Glock

Folks who know me know I'm fascinated with firearms.  Just as much as I'm fascinated by knives.  Always have been, always will be.

However, I generally keep discussions about firearms out of my blogs, for a few reasons.  First, guns are a highly charged, emotional topic, even in my own family.  No need to poke the bear.  Second, guns of all types, gun issues and gun culture are already well covered on other blogs; there's only a few blogs that focus on knives but there's hundreds (perhaps thousands) of blogs (and websites, and YouTube channels) focused on guns.  I see no need to rehash what's already been hashed and rehashed elsewhere.

But I am fascinated with guns (did I already mention that?).  And I really like Glocks.  My affection for Glocks came late in life and was born out of frustration.  I went through several small 9mm pistols from other manufacturers that proved unreliable.  Not 'fails to fire every few hundred rounds' unreliable, but 'hiccups on damned near every other round' unreliable.  Since I was on the hunt for a ultra reliable pistol that I could carry concealed (God bless the State of Georgia and her concealed carry laws) I was very frustrated by the performance of the pistols I had tested.

Then one afternoon I stumbled into a gun store that also happened to be a Glock Law Enforcement dealer.  I ended up telling my tale of woe to the guy behind the counter and after listening for a few minutes he asked, "Have you ever looked at the Glock 26?"  I made a sour face.  To that point all I thought about Glocks (if I thought about them at all) was that they were overpriced tactical Tupperware.  The sales guy pulled out a Glock 26 and let me handle it.  I have to say that, right off the bat, I was not impressed.  The Glock 26 is a fat, stubby, ungainly looking little gun.  The frame is so short that I could only grip it with two fingers.  It did, however, point quite nicely.  The sales guy looked at me, looked at my haircut, and asked, "Are you law enforcement or military?"  I told him I was retired from the Army.  "Well then, you are entitled to the Glock Law Enforcement discount!"  I asked him what the price of the Glock 26 was and was surprised at the number he tossed back to me.  I looked at the gun in my hand and figured heck, at that price if I don't like it I can always sell it for more than I paid for it.

Eight years on I still carry that Glock 26.  From the first day at the range it has been 100% reliable.  Not '100% reliable with most types of ammo', but 100% reliable, period.    By my count I've put over 2,000 rounds of ammunition through it and the pistol has never failed to feed, fire and cycle any of the ammo I've fed it.  Not once.  And I've fed it some pretty crappy ammo.

Since then I've become a big fan of Glock pistols.  I bought or traded into several other models (a Glock 22 sits on the shelf next to me as I type).  I even got the opportunity to attend the Glock Armorer course at Glock's American headquarters in Smyrna, Ga.  When you tear apart a Glock and understand how it works, then compare its design to many of its competitors (Smith & Wesson, Springfield Armory, Kahr, SIG, H&K, etc.) you begin to understand the genius of Gaston Glock and his design.  Many firearms manufacturers have caught up with Glock in terms of design and reliability, but Glock was there first, and was there decades ahead of most of his competitors.  When a gun company introduces a new polymer frame pistol the first thing it's compared to is the Glock.  In most cases the design is simply a re-engineering of the basic Glock design.

But this blog post isn't really about Glock pistols, at least not directly.  It's about a fascinating little book written by Paul M. Barrett titled 'Glock - The Rise of America's Gun'.

You would think that the history of Glock is pretty straightforward - Austrian entrepreneurial genius produces a groundbreaking pistol design, captures the American law enforcement and sports shooting market and lives happily ever after.

