this: the young intermission cleaning crew "never found it". Punks.

thad
 
Great stories! Here's one of mine.
Several years ago I was fishing for salmon on the Eel river in northern California. It was during the winter between storms when the river is low and clear enough to fish. I'd ducked and dodged my way through several stands of willows when at the end of the day it started to rain. It started to rain hard and i knew that a new storm had rolled into the area. Somehow in the trek back to my truck i had lost my favorite fishing knife, a 4" blade Rapala. It was razor sharp with just enough flex to slide over fish rib bones without wasting meat.
I was losing the light and the river was about to cover the area where i lost the knife in a couple feet of water. I never replaced it. Why not?...i don't really know.
 
I thought about this instance in context to this thread.
About 35 years ago when I was 10 (Yikes!!!), all of my buddies including myself had those cheap copies of K-Bars. You know, the ones made out of stop signs.
These were our throwing knives. They would bend and you would straighten them out for the next throw.
None of my buddies (including me) were any good. The object was to get the knife to stick into something, and accuracy was no concern.
All the guys were playing "Davy Crocket" in the railroad yard when my buddy who never could get his knife to stick into anything took a shot at a slow moving boxcar.
His knife stuck !
We gave chase, but the train was slowly accelerating and we were laughing so hard that we couldn't catch a turtle anyway.
Off went the train with my buddies knife, and 4 or 5 kids laughed all the way home.
In fact, this memory brought laughter again.
Thanks !
Bill

 
A couple of years ago, I was night fishing w/a buddy off a dock on a lake in upstate NY. He asked to borrow a knife just as I was reeling in a fish so I gave him the one that came most readily to hand, a large A.G. Russell Sting from the SOB.

Rather than handing it back when he was done, he tossed it onto the folding chair that he had along. You guessed it... the fabric acted like a trampoline and bounced the knife right into the lake.

He first offered to replace it but, after I told him the cost & the fact that the knife was out of production, we both knew that he would be going for a swim the next day.
smile.gif


The tale does have a happy ending. After about an hour of poking around the rocky bottom he came up with it, and neither he nor the knife were any the worse for wear.

I wound up giving him a drop point for his birthday so that he wouldn't have to borrow my blades anymore. Not being a knife person, the abuse he put that piece through is subject for a future sad story.

Brian
 
I gave my twelve year old daughter a small pink, Swiss Army Classic to take to camp. I had already given her a Tinker and a SOG multi-tool but she wanted the Classic because of the scissors. Upon returning home, she anounced, in tears, she had lost the little knife! She was heartbroken. She thought she could retrace her steps where she remembers having it last so I melted under her teary, pleading gaze and drove her back to the camp. She took me to the spot where she had used it last (the crafts area) and there it was, laying in the dirt. The whole camp area had had a trash call before letting the campers go home but the knife had been missed. She was very thankful!
 
Having a Carbon Fibre handled Spyderco Dragonfly taken off you by security at the airport and telling you it will coime out as luggage at the other end.

Needless to say after spending an hour waiting for it at the other end it did not appear.

All this and my wife is saying "why did you bring that along and try to carry on a plane" not what you want to hear.

However I replaced the said item with a Calypso Jrn so at least my story has a happy ending.



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Harvey Wareham

Live Long & Prosper, so you can buy more knives :)



 
Hmmm... wonder if there is a way to hide my identity on this one..... guess not...

I lost my KISS a while back. I had been using it as a money clip. I had put a couple hundred bucks in it and gone out for an evening of... er... ahh.... entertainment??

After visits to my table by a number of young ladies, all of my larger bills were gone. I was down to a few singles. One final sweet young lady stopped by for a visit and distracted me somewhat. I was sure I put the few singles back in the clip of the KISS and slipped it into my pocket. Must have been more distracted than I realized. (Thanks so much Angie.)

After closeing time, I was on my way back to the truck, when I realized the KISS was gone. A large fellow at the door of the establishment advised me in no uncertain terms the ladies were changing and I would NOT be allowed to return to the lounge.
frown.gif


Wrote it off. I had cut myself a few days earlier with the KISS using it as a money clip and didn't really want to argue with the gentleman over a $25 knife.

Lesson learned... No more KISS money clip.



