Roper is Worth a Look

 

Photo by A G Russell Knives

               Roper Knives make some interesting traditional folders. The models are the usual suspects: trapper, stockman, and the like. They are moderately priced and made in China, nothing too exciting there. Where Roper shines is in its handle designs. While not a radical diversion, they do represent a welcome departure from other knife companies’ offerings. Typical is the one pictured above using two varieties of micarta. They also make a Viper Series, one of which is bumpy and one of which is inverted bumpy. The designs are inspired by the Old West/Southwest and also feature a series of Native American motifs. They all get pretty good reviews and sell in the 20+ dollar range. They offer a line of modern and sheath knives, neither of which I can speak to with any authority.

               Roper also makes some fusion knives, combining modern features with traditional looks. One, the Pecos Linerlock (RP0011), sports a creamy yellow Delrin handle with a copperhead top bolster and a powder horn bottom. Looking every bit the traditional, a closer look reveals a thumb stud and a pocket clip. The steel is 1065 carbon. The blade is a practical clip point. They claim a 3.5” blade, but personally I think of it as 3” with a 2 3/4” cutting edge. The thumb stud is not accompanied by bearings but can be easily opened entirely with a fluid motion of the thumb. The linerlock is easily disengaged.

               Those are the facts, but on the subjective side I can proclaim this as one of the two most companionable knives I own. I’m not entirely sure what I mean by that, but it’s what comes to mind when carrying this knife. It looks great, is easy to open and close, and it cuts stuff.

               The other fusion knives by Roper are the Buffalo Warrior and Buffalo Scout, which I do not own. They are both traditional looking flippers with wood scales and brass bolsters. I see one in my future.  Anyway, look ‘em up and see what you think.

Roper Pecos Linerlock
Photo by Walmart

"5 Pocket Knives I'd Buy First if I Had to Start Over" - in America!

 

Ute knife baabee! Ute knife, baby ute knife...
(Wikipedia)

So I was watching Slipjoint Sawyer on the YouTube and it was pretty good, as is all his stuff. But this one was problematic as he’s in England, so his list may be a little different if he was in the U.S. of A. So here’s my version of Mr. Sawyer’s starting over list.

               First off, America is pretty much a sink or swim state, so if you're down, well good luck buddy. Let’s say your apartment building burnt down and you didn’t have insurance. Or you wife got sick and you had lousy insurance. Or your wife got better and ran off with her lawyer who got her everything. Everything? Even my knife collection? Yup, everything. 

And while all this was going on at home that pretty good job you had disappeared when your company moved to Upper Volta, and you won’t get any unemployment because you’re a dirty Democrat, or even worse, a cat eating Britisher! So you need a job and you need it fast and you take the first thing you can get, and it’s minimum wage, federal minimum wage, $7.25 an hour and you want to buy some knives (for comparisons sake a big mac combo in America runs between $8 and $13  nationally). Here’s what you do.

               Your first paycheck: “Hyper Tough Retractable Utility Knife with Blade Storage, Model 6832, 7.75 in” $3.92 from Walmart. It even comes with 3 disposable blades, because all the best blades are disposable.

               Your second paycheck: Well you're really cooking with gas now, you got a fiver to spend! How about the Rough Ryder Yellow Mini Trapper Folding Knife at $4.99? It’s almost a real big boy knife!

Your third paycheck: Wow only six weeks in and you got a sawbuck left over, good job! Splurge on a “Frost Cutlery Black Hills Steel Dakota Blue Bone Peanut Folding Knife” for only $9.99. What, you don’t have anything for taxes and shipping? Well. You’ll get another paycheck in a mere two weeks. Hang in there.

Your fifth paycheck: Hey, you got raise after they found your shift leader hanging in the break room, now you’re the shift leader! Yay! It’s 20 more bucks a week and it’s off to Roper town, no pun intended. The “Roper Liner Lock Pecos Delrin Knife” is a nice midsize old timey looking knife with some modern touches. The 1065 steel blade and yellowish Delrin handles are making you feel like a human again! It’s pricy, like 20 bucks, but you’ve earned it.