Nooooooo....  The history of Glock, particularly the history of Glock in the US, reads like a juicy soap opera. We have:

• The reclusive Austrian genius who thinks Americans are stupid, especially those that unintentionally shoot themselves with his 'perfect' product
• The fast talking company president who got his start selling machine guns out of the back of his van
• The slick corporate lawyer who becomes the master of trapping liberal politicians in their own hypocrisy 
• Slimy left wing law enforcement leadership bad mouthing 'plastic pistols' out of one side of their mouths while arranging sweetheart deals with Glock out of the other
• A strip club that hosted so many Glock 'business meetings' that it became a defacto corporate annex
• Company employees buying pistols and magazines at huge discounts just before federal bans are enacted only to start selling them out of the trunks of their cars at enormous profit once the ban was in place
• Lines of vans rolling up to Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta to offload weekly shipments of thousands of guns and tens of thousands of magazines to feed an almost insatiable demand for Glock products
• Shady deals with large police forces in major cities that put Glocks in the holsters of police officers at essentially zero cost
• The 70 year old company owner delivering a bare knuckled ass whipping to a would-be assassin who was was hired by one of his own executives to beat his head in with a rubber mallet

You could take the characters from the Sopranos and insert them into this storyline and all the personalities would fit!

How Monty Python-esque is this story?  Here's a sample: when Glock set up its booth at the shooting industry trade show (SHOT Show) in Las Vegas back in 1990 the 'gun babe' they put in the booth to demonstrate the features of the new Glock 20 pistol was actually a stripper from the infamous Gold Club in Atlanta.

Folks, I can't make up stuff this good!  Hell, Jimmy Breslin couldn't make up stuff this good!

The author Paul Barrett is an assistant managing editor of Bloomberg Businessweek (yes, that Bloomberg) and as such he's no supporter of guns or the Second Amendment.  But he's written a mostly fair, honest and often hilariously revealing story of the Glock company, focusing mainly on its US operations.  At the end of the book Barrett invariably slides into familiar liberal talking points territory, asking the reader, for example, if it's really necessary for civilians to have a pistol magazine that holds more than 10 rounds, or if a citizen really needs a cartridge like the .40 S&W that "delivers more destructive force" than the more 'reasonable' 9mm round.  And of course the NRA and Sarah Palin get bashed six ways to Sunday.

But in the end it's the fascinating story of an industry changing pistol design that has thrived despite all the foibles, seedy drama, missteps and outright screw-ups of the humans that designed it, manufactured it and successfully marketed it to make it the most successful line of handguns in history.

It's a fun story.  If you have any interest in firearms, the firearms industry or Glock in particular I highly recommend this book.

Stay sharp!

Brian

RIP Blind Horse Knives

I got an email yesterday from L.T. Wright, one of the owners of Blind Horse Knives in Ohio, stating that he and Dan Coppins have decided to dissolve their partnership and go their own ways in the knife making world.

L.T. has popped up on at least one forum to let everyone know that the split was amicable and he and Dan just wanted to pursue different knifemaking paths.

Both L.T. and Dan have formed new companies.  L.T.'s new venture is L.T. Wright Handcrafted Knives and Dan's new venture is Battle Horse Knives.

I'm sad to see Blind Horse Knives disappear.  Over the last five years or so the brand developed a strong following among the outdoors/hunting/bushcrafting crowd.  Their knives were very well designed, well made, reasonably priced and represented an excellent value for someone looking to move up from standard factory production designs.

I wish both L.T. and Dan the best of luck in their new ventures, and I'm sure I'll be picking up a knife or two from each of them as their blade lines mature.  But for now let's take a look at some great blades that bear the Blind Horse Knife stamp.

BHK Bushcrafter
O1 steel, green Micarta handles

BHK Small Workhorse
D2 steel, orange G10 handles

BHK Large Workhorse
D2 steel, green Micarta handle

Top: Woodsman Pro in O1 steel
Bottom: Woodsman in 154CM steel

Stay sharp!

Brian

Blade Of The Month - The Lowly Machete

I've been using machetes regularly for 20 years, and more intensively since I became a homeowner for the first time about 13 years ago.  The machete is, hands down, one of the most useful cutting tools ever devised by man.  As a slashing and light chopping tool it is unsurpassed.

