Wild Willie's "It is better to have loved and lost" GAW...

I had a SAK Tinker I had carried for years, was a gift and had my name and rank on it from a previous post along with a Leatherman tool which was also engraved and an Atwood tool (before they became highly desirable). Anyways, on a convoy in Afghanistan the entire pouch got ripped off my belt when I quickly exited an MRAP, wasn't my unit as I was a "convoy bum" and so I never saw them again. Wasn't so much the things but that they were engraved and I had carried them for a decade+ at that point.

Not family heirlooms but a real bummer.
 
Very entertaining thread indeed. I’m in. I’ve always hated that I lost my boyhood Imperial Barlow knife. It’s the only knife that has ever sliced me viscously. Cut straight down through my thumb halfway into the nail.

My son Sam makes me tell that story all the time, wanting to prove the point that he deserves more knives because he’s never been as dumb as his dad with a knife.

The knife got lost along the way. Sure would have been nice to have a prop for my story!
 
As much as I would love the Mercator, I'm not in. I've had too much good fortune in the GAWs recently, so I'll leave it to others.

But I love to participate, so in the spirit of participating, but not actually entering, I will tell a sob story with a happy ending. I've told this story before, but I will never stop finding it miraculous.

20180920_144815-jpg.989145

The Story

That old Solingen hunting knife is certainly not the most valuable knife I own, but it is by far the most precious to me, and I will share why.

My grandfather gave me this knife when I was 11. I loved it. I carried it all over the place running around the countryside outside of Nome, Alaska :D. Actually, I loved it so much I would carry it around town a lot too o_O. What can I say, I was a preteen in a place where no one batted an eye at someone carrying a knife, I just think in retrospect that preteen me really didn't need to be carrying a full-size fixed blade everywhere. Especially since I would routinely stick it in my boot for no good reason.

That habit of carrying the knife in my boot led to a minor tragedy in my life when I was 14. I went traipsing around the tundra with my trusty K. Tragbar stuck in my boot, and it fell out! :eek::( I realized later, and searched and searched, but I never found it :(.

Fast forward a couple years. I was 17, and working at a gas station. A guy pulled up to get his truck filled, and I noticed he had an old mud-covered knife in the bed of his truck. I noticed that the pommel looked like my old knife, but it was so encrusted in muck and vegetation bits that I couldn't see much else in the way of details. I asked the man if he would be willing to sell me the knife. He replied that I could just have it. He said his kids had found it on the tundra earlier, and it was probably just a hunk of rust inside the sheath. I thanked him, and he went on his way.

I took it into the shop and started washing it and softening up the packed in muck. I was quite shocked when I washed off the back of the sheath and found the initials that I had carved into it when I was 12! I was sure the knife was going to be utterly trashed, but at least I was going to have My Knife back. I was absolutely floored when I got the knife fully cleaned up that there was no more than superficial rust on the blade (that Rostfrei really lived up to its name) and the handle was still in pretty decent shape. It was really packed with muck, I even had to clean out the inside of the handle. Fortunately it takes down easy.

Somehow, some way, that knife spent three years on the tundra and then came back to me whole.

I am pretty sure that the odds of my knife coming back to me after years on the tundra are essentially zero. I still have no idea how it could have happened. I know from talking to the guy that he and his kids were out in the countryside near where our camp had been when I lost the knife. And I feel like the likelihood of someone else with the same initials carved into the back of their visually identical knife losing it in the same area and that one being recovered and given to me has to be even more unlikely than the knife coming back to me, but I still don't understand how it could still be in good condition. It was on the tundra for years, freezing and thawing in the muck. The tundra is vast, and when things get lost on the tundra they tend to stay lost. And the tundra is hard on objects. If nothing else I would have expected the antler handle to have degraded significantly. But somehow, by some miracle, the knife came back to me in good shape.

The original sheath is long gone at this point (courtesy of my ex wife's dog), but that old K. Tragbar has been with me camping, fishing, and hunting from the tundra to the mojave, from the Olympic rainforest to the Appalachians, and served me well when I lived in the woods of Quebec.

I don't really use it anymore because I am saving it for my daughter (or my son if she ends up not liking knives, but she is already into them) when she gets older. Honestly, the knife is a little small for my hands these days, and I have lots of other options. I am hoping that my daughter is not unfortunate enough to inherit my size 11 paws ;). But if I had to give away all of my knives and only hold on to one, it would be that old K. Tragbar. It is a great and proven knife, and it came back to me. I hope it serves my daughter and maybe future generations of my family as well.
 
abbydaddy said:
As much as I would love the Mercator, I'm not in. I've had too much good fortune in the GAWs recently, so I'll leave it to others.

