When you owed it to your knife...

B

bchan77

Joined
Dec 6, 2007
Messages
447
Hello all, most of us use our knives in our daily chores. Do you have any experiences where your knife helped you out of a critical, emergency or even embarrassing situation? Let us hear them!
 
church barbecue...we all arrived at the park with food and games, fired up the grill, then realized no one brought the grilling tools. they sent a few people off to get them, but they wouldn't be back for easily 45 minutes, so i found some sticks and shaved the bark off and made chopsticks. it was hilarious to flip burgers and hot dogs with chopsticks made from twigs.
 
I was helpin' a friend drill some holes in a wood frame he was buildin' a jungle gym with, I was wearin' a long sleeve flannel shirt when the 3/8' drill grabbed my sleeve and wrapped it around the bit, I could smell the smoke, I didn't know what burnin' the shirt, my arm, the motor who knew.

Anyway as the drill wound my sleeve up it tightened my shirt sleeve against the trigger and my friend couldn't let go of the drill, he tried pullin' on the plug but I tied a knot in the cord so it wouldn't pull out, all this happened in like 3 seconds, now when I'm workin' outside sometimes I clip a Gerber CF3.25 SL to my shirt pocket, I like the carbon fiber frame it makes for an air light super strong knife, so to make a long story short I managed to cut the 5/8" tightly wound flannel rope that was my sleeve in a couple of swipe and freed my arm leavin' nothin' more than a small abrasion and what looked like someone had applied a tourniquet to tightly.

I cut a cat loose from a six pack holder once, cat didn't seem to grateful, he scratched the heck outta my arm.
 
I once cut the seat belt and part of the seat to free an almost dead drunk guy from a truck. He had entered the exit ramp at 3 a.m. and head on into a UPS cargo truck. Another time i cut loose the victim of a drunk driver. She was just banged up, but her seatbelt wouldn't release.
 
In the circle of friends I frequent I am often the only one with a knife on me. They all know it, so when a knife is needed, they come running to me.

One of the best times was many years ago my wife took me to a fancy concert for my birthday. My auditorium seat was perilously loose on its iron pedestal base, but the screwdriver on my trusty SAK was up to the task of reconnecting it. She loves to tell that story, still.

I cannot believe how many persons are comfortable without a knife. I feel naked without mine.

Bill
 
my basement was flooding one of the many times. and we were using a gas-powered water pump to get it out and away from the foundation. the outlet hose sprung a leek because it has rested against the exhaust, bad design. i had to run outside with a screwdriver and my e4. took the clamp that was holding the hose on off, cut the hose past the hole, put the clamp back on. had to go pretty fast the water was coming in and not stopping. this was also my sister's wedding morning. she spend it bailing buckets, more like coolers, full of water. don't think she'll be forgetting that day anytime soon. i feel like there was another time, but i can't remember it.
 
T. Erdelyi said:
I cut a cat loose from a six pack holder once, cat didn't seem to grateful, he scratched the heck outta my arm.
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I cut a robin loose from a branch once. It was wrapped around with fishing line and every time it flapped, circling the branch, it wound itself tighter. Fortunately for the bird -- and me -- I had a Vaquero Grande, and was able to maneuver the tip of that long blade without my hand getting close enough to get ripped up.
 
Years ago I was working horses at a children's summer camp. One of the young assistants tied the lead rope to a horse's halter too long and with a solid knot. The horse decided he wanted to scratch his back, tried to lay down and got his leg twisted up in the lead rope. He started thrashing about trying to get free, sawing the rope around his fetlock. Way too much tension on the rope to try undoing the knot, so I pulled out my fixed blade and cut it free from the fence. Horsie got away with just a minor rope burn and the assistant got a lot of horse hitching lessons! Poor kid was more shook up than the horse so learned his lessons well!

Stitchawl
 
My mom was driving and there was that orange plastic construction gate that had blow over on the road. She ran over it, thinking it'd just stay there, I'm sure most people would do the same. I looked back and saw we dragging it. I had my RC4 on me and she pulled over while I inspected the belly of the vehicle. It was tangled up in the exhuast, a few cuts and the car was free.
 
Never life nor death, but my kids come to me for splinter removal. They know how painless a sharp edge can grab ahold and pull out a splinter from soft young skin. Even my youngest mama's boy step son comes to me instead of mom for splinter fixing.
 
After working at an apparel company for some time, I was asked to help with setting up the fixturing of a new store that would be opening in a month. It was going to be a busy day of tearing open boxes, preparing mannequins, and organizing hardware both on the floor and in the stock room. There were twelve of us total, and once the shipment started arriving, we realized that all the box cutters that we needed were somewhere in the pile of 2000+ boxes. Luckily, I had a Victorinox Tinker, a Case Barehead Slimline Trapper, and a Byrd Robin to pass around so we could share.