I've known about machetes all my life, but my first real introduction to them came in the late 1980s down in Honduras.  Watching the local laborers using them to clear brush, chop down small woody plants or cut sugar cane was fascinating.  In Honduras and in other Central American countries at the time if you could swing a machete you could earn a wage.  It was a common sight while driving through the villages early in the morning to see the men of the family - fathers and sons - standing along the road holding a machete, a small lunch in a string bag and a jug of water, waiting for the day labor trucks from the local farms or ranches to swing by and pick them up.  In the United States mechanization would take care of much of this work, but in Honduras the economy was absolutely dependent on manual labor for these tasks.  

Later while stationed in Panama I got more exposure to the uses of the machete.  Unlike southern Honduras, which is semi-arid, Panama is full-on rainforest and keeping the jungle at bay is a full time battle.  This was one of the few times in my life I was able to afford the services of a gardener, and he did virtually all the clearing and trimming tasks with a machete.  At various times I watched him use it to trim hedges, edge the lawn, cut bamboo, open coconuts for the kids, cut rope, cut banana stalks from the trees, cut back sawgrass and kill a poisonous snake.  It was his do-everything tool, and he always made sure it was at-hand.  Victor (the gardener's name) was a virtuoso with the blade and I learned a lot by watching him work.  His machete was an old USGI model someone had given him years before.  The broken handle was wrapped in electrical tape and it had been resharpened so much that it had lost much of its original blade profile, but it still worked perfectly fine in Victor's hands.  

When we bought our house near Atlanta in 2000 the yard was badly overgrown.  The homeowners had neglected the yard for the better part of a decade and it needed immediate attention.  The biggest chore was to simply cut back the overgrown brush and woody vines and take down the dozens of small saplings that had sprouted up.  I knew right away I had the right tool for the job - a USGI machete manufactured by Ontatrio.  

The USGI M1942 pattern machete and sheath 

Now, there are dozens and dozens of machete blade styles.  There are machetes designed specifically for cutting sugar cane (large and heavy for cutting through the woody stalks), for cutting light brush (long, curved and relatively light weight for more efficient slashing) and even machetes designed for gardening chores like harvesting fruits and vegetables (short, lightweight blades for close-in work).   While in Central America I'd buy any new or unique blade style I came across.  The small local hardware stores usually had a good selection of blades on offer for just a few dollars each so it was easy and cheap to accumulate a good collection.

Getting the blades out and ready for some yard work!

However, my machete of choice has always been the USGI M1942-pattern blade.  This blade was first adopted by the US military during WWII and is based on a commercial Collins pattern.  During the war the M1942 machete saw wide use across the world, most notably in the South Pacific and the China-Burma-India theater where it hacked thousands of miles of trails in otherwise tractless jungle.  It developed a reputation as an excellent and absolutely essential tool for jungle warfare.  Decades later it came back into widespread use in Vietnam where it was again used to hack jungle trails, clear fields of fire, cut and shape bamboo stakes, butcher pigs, dig fire pits and, when necessary, be used as a weapon in close-quarters combat.

For the last 30 years or so the Ontario Knife Company has been the sole supplier of M1942 machetes to the US military, and they are still produced to the original Collins pattern with an 18" blade and a black plastic handle.  The M1942 model is made of blade stock that is a bit thicker than that used by most commercial machete manufacturers.  This makes the USGI machete a bit heavier and the blade a bit stiffer than other machetes of similar size, and I feel this is what makes it such a great all-around tool.  It is long and thin enough to swing effectively to clear brush, but has enough blade weight and stiffness to be easily driven through tough woody vines, saplings and bamboo.  It is a first rate land clearing tool.

My M1942 machetes (I own several) are working tools, not collector pieces.  They get used hard and, frequently, get put away wet.  In fact, one spent the winter outside embedded in an old tree stump.  I didn't find it until spring.  They look like hell - rusted, nicked and generally abused.  