But I love to participate, so in the spirit of participating, but not actually entering, I will tell a sob story with a happy ending. I've told this story before, but I will never stop finding it miraculous.

20180920_144815-jpg.989145

The Story

That old Solingen hunting knife is certainly not the most valuable knife I own, but it is by far the most precious to me, and I will share why.

My grandfather gave me this knife when I was 11. I loved it. I carried it all over the place running around the countryside outside of Nome, Alaska :D. Actually, I loved it so much I would carry it around town a lot too o_O. What can I say, I was a preteen in a place where no one batted an eye at someone carrying a knife, I just think in retrospect that preteen me really didn't need to be carrying a full-size fixed blade everywhere. Especially since I would routinely stick it in my boot for no good reason.

That habit of carrying the knife in my boot led to a minor tragedy in my life when I was 14. I went traipsing around the tundra with my trusty K. Tragbar stuck in my boot, and it fell out! :eek::( I realized later, and searched and searched, but I never found it :(.

Fast forward a couple years. I was 17, and working at a gas station. A guy pulled up to get his truck filled, and I noticed he had an old mud-covered knife in the bed of his truck. I noticed that the pommel looked like my old knife, but it was so encrusted in muck and vegetation bits that I couldn't see much else in the way of details. I asked the man if he would be willing to sell me the knife. He replied that I could just have it. He said his kids had found it on the tundra earlier, and it was probably just a hunk of rust inside the sheath. I thanked him, and he went on his way.

I took it into the shop and started washing it and softening up the packed in muck. I was quite shocked when I washed off the back of the sheath and found the initials that I had carved into it when I was 12! I was sure the knife was going to be utterly trashed, but at least I was going to have My Knife back. I was absolutely floored when I got the knife fully cleaned up that there was no more than superficial rust on the blade (that Rostfrei really lived up to its name) and the handle was still in pretty decent shape. It was really packed with muck, I even had to clean out the inside of the handle. Fortunately it takes down easy.

Somehow, some way, that knife spent three years on the tundra and then came back to me whole.

I am pretty sure that the odds of my knife coming back to me after years on the tundra are essentially zero. I still have no idea how it could have happened. I know from talking to the guy that he and his kids were out in the countryside near where our camp had been when I lost the knife. And I feel like the likelihood of someone else with the same initials carved into the back of their visually identical knife losing it in the same area and that one being recovered and given to me has to be even more unlikely than the knife coming back to me, but I still don't understand how it could still be in good condition. It was on the tundra for years, freezing and thawing in the muck. The tundra is vast, and when things get lost on the tundra they tend to stay lost. And the tundra is hard on objects. If nothing else I would have expected the antler handle to have degraded significantly. But somehow, by some miracle, the knife came back to me in good shape.

The original sheath is long gone at this point (courtesy of my ex wife's dog), but that old K. Tragbar has been with me camping, fishing, and hunting from the tundra to the mojave, from the Olympic rainforest to the Appalachians, and served me well when I lived in the woods of Quebec.

I don't really use it anymore because I am saving it for my daughter (or my son if she ends up not liking knives, but she is already into them) when she gets older. Honestly, the knife is a little small for my hands these days, and I have lots of other options. I am hoping that my daughter is not unfortunate enough to inherit my size 11 paws ;). But if I had to give away all of my knives and only hold on to one, it would be that old K. Tragbar. It is a great and proven knife, and it came back to me. I hope it serves my daughter and maybe future generations of my family as well.
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That is a terrific story! I often wonder how many things get lost, to be found by someone else and continue to be used vs thrown away. Lucky for you the guy never decided to clean it up.
 
I took my neice to a go cart racing track & she had a ball. Towards the end, she guilted uncle John to squeeze into a gocart & race her ... of course my speed demon 10 year old niece (who got a warning from the proprietor to take it easy - she was running circles around everyone else out there) put manners on her uncle (the power to weight ratio wasn't in my favor). Was wearing cargo shorts, and when I got home, my blue bone Case copperlock was missing. Must have fell out inside that little go cart. Of course nobody at the establishment knew anything about it when I called a few days later asking if anyone turned it in. Since I got serious about collecting knives, thats the only one I've lost...
 