Beats trying to open everything with keys. Can you imagine twelve people trying to get through 2000 boxes with nothing more than car keys?
 
YayILikePie said:
Beats trying to open everything with keys. Can you imagine twelve people trying to get through 2000 boxes with nothing more than car keys?
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I used to work at a place where pretty much everyone needed a knife, and all the management gave the workers were very cheap safety box cutters.
(here's a pic) http://boingboing.net/images/boxcutter2.jpg
Well.... I started out by passing out .50 cent generic chinese keychain crap to some of my friends. the blades were only around 1.5 inches each.
Later, I started selling knives to anyone who needed for $5.00. I really didn't feel too bad about making a profit, since most stores in this area charge at least $10 for them.
 
As the person who started this thread I have to tell one of my stories:

Many years ago one of our company's directors decided to hold a company party for staff and spouse in his house. (We were not a large company). Before dinner was served inside the house we had a cocktail reception in the garden. One of our pretty secretaries (whom I knew personally) brought along her boyfriend and somehow got the end of her dress caught by the thick shrubs in the corner of the garden and was stuck there. Her boyfriend was trying to untangle the dress from the shrubs, with no success. At that time it was announced that dinner was ready and people started to make way into the house.

Seeing their predicament I offered to help and drew out my No. 6 Opinel. The muscular boyfriend suddenly became hostile and warned me not to ruin his girl's dress. A little taken aback by his attitude and a little annoyed by his tone I was thinking of putting back the knife into my pocket and leaving them to their own when the secretary implored me not to mind about the dress and just got her 'out of this'.

I proceeded to cut the end of the dress with the Opinel. My knife-savvy French boss heard us and came over to see what was happening. When he saw me cutting with the Opinel he smiled with approval. We were all amazed by the apparent ease of the knife when cutting through the fabric.

When the secretary was freed she thanked me profusely and gave a look to her boyfriend which was far from complimentary. Strangely enough, she did not seem to be affected by the mishap of her dress and remained cheerful that night. Only her boyfriend was sullen.
 
When I crashed my Jeep it rolled over several times and ended up on the side, driveres side up. The seat belt was jammed, and I cut the belt and crawled out. Moments later the Jeep exploded.





Well, OK, the exploding part is BS, but the rest is true. :D

Edit: Oh ya, knife was a Spyderco Centofante III
 
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My favorite story happened just minutes before a good friend's wedding. I was his Best Man. We were literally playing ping pong since the room we'd been assigned to wait in was the church youth room and happened to have a ping pong table. In burst one of the bride's maids. "Chuck, come quickly! Stephanie [the bride] needs you." Well, this really wasn't the traditional time for that... but I went anyway.

The dress's train was held on by several metal clips. One has broken. In the background, one could hear the organ playing. The congregation was taking their seats. We had only a few minutes. I thought about options: duct tape, superglue... and then I saw it shining right in front of me like a lighthouse beaming in the night. The mother of the bride, who was in quite a panic, had, in her hands, what every mother of the bride carries: a bundle of papers. And one one of them was a paperclip. With no time to spare, I dispensed with formalities and plucked the clip from her papers with my left hand as my right hand drew my Leatherman Tool from its sheah under my tux jacket and deftly opened it on-handed balisong style. I quickly formed the clip to attach the train to the dress. Perfect.
 
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There was a news item about a year ago of a elderly woman in Boston whose scarf got caught in a public escalator. She ended up being strangled to death, slowly, right in public, with people standing around. None of them able to help her because no one had a knife!! :mad:

So, this could have been the ultimate knife story for this thread. But sadly, no one "like us" was around at the time...:(
 
ExMachina said:
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There was a news item about a year ago of a elderly woman in Boston whose scarf got caught in a public escalator. She ended up being strangled to death, slowly, right in public, with people standing around. None of them able to help her because no one had a knife!! :mad:

So, this could have been the ultimate knife story for this thread. But sadly, no one "like us" was around at the time...:(
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That was an extremely sad story, I remember reading it when it was first posted. That's one of those situations that reassures me on why I carry a knife.

I've never used my knife to "save" the day, but I've frequently been yelled at "Hey, Dude, get over here, I need sh*t cut." I hear that at work a lot.
 
25 years ago I cut a seat belt from a lady who was in a nasty car wreck. Used my trusty Buck 110. She ended up dying. She hit a concrete bridge at about 60mph. Bad memory.
 
I had just bought an old Imperial Camp knife (new-old stock) while on a trip in Colorado. On the train trip back, we (me & my wife & my son) couldn't sit together because at least half-a-dozen seats were broken around us. I looked at how they were built, and started working on them with my new knife - it was exactly what I needed. I fixed what we needed so we could sit together, and did the same thing for several others for families & groups who were together. And then some car attendant told me that only 'union personnel' were to do that kind of repair. :rolleyes:

thx - cpr
 
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