Some battle scars on the edge of one of my machetes

Machetes are made of relatively soft steel, and this is on purpose.  A machete is an impact tool - something that strikes hard objects with force (like tree stumps or saplings) and the edge needs to give and not chip or break.  It also needs to be easy to resharpen in the field using common tools.  Because the steel is relatively soft (around the mid-50's on the Rockwell hardness scale) the edge will nick or roll when it hits something too hard.  This is expected, and with a few passes from a bastard file or a few licks on a carborundum stone they are back in action.  My machetes bear the scars of meet-ups with rocks, tough wood and even the occasional smack on a concrete step.  They survive to do battle another day.

If you are a home or property owner, or someone who often finds himself in the woods doing tasks like clearing areas for campsites, deer stands or blinds you need a machete. 

Stay sharp!

Brian

Why I Like Stainless Steel Blades

Bill and I went fishing at Sprewell Bluff on the Flint River this morning on reports that the shoal bass were active.

Don't really know if they were active or not, because about the time we got kitted up it started to pour.  Not too hard if you had the right rain gear (which we did) but hard enough to dampen our enthusiasm for fishing. The river was flowing about 2400 cfs, and safe wading ends at about the 1500 cfs point, so we didn't venture too far out into the water.  I spent a few hours tossing Clouser minnows and woolly buggers into the shoals but got no takers.  Bill ended up getting one good strike on a top water hopper, but that was about it.  The guy sweeping the picnic area with a metal detector was having more luck - he reported digging up 30 cents in about an hour.

As I was standing in the pouring rain I started asking myself deep, probing questions:  Will man ever travel faster than the speed of light?  Are parallel universes plausible?  Will we ever solve world hunger?  Did I bring a stainless steel knife?    

Of all these questions the issue of the stainless steel knife troubled me the most.  Then I remembered that I had indeed brought along a stainless steel blade - my J.D. Davis drop point hunter made of CPM 154 steel.   I had actually strapped it to my belt early this morning before heading out and had forgotten it was there (hard to feel stuff buried deep inside a set of chest waders).  

I patted the sheath on my hip and smiled.  The stars are in their proper places in the heavens, the sun still rises in the east and I've got a stainless steel blade along on this wet, sloppy day.  Life is good.

On the Flint River

I had J.D. build this knife just for days like this.  Yes, I know that carbon steel blades don't just rust away after a few hours of exposure, but I also know that in this day and age corrosion resistance and edge holding ability are not mutually exclusive issues when it comes to knife blades.

On days like this stainless steel is a no-brainer.

Carbon steel is good, but some days just demand stainless

Stay sharp!

Brian

Stove In

I can feel fall's approach.  Seriously, I can!  Even though the days are peaking at 95 degrees and the sun stays up until 9 pm I can sense that wonderful season's slow approach.

Or maybe it's just wishful thinking.  Either way, I want fall to get here real bad.

I figured one way I could hasten it's arrival is to tackle a small chore I've been delaying until cooler weather - the repair of a few antique camping stoves.  My thinking was that if Mother Nature saw me doing something that I would normally only do sometime in late October she'd think she'd think she was running late and would drop some nice, cool, dry fall air on us ahead of schedule.

Still waiting, Mother Nature...

Yet the stove 'repairs' proceeded.  More accurately it was griping, cursing and fumbling with stoves and stove parts.  Little actual repair got done.  None, in fact.