------------------
Bubba
 
Here's another one with a happy ending: One really miserable, evil Friday at work, I was all too ready to meet some of the "fellahs" for our usual Happy Hour in our usual place in midtown Manhattan. It was snowing fairly hard & therefore the subways were an absolute zoo- folks piling up & pressed from all sides & no room to move at all- I have a very heavy leather satchel full of books & knives & work stuff, etc & it was pressed to my side for the whole ride. Long story short- I'm sitting at the table & one of my friends asks to see my knife (large Wegner) because they are terminally amused by my knives: NO KNIFE- GONE- I was sure it had worked it's way free & hit the floor of the subway car without my noticing. I was really bummed- On the way out I found it clipped into a hole that had worn into the lining of my leather jacket- It was hanging on a hook in plain sight all night long. result one happy boy who is Very Careful now...
 
Although I've never loss a knife during use. I feel a deep sense of lost over this one...
I recently sold a one-of-a-kind Buck Sawby 531 with Mastodon Ivory handles. This was the first custom Ive sold, and It will be the last. I still have a deep sense of 'loss' to this day.
I sold it because I didn't think i'd miss it. Boy, was I wrong...(sniff, sniff,
frown.gif
)

Jeff

[This message has been edited by Jeff Hubbard (edited 04 February 1999).]
 
i was 2 weeks into a backcountry trip in the mountains. the time of year was august and it supposedly never rained this time of year. boy were we wrong. our camp site was situated at the end of 2 glacial lakes. to get there, we crossed a run off stream which was only ankle deep a few days earlier. after waiting 3 days for the "freak" rain to stop we decided to make our way back before the stream got any higher. the stream was now chest high and ran off a small cliff and continued underneath a snow/ice bridge.

needless to say we did not want to be swept away down into an icy abyss underneath this glacier. at any rate half way thru the stream crossing i lost my balance. my only knife with me was a victorinox swisschamp which i kept in my anorak's chest pocket. i slipped, went under for a moment and regained my footing. when i made it over to the other side i noticed that the chect pocket was open and the contents were no longer there; flashlight, compass, knife, had all been swept away to their new icy tomb.

i was sad to lose such key backcountry items, but another 100yds down stream and i would have joined my missing gear in an watery underwater cave.

-patrick

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"AUDACES FORTUNA IUVAT"
www.tripleaughtdesign.com
Your edged tool & compact accessory resource.
velox@slip.net

 
The only knives I have ever lost have been while scuba diving. There is just something about the forces of nature in the ocean that can put you in a situation where things happen and you just can't think/muscle your way out alive without losing some gear in the process. As weird as it is this is a true story.

Years ago when I was a grad student at UCSD our dive instructor Bert Koyabashi always led a dive on Halloween night at midnight for the SeaDucers dive club. About a dozen brave divers showed up and the plan was to dive to 100 feet for 25 minutes along the north branch of the Scripps Underwater Canyon. While suiting up on the beach the tradition was for him to tell scarry stories about the big creatures that frequent the area. This is quite believable since the underwater canyon goes into water 2000 feet deep within a mile or so of shore. The other spooky part of the dive would be that there would be no bottom under us at 100 feet since the sheer rock wall face there hits the sand at about 300 feet down. So buoyancy adjustment was critical to stay on the plan, but the water was 30 foot visibility under the thermocline, we had bright lights, and had dived there many times both day and night.

Everything was going fine on this special spooky club dive, and we were working along the face of the canyon in buddy pairs enjoying the beautiful colors of the red carpets of corynactus anemones when...along come three big electric sting rays swimming slowly in single file directly toward us. They are black on top and we had not noticed them until their white underneath was showing slightly above us. I had seen smaller ones before and they generally did not scare away like most rays. We started to try to go around and under them but the first one in line (about 3 foot wingspan) was cutting the corner to intercept us! How their little torpedo ray brain works I will never understand, but as a precaution I took my trusty Voit Swim Master 10" fixed blade out just to give it a poke to change its course, not to do any real harm. Suddenly it closed the last few feet in a flip and raised one wing up over my hand and shocked the hell out of my arm! It felt like putting your finger in a 110 volt wall outlet.
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I don't remember losing my grip but the knife fluttered out of view below toward the 300 foot bottom, and all the the rays were suddenly gone too. I checked my depth (now 110 feet), pressure gage and motioned my buddy to end the dive early for a safe ascent, and then got oriented for which way to go. My arm was numb and painful but I was used to diving one-handed working with cameras and equipment so we got back to the beach no problem.