My first real pokcet knife was an Oldtimer medium stockman. (I say first real "pocket" knifd because I had a larger folder with tools that was a belt knife, too big for general pocket carry).

Back then having a pocket knife was not a mortal sin, like it is now. In fact, I once took a machete to a school weekend camp. One of teachers heard i had the machete, and asked to borrow it. She used it to dig some edible plants, and gave it back to me for the rest of the trip!

I had the pocket knife in my jacket pocket. At lunch, I hung the jacket up in the school kitchen. One of the other kids snagged that pocket knife and pilfered it.

I was relatively certain who took it, but did not see him take it. (Years later that same kid got 25 years in prison for shooting people at a bar ).


This Oldtimer is a new old stock. But I would love to have my old trusty original back!
 
Ok friends and neighbors, it's time... Here's the updated prizes, the small tinker arrived today...1592440447964720675304.jpg
Here is my highly sophisticated random name selector...
15924408277311460191384.jpg
And here are our winners... Drawn by the children in birth order... Will Power Will Power is our first winner... @meako is the second.
15924411103301873059557.jpg
Post up here with your choices guys, then either pm me here or shoot an email to akpwillis@ymail.com

Thanks a lot guys for the participation!
 
Congrats to the winners, and thanks for a fun (and also sad) GAW!
 
Great stuff!!:cool:

However, due to the Covid situation and chronic delays in the postal system from US to Europe-STILL waiting for a knife trapped at Chicago airport since 29th March:eek: I've decided it's for the best if I pass my winning nomination to an American participant/resident, so I'd like to nominate Henry Beige Henry Beige to have first choice:thumbsup:

Hope this is OK but I think it's better due to the current situation. My thanks for this interesting GAW oh and I haven't found the lost Lag but a drawer revealed a few nuggets I'd misplaced since the house move in February, must be this thread's Karma :D;)

Many thanks,

Will
 
Will Power said:
Great stuff!!:cool:

However, due to the Covid situation and chronic delays in the postal system from US to Europe-STILL waiting for a knife trapped at Chicago airport since 29th March:eek: I've decided it's for the best if I pass my winning nomination to an American participant/resident, so I'd like to nominate Henry Beige Henry Beige to have first choice:thumbsup:

Hope this is OK but I think it's better due to the current situation. My thanks for this interesting GAW oh and I haven't found the lost Lag but a drawer revealed a few nuggets I'd misplaced since the house move in February, must be this thread's Karma :D;)

Many thanks,

Will
Click to expand...

That's fine with me... Thanks for playing along, and I'm glad you found at least a few misplaced items. Maybe the lag will turn up some day. Here's hoping...

Henry Beige Henry Beige . You're up to bat good sir!
 
I’m missing a Victorinox Champion my Dad bought me for my 13th birthday.

No real story it’s just been missing for a long time. I wasn't carrying it, When it went away. I just can’t find it. It’s been gone at least ten years.
 
Will and Willie,
You guys present me with a tough choice at this early hour. I haven’t even had coffee yet. Willie, that is a well-considered and tasteful lineup of knives. I say this from experience, as I have examples of just about every knife there. The one that I do not have is the yellow Case, is that a slimline trapper? So the Case would be my pick. Unless, of course, if the Case is the knife Meako would choose. In that case, all he has to do is say so, and I will make a different pick.

Willie, thank you for a unique and entertaining GAW. Will, thanks for thinking of me. And not least, thanks to all you other losers, for sharing your tales of woe.
 
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Henry Beige said:
Will and Willie,
You guys present me with a tough choice at this early hour. I haven’t even had coffee yet. Willie, that is a well-considered and tasteful lineup of knives. I say this from experience, as I have examples of just about every knife there. The one that I do not have is the yellow Case, is that a slimline trapper? So the Case would be my pick. Unless, of course, if the Case is the knife Meako would choose. In that case, all he has to do is say so, and I will make a different pick.

Willie, thank you for a unique and entertaining GAW. Will, thanks for thinking of me. And not least, thanks to all you other losers, for sharing your tales of woe.
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That is indeed a slimline trapper. It doesn't have the finest action but is a great knife none the less. Shoot me a pm with your shipping info and I'll get it out to you.

We're still waiting to hear from @meako. I await your response with bated breath...
 
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