Background.  I collect camping stoves almost like I collect knives - in volume.  I didn't start out to collect stoves.  Unlike knives, I have no strong attraction or affinity for stoves.  For me the real attraction is fire.  At heart I'm a five year old kid who likes to play with matches.  No, I'm not sick, or warped, and I didn't have bed wetting issues as a child.  Here's a little secret - damn near EVERY five year old boy wants to play with matches.  And lighters, candles, road flares and, if given a chance, flame throwers.  It's part of being a boy. What happens as we grow up is we learn to control the fascination.  Some do this by become rocket scientists who get to play with highly volatile liquid hydrogen and oxygen.  Some become firefighters and learn ways to first start fires, then put them out.  Some go to Vegas and put on stage shows with tigers jumping through flaming hoops.  Or some, like me, find a fascination in tools that produce flame in a controlled environment, like camping stoves.  I'm not so much a pyromaniac as the master of the flame!  (Insert Dr. Evil demented laugh here.)  I work to control fire, to bend it to my will, to have it do my bidding.  Like heating up a rehydrated package of chili mac.

Along the way I've picked up stoves that were somewhat complete but didn't run too well, if at all, but they interested me for one reason or another.  Some were old Swedish stoves like the vintage Optimus or Svea self-priming brass models.  Some were early versions of modern classics like the MSR Whisperlite.   Lately I've accumulated a number of older Coleman single burner stoves.  But the two that I tried tackling today are real classics.  First is a Coleman 530, an immediate post-WWII single burner stove that was copied from a version Coleman manufactured for the US military during the war.  This stove was extremely popular with soldiers during the War and Coleman figured there's be a strong market for a civilian version once the war ended.  Coleman was right - it became immensely popular and sold well for a few years after the war.  However, by the late 1940s Coleman figured out that the newly mobile American population wasn't doing much backpacking.  Car camping was the thing and everyone wanted a Coleman two burner stove.  By 1950 demand had tapered off and Coleman stopped production of the 530.

Late WWII ad by Coleman for
their post-war 'pocket stove', which
would be introduced as the model 530

The 530's are exquisite stoves, perhaps one of the best made stoves Coleman ever produced.  They were all brass, nickel plated brass and stainless steel.  The fit and finish was first rate.  They must have been prohibitively expensive to produce, and maybe that's one reason Coleman shut down production.  Still, Coleman claims to have manufactured over one million of these little jewels between 1946 and 1950, and you can still find good plenty of good examples on eBay.

The next stove is one that is directly descendant from the USGI 'pocket stove' and although a 1950's design it remained in service with the US Army right through the 1990s.  This is the M1950 single burner 'squad stove'. This stove was actually a Coleman design but it was never produced for civilian use.  The Army asked Coleman to update their WWII design to make it easier to service while in the field.  I think the requirement was that it also had to fit inside of a squad cook kit.  Coleman did a great job and the resulting stove was virtually indestructible and would burn about anything you could get in the tank.  It's also kind of squat looking and lacks the elegance of the WWII design, but in this case form had to follow function.  The M1950 is all stainless steel with just a bit of brass.  It's about as lovely as an M60 tank.  But it worked, and worked well, and it heated rations for American soldiers from the frozen fields of Cold War Germany to the rice paddies of Vietnam, and lots of places in between.

M1950 Squad Stove

In the early 2000s the US military started to surplus these stoves out and thousands of them hit the market in new or like new condition.  Unfortunately I missed that buying frenzy, and the days of new-in-the-box $60 stoves are long gone.  There are still plenty of good examples available, but today they command almost double what they were selling for a decade ago.

I was lucky in that I managed to get both of my stoves from friends or off of forums where folks are less interested in making a buck.  The sellers of both of these stoves made no secret of the fact that they didn't work (in fact, the M1950 came to me in pieces).  I figured getting them up and running would take just a little elbow grease and a few spare parts.

Hah!

After complete tear-downs, replacement of key parts like the burner valves, testing, more disassembly and reassembly, more testing and lots of cursing and runs to the computer to check the internet references for repair info I now have to admit defeat.  Utter, shameful defeat.  The day started out so promising and my workbench looked so neat and organized.

The M1950 in the process of being field stripped

The M1950 was the clear basket case of the bunch.  It had been rode hard and put away wet.  Repeatedly. The first thing I did was remove the valve assembly.  The fastest way to get the valve assembly off of the tank is to clamp it upside down in a vise and use a strap wrench to unscrew the tank.  This one was on tight!