Your sixth paycheck: That $7.75 an hour just keeps gushing in and you want something swanky. How about a Marble's Exhibition Grade Brown Checkered Bone Barlow” At only $17.99 this stylin beauty will make you look like a ten dollar an hour man. The sky’s the limit! Now go buy a shovel because you still got a lot of digging to do. 

Bear & Son Peanut Butter & Jelly Lockback (PBJ05)

 

I received this knife as a Valentines Day present. It was a real surprise. I asked my girlfriend, “Did I tell you about this knife?” “No,” she said. “How did you decide on this knife?” She said, “I went on that site you like, and it was on the home page and I know how much you like peanut butter.” Which is true: pb&j, pb&b, pb&h, pb&p, it’s all good.

As far as I know, Case was the first to make a pb&j themed knife, though it’s limited to the color scheme, still, it always brings a smile. Bear & Son has gone it one better by making scales that actually look like peanut butter and jelly. My girlfriend says it looks just like Jiff, though I think it’s more like Peter Pan. That’s in low light, turn up the light and you get sparkles coming from the “mica pearl,” something I had to look up.

Knifewise, the series comes in a Barlow, two sizes of trapper, a fixed blade, and if you like peanut butter and booze, a beer tender. The series is a collaboration between Bear & Son, Smokey Mountain Knife Works, and custom knife designer/maker Michael Prader. The Lockback, is typical of its type (they are all cousins of the Buck 110), and features a “high carbon stainless blade.” I find the lock to be a bit tough to use, but I have found most lockbacks to be stubborn. The key is to press on the lock lever with your thumb and thumbnail at the same time, going as far down as it will go, which works great. It’s not something you’ll want to do 30 times a day but is fine for causal use. Though heavy on novelty value, the lockback version is close enough to a gentleman’s knife to go in the pocket of my sportscoat. The blade came sharp enough for me, but the pivot needed a little oil, and I threw some on the springs and the lock lever, more for good luck than anything else. (I use Hoppe's Number 9 Gun Oil on my knives and you’ll never talk me out of it.)

So there you have it, a good knife with whimsical scales, win win.

Rosecraft Modern Knives "Priced to Move."

Remember when Fred fell in with those bank robbers and one guy had a switchblade that opened into a full-sized meat clever? That's what the Ogee reminds me of.

Rosecraft Blades has “decided to move away from Modern Knives altogether.” This is news to me, though it seems to have been going on for a while, but it was news to me, maybe you too. There are still a good number left, and the discounts are good. I pocked up the Ogee because it reminds me of an episode of the Flintstone’s.

My other Rosecraft modern model is the Castorea, which is, for all intents and purposes, a modern grandaddy Barlow. The name is interesting, some sites say castorea means “beaver,” and other sites say it’s a beaver’s scent gland. The blade does resemble a beaver’s tail. I don’t know what a beaver’s scent gland looks like.

Anway, if you like quality modern knives, or are just modern-curious, there’s plenty of bargains there.

"No, you cannot see my castorea!"

Gzen92, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Knife Sharpness Tests

 

Yeah, but is it sharp?

I enjoy watching knife sharpness tests. They aren’t the most exciting things in the world, watching somebody make hundreds of cuts, but they have taught me a few things. If you aren’t familiar with these tests, they go as follows: The tester will take one or more knives and see how many cuts can be made before the knife gets too dull to easily slice a piece of paper. The testing material is usually corrugated cardboard or rope.

The first one that caught my eye was done by Paddy’s Potato Peelers, who wanted to see how many cuts he could get out of a Rough Ryder trapper. The steel is 440a and the knife inexpensive, nothing fancy. He got a hundred cuts before the blade went dull. I was impressed. Other testers have achieved similar results with the old RR brand.

Then I ran across a fellow named Cedric who tested a bunch of different knives, starting with some basic steels all the way up to some fancier varieties. There are knives out there that can make, not a hundred, but hundreds of cuts before getting dull. 