When all the divers were back together, having survived another Halloween midnight dive, we found out that two others had been zapped by the same trio of big electric rays, but that I was the only one that had been electrocuted through his knife!
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Well a couple of weeks ago I purchased a CUDA and a C16. Love the C16 but the CUDA needed to grow on me. Well last Sun. while watching the Super Bowl, went up to check on my wife who was feeling rather ill(flu). Well I had been flicking it open and such as one will, and I had been having a devil of time getting the damn thing sharp. Not even close to sharp as the C16. Well I decided during the half time intermission to throw it back on the Lansky hone and when I reached for it, no knife in the pocket. Still can't find it. Have torn the house upside down looking for it to no avail. I even tore through the garbage, twice, still no CUDA. Oh well...
 
I don't have any really interesting loss stories, both knives I've lost were in circumstances like Longbow's. Know I had them around and then zap, disappeared. One of these at least, I suspect being stolen by a "friend" newly made, who visited my home to play poker (once). Never saw him or the knife again, could be coincidence. It was not a real expensive knife but I really liked it. It was one of those European type, bone handle with the lock being a piece of steel on the spine, blade had a stud on back that popped into the spine to lock, you pulled up on a ring to unlock. Wish I could find another.
 
all these interesting stories, so heres my boring one: i have lost i beleive 2 knives in my life, both were rather cheap lockback folders that fell through holes in my pocket at one time or another. wait, i also lost a boot knife once while running through the woods, it wasnt secured in the sheath and it slipped out.

Jason
 
16 yrs. old, class field trip to see "A Christmas Carol" in an opera house. Had small shirasaya style tanto letter opener. This was pre-Cold Steel for me. After being told to switch seats, I got up and poof in the dark it goes. Worse, some other idiot in top balcony decides to spit and hits my thigh.
 
Another story with a happy ending- the first knife I ever owned was a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife, which my parents brought back for me from Bermuda. As a fairly typical twelve year-old boy, I loved it. It was also back in the days when I could take it to school without risking expulsion.

One day I went fishing at a local lake with a friend. That night, I realized that I had lost my knife at the lake. I asked my father to drive me over, as we had ridden our bikes, and it was too late and too dark to ride over. He refused. The next morning it just happened that my family was going away for the weekend, and he did agree to stop off at the lake on our way out of town.

I didn't sleep well that night. The next morning we stopped at the lake, and I ran to the spot I had fished from. My father wasn't, and still isn't, the most patient man, so I had to look fast. I scanned the bank where I had stood, but didn't see any knife. I knew that my treasured possession was gone forever. More or less on a whim, I asked a boy (even younger than me) if he had seen a knife on the ground nearby.

I was fairly cynical, even as a twelve year-old. And yet, the last thing I ever expected actually happened. Without a word, the boy reached into his pocket and pulled out my knife, and handed it to me. I remember wanting to say more than just a simple thank-you, but I had that impatient parent waiting in the car. Still, if I could talk to him now, I would say that I think of him whenever the topic of "honesty for honesty's sake" comes up.

No lives saved, but faith restored. A simple thing, but one I've thought of hundreds of times over the last (almost) thirty years. Not bad for a SAK.
 
This is somewhat of a different story because I actually "lost" a knife on purpose. When I was a kid I had an piece of crap throwing knife made by united cutlery. I played around with the knife for a while, but quickly tired of looking at its poor quality and workmanship. One day when my cousin was over at my house fishing in our lake I decided I would really throw him for a loop. I went to the house and got the knife. He was in awe I showed him the knife since I laid the BS on heavily about how great of a knife it was and how I had paid a great deal of money for it since it was a custom knife.Ha. Of course he knew next to nothing about knives and believed every word I said. I then smiled and said "watch this". I turned and threw the knife into the lake. It landed in the middle of the lake with a splash. My cousin was speachless and just looked at me in bewilderment; thinking I had seriously lost my mind. His funny reaction and the satisfaction of putting that knife where it belonged was definately worth the $10 I lost on the knife.
 
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