 Next pull the pump assembly and have a look down into the fuel tank.  Yuk.

Lots of crud in the bottom of the tank.  A good scrubbing with some small
stainless steel nuts and white gas got most of this out.  Just drop in the nuts,
add the gas and swirl.  Rinse and repeat!

Once most of the crud was out of the tank it was time to clean up the threads.  Whoever worked on this stove last was in love with gasket sealant.  It was everywhere.

Using a brass bore brush to clean up the tank threads

One of the saving graces of the M1950 fuel tank is that it's made out of stainless steel.  A lot of them look like hell on the outside (mostly due to lousy paint jobs) but all that I've seen were still perfectly serviceable.  They can take a lot of abuse.

One key step on reassembly is to make sure the fuel valve properly aligns with the valve stop which is part of the pot support/windscreen.

The fuel valve needs to align with the stop tab on the
windscreen.  For testing you don't actually reattach the
windscreen.  This is just to make sure all parts are
properly aligned

OK, everything rebuilt, back together and ready to test.

3, 2, 1... Failure!

Poor pressurization, fuel running everywhere, the serious risk of setting the neighborhood on fire.  I was so startled by the results I forgot to take pictures.  I ALMOST had to run and get the fire extinguisher!

There it sits.  Shamed, alone and hissing highly
flammable gas vapor while in the OFF position

What's next?  I'm not sure.  Something is clearly wrong with the valve assembly.  It is not closing properly when the valve dial is placed in the OFF position.  I just don't know where to look.  Yet.  Luckily I hang out on a great stove related forum where folks trade expert advice all the time.  That's my next stop.

The Coleman 530 was only marginally better.  The only thing I did was replace the gas tank seal (the old one was as hard as rock candy) and pumped her up.  After a few minutes of warming up she finally settled down to an acceptable roar with only the hint of yellow tipped flames (which could have been due to the light breezes we were experiencing).  However, this stove wouldn't turn all the way off, either.  I ended up having to blow it out and let all the compressed gas escape through the flame jet.  Clearly there's a bad seal in there somewhere.  That's a chore for another time.

So there I sat, a day's worth of effort all but wasted.  I needed a working stove fix bad, real bad.  I needed to see some nice, even blue flames spouting from a well behaved stove, something that loved and respected me.  I grabbed two of my favorites that just happened to be summering in my storage shed, an ancient and venerable Coleman 502 and the more recent (and less venerated) Coleman Exponent.  Both are excellent stoves.  The 502 is a classic in its own right and I intend to do a posting on it in the near future.

But for today, it was pump, light, enjoy.  These two fine friends saved the day.

Coleman Exponent (successor to the Peak 1) on the left,
a Coleman 502 (1964 vintage) on the right.
Look closely and you'll see nice even blue flames
being put out by each stove.  

Stay sharp!

Brian

Orange Crush

I've got this thing going for knives with orange handles.  I'm not exactly sure why since as my lovely wife will tell you I tend to be a very boring earth-tone kind of guy.  But for some reason I've long been drawn to knives with orange handles.

Part of it may be my morbid fear of dropping a knife onto the forest floor and not being able to find it.  My nightmare scenario is this: I'm on the edge of survival.  It's just me and my trusty knife against all mother nature has to toss at me.  I'm doing just fine, thanks, since my blade helps provide fire, shelter, food and protection.  Then I stumble, the knife falls from my hand onto the forest floor and is lost in the confusing pattern of leaf litter, sticks, grass and vines.  I search frantically but the knife is gone.  Mother nature wins.  I die.

So to prevent certain death while out on day hikes along well marked trails and within line-of-sight distance to my pickup truck with satellite radio and air conditioning I carry an orange handled knife.  Or two.