I was also impressed with the method the testers came up with. This informal group of vloggers have achieved a pretty good system for tests that is objective and easily replicated. If you are skeptical, you can easily do the test yourself at home spending little to no money.

Lessons learned:

1. There are budget knives that can cut a lot of stuff before getting dull. This is, of course, relative to the materials being cut.
2. It seems that I can use my knives longer between sharpening than I thought.
3. There is a real value in premium knife steel, especially if you need to do a lot of cutting throughout your day.

 It seems rare to find testing that reveals all good news, but there you have it.

The Swiss Army Knife is a Good Friend to the Retiree

 

The Swiss Explorer from Victorinox, as they used to say
over at The Whole Earth Catalog "Tools for Living."

One of the nice little surprises to getting older is how much I still rely on my old friend the Swiss Army Knife (SAK). I used to backpack, camp, fish, and work in all sorts of factories, warehouses, construction sites, and other places where a good multitool can be essential, but not anymore, and yet, there is still a Victorinox Explorer SAK in my pocket and not just for sentimental reasons. I use it all the time, sometimes for the same old tasks, like tightening screws and opening bottles, but others too, like cutting open annoying clamshell packaging with the scissors and reading the very small print on items at the store with the magnifying glass. Some of the most important words you will ever read are on the sides of medicine bottles, but who can see them?!

Victorinox scissors are widely acknowledged for punching above their weight, and those tiny things can cut open most anything a bigger pair can handle. The magnifying glass, peculiar to only a few Swiss models, is a less well-known Godsend. If there was a Noble Prize for usefulness, Victorinox would win, hands down. Even the tools that seem superfluous pop up to save the day. Few people think of the awl as useful, until they need to add a notch to their belts. The parcel hook, the pin, the toothpick, the tweezers, and the corkscrew have all served me in times of need. Who wants to stare at an unopened bottle of wine all evening? Who wants to keep that splinter in their finger? Who wants those strings digging into their hands?

The newest tool for the Swiss Army Knife is the internet, where there are countless numbers of sites and videos written by clever people to show you all the things you can use your SAK for. I will mention two. First is a fellow, named Felix Immler, who spends a lot of his free time thinking of new uses for the SAK. He plays The Professor to the world’s Gilligan’s Island. Another good destination is a video by VineClimber called Good Night, Swiss Army Knife, where she spends a pleasant hour going over the pros and cons of the various SAKs in her collection. Oh, and Jon Gadget, I guess that’s three. Anyway, there are a lot of good people in this world, some of whom want you to get the most out of your tools, God Bless ‘em.

While the SAK is naturally at home to the handymen and MacGyver’s of the world, it’s much more useful to the unhandy. If your tool collection consists of a screwdriver and a bent steak knife, buy yourself a SAK. If you are always misplacing your tools, buy a Sak and keep in a safe place, like your pocket or a kitchen drawer. If your tired of buying tools for every little problem, buy yourself a SAK, the fifty-some bucks for the Explorer will save you money in the long run, or, if you want to go whole hog, spend a C-note on the Swiss Champ, a veritable toolbox of a knife. I can’t recommend them enough. And please, get the name brand, it will never let you down. If cost is an issue, check your local pawnshop or thrift store.

Maybe you got your first scout knife when you were eight years old, now, at 65, it’s time for your first Swiss Army Knife. Congratulations.

The Swiss Champ, a little large but surprisingly practical.

House Knives

"Whetstone" by Falmanac

How do you keep your knives? Are they all on display under glass? Are they secured in boxes? Are they accessible to other adult family members? Would they dare?

When I was a kid, my dad brought home a bunch of old knives discarded by the plant where he worked. They were pretty worn out. The knives were about the size and shape of a bread knife without the serrations. Many had the tips broken off, the wood handles had long ago lost the finish, and they had all been sharpened too many times on some rough, impatient grinders. He cleaned them up, gave them a proper sharpening on our old swaybacked stone and started distributing them around the house. They were everywhere, kitchen drawers, the pegboard in the workshop, the toolbox in the basement, the table by the washer next to an ancient corked bottle of laundry bluing, the toolbox in the car, the tackle box, there was always a knife handy. Were they always the perfect tool for the job? No, but they were usually good enough.