I think it's great that more and more manufacturers and custom makers are offering knives with bright orange handles.  Modern synthetic handle materials like G-10 make it easy to produce rugged knives with colorfast handles that can take a lot of abuse.  While international orange isn't 'tacticool', I believe there's a strong argument in favor of carrying at least one knife that sports an orange handle.  It's a lot harder to lose an orange handled knife than it is to lose one with a handle made out of wood or other earth tone colors like green or black micarta.  This is even more important if, like me, you are even just a little bit color blind and you lack the ability to differentiate subtle color differences in the red-green spectrum.  At some point everything on the forest floor looks the same to me, even items that have deep red coloring (like the handle of a Swiss Army knife).  International orange, however, stands out like a bright blaze against an otherwise consistently drab and indistinguishable background.

There's two knives in the photo below.  Both are the same size and blade shape.  The only difference is the handle material.  One knife sports African Rosewood (bubinga) scales, the other orange G-10 scales.  Roughly the same amount of handle material is exposed for each knife.  Which is easier to spot?

Here's what you are looking for:

Two J.D. Davis drop point hunters

Of course screaming orange yellow handles put off the tacticool and mall ninja crowd, but for folks who take knives into the woods to be used and relied upon I think orange handles are a wise choice.

So here's some more great examples of orange handled knives:

Benchmade Triage on the left.  From top to bottom on the right:
Ka-Bar BK-24 in D2, Blind Horse Knives Small Workhorse in D2
and the J.D. Davis drop point hunter in CPM154

The ever popular Buck Folding Hunter in orange plastic scales

Here's the Buck Bucklite Max in orange (the Boone & Crockett model)

The Ka-Bar BK-14 with orange scales.  This model is
made of 1095 steel

A Case small Camper model with orange G-10 scales

Heck, I'll even let an axe get in on the act!

So, if you spend a lot of time in the woods and depend on your knife consider taking along one with a bright orange handle.  It might just save your life.  OK, a bit over dramatic, but for sure it can prevent you from leaving your dropped knife on the forest floor because you can't see it.

Stay sharp, and go orange!

Brian

Switchblade!

The word conjures up images of Mafioso enforcers silencing family members who don't show enough loyalty, Sharks and Jets pirouetting and jabbing at each other beneath New York City overpasses, and blues musicians battling for the attentions of sultry vixens in smoke filled New Orleans music halls. While I happen to think the images are darkly romantic and fascinating, to the weak kneed and weak minded the word switchblade evokes unnecessary violence, violence that can be and must be stopped by banning all switchblade knives everywhere. Speak the word and Michael Bloomberg donates another few million to his anti-everything causes. Sort of like a twisted turn on the "when a bell rings an angel gets its wings" fairy tale.

Yet the reality is much different. There are no legions of inner-city youth carving each other up with switchblades. Never were. For a couple of reasons. During the heyday of the hoodlum switchblades were mostly cheaply made Italian or Spanish imports that couldn't stand up to peeling an apple, let alone carving up one's opponent in a school yard fight. No experienced thug would carry one. They preferred stouter folding knives, fixed blade knives, clubs, baseball bats, guns - anything that would see them through the conflict from start to finish.

Automatic opening knives (switchblades) have been banned in most states and virtually all large cities since the 1950s. This was a knee-jerk reaction to a flood of 'hoodlum' movies that hit the theaters mid-century and focused on the growing restlessness and violence being displayed by inner city youth. The directors and producers of these movies picked the switchblade as a key prop device because they looked cool and, well, they thought that's what all self respecting hoodlums used.

Never let it be said a politician will let pass a chance to ban something "for the good of the children."  Anti-knife laws swept the nation in the 1950's, driven mainly by the images presented in these movies. Switchblades virtually disappeared. Imports were banned and most domestic manufacturers making automatic knives abandoned that segment of the market.