Am I suggesting you take your prize collection and distribute it throughout? Heck no. But remember all those knives you bought during the Great Ozark Trail Rush of ‘24? I bet most of them are still sitting unopened in a Walmart bag somewhere. Why not get them out and spread the wealth? Your life will be that much more convenient, and it may keep folks away from your best knives, a decoy of sorts.

A couple of months ago I was packing up cartons and cartons of excess inventory using my beloved Vosteed Corgi when it quietly fell into one of the boxes. If I hadn’t noticed, I may have lost a sixty-dollar knife, the next day I came to work with my ten dollar “7.5 inch folding knife.” I still take my Corgi to work, but the Ozark Trail lives there in a drawer, waiting patiently for the hazardous duty.

A little postscript: The original Ozark Trail was not a path taken by pioneers in covered wagons, but an early auto road maintained by volunteers, connecting the Ozarks with the Desert Southwest. And perhaps that’s a good way to think of the brand, fine for car camping, maybe not the best if you’re setting out for a long jaunt on the Appalachian Trail.  

Courtesy of Sixgun Siding

The Neo-Barlow: What Hath God Wrought?

 

The Finch 1929

The classic American Barlow knife has a handle that’s about 3 ½ inches long, a long top bolster, and a subtle teardrop shape. A typical modern knife has a locking blade, a fast-opening mechanism, and a pocket clip. And never the twain shall meet, until lately. Or should I say finally. The modern and traditional knife worlds are coming together thanks to some innovative designers and some willing customers. If you are anything like me, you’ve been waiting for this. Traditional knives look great but can be, at times, inconvenient. On the other hand, modern knives have great conveniences but are ugly as sin.

There is no better example of a neo-Barlow than the Finch 1929. It has the right look, the right dimensions, and taking a bold leap into the Space Age, a pocket clip. It’s also a flipper with a locking blade. Heavens forefend. They don’t call it a Barlow, probably because they don’t want to get mired down in endless questions of genuine authenticity, but rest assured, it’s a Barlow. Come to think of it, if the guy who invented the Barlow had thought to himself, "wait, this is too modern for 1670," we never would have gotten such a grand old design to begin with.

Are there any drawbacks to this new design? None that I can see. I’ve been carrying one for months and it does everything my other 12 Barlows can do, but it’s faster to open and easier to find in my pocket. I do think the opening mechanism on a traditional slipjoint will probably last longer, long enough to leave to my grandson, but he can buy his own knife. Heck, by that time, they will probably be cuttings things with tiny lightsabers from the Smokey Mountain Laser Works.

The 1929 is a bit on the pricey side. I bought mine last year for $125.oo, but there are other, less expensive neo-Barlows out there. There is the Smith & Wesson “Executive Barlow” that the Amazon blurb says is for “Outdoor, Tactical, & Survival,” but I wouldn’t go that far. It is, however, a swanky little Barlow with, hold your breath now, assisted opening. "O brave new world!" It’s also dirt cheap, around 23 bucks.

Smith & Wesson Executive Barlow

Then there is the  Rosecraft Blades Castorea which is nothing more than a big ol’ Grandaddy Barlow that flips, locks, and pockets with the best of them. It sells for a mere twenty dollars. Yup, Rosecraft quality for a couple of sawbucks.

Rosecraft Castorea

There are even new Barlows out there with modern looks and old fashion mechanisms, though I’m not sure why. It reminds me of the time when Sarah Bernhardt, a famous beauty, met George Bernard Shaw, a famous intellect. She suggested they combine their glorious attributes by having a child. He answered, “But what if the child were born with my looks and your brain?” So, I will leave those recommendations to someone else.

Rice Krispies Knives: The Rise of the God Walkandtalka

 

The Rosecraft Appalachian Jack has the best walk and talk ever.

People