But the switchblade soldiered on in one area that local lawmakers couldn't touch - the US military. The military continued to purchase automatic knives for issue to pilots, paratroopers and rescue personnel. The thought was that the automatic opening feature would allow an injured Soldier to open the knife one handed and cut himself free of his parachute suspension lines or harness. In theory not a bad idea.

What we have to look at today is one of the more common US military switchblades as issued by the Army in the 1970s and 80s. This knife was manufactured by Schrade Walden in New York and was issued to my good friend and fishing buddy Bill sometime in the 1980s. Bill started his Army career flying Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs in Vietnam and ending his career flying the Grumman OV-1 Mohawk in the Army Reserves. Somewhere along the way Bill was issued this knife and 'forgot' to turn it in.

Last year we were doing some float fishing and Bill pulled out this knife. He had it clipped to his belt via the home made lanyard and it was his emergency bail out knife should his kayak overturn. I hadn't seen one in years and he let me play with it for a bit. The last one I saw was in a unit supply room back at Fort Bragg in the early 1980s. Airborne units were allowed to purchase and issue them to jumpers for use during airborne operations. Our supply room kept a few on-hand for issue to jumpmasters, but never had enough to hand out to the full company so they rarely got issued. Of course they were considered 'sensitive items' just like an M-16 so were kept locked up in the arms room. My impression of them at the time was that they were poorly put together. The spring that opened the main blade was weak and barely got the job done, and there was a lot of 'slop' or play in the blade when opened and locked. The knife had a high cool factor, but my impression was that a small fixed blade knife was a better option.

Bill reports that he carried it for years in the special pocket sewn into the inside thigh of the issue flight suit. The pocket was sized specifically to fit this knife. Since you have to have a specific place for everything inside the cramped cockpit of an airplane I guess this location made good sense. It was out of the way of the parachute harness and allowed easy access.

One useful feature this knife incorporates is what is commonly referred to as a 'gut hook'; a hook shaped blade designed specifically to cut parachute suspension lines. The design works very well and will slice through tensioned suspension lines like a hot knife through soft butter. It's much more effective at this task than the straight main blade.

As represented by this knife the concept of the switchblade as an emergency tool doesn't inspire confidence. As I've already mentioned, these knives are poorly fitted. The blade deployment spring is weak and barely gets the blade more than halfway open.  The user has to finish the job with a flick of the wrist.  Several flicks of the wrist, actually. The lanyard bale also frequently interferes with opening. While the idea of one handed opening is good, this knife assumes that your good hand will always be your right hand. It puts the opening button and slide lock just on one side where only your right hand can get to it. Here's hoping it's always your left hand that gets broken or crushed during the ejection or parachute landing because otherwise you're in trouble.

We do have to keep in mind that this knife is essentially a WWII-era design that was kept in production through the 1980s. From that perspective it's not a bad design and reflects the best knife making technology available during the war. As a purpose built tool, something designed for a single use during a specific event (to cut a downed flyer or paratrooper free of his parachute) it works OK. For any other purpose it pretty much sucks. I'd hate to have to go into a true survival situation with just this knife.  It would break the first time it saw hard use.

Since the 1980s folding knife technology has advanced quite a bit. Manufacturers have designed and marketed fast opening knives that get around the silly switchblade restrictions.  Most makers incorporate an opening 'stud' on their blades to permit fast opening using the thumb. Some manufacturers like Spyderco incorporated large opening thumb holes instead of studs. All of these solutions are extremely effective and allow the manufacturing of more robust folding knife designs. Today's high quality folding knives deploy faster than most switchblades, can be used in either hand and stand up just fine to real world use.

One direct response to the weakness of our switchblade is the Benchmade 915 Triage. It incorporates an ambidextrous fast opening main blade with an extremely rugged locking mechanism and incorporates a gut hook that can be opened with one hand.

The Triage is an extremely rugged knife that can not only slice open your parachute harness but then go on to slice open the hood of a Buick. That's what I want the next time I get into a scrape!

Stay sharp!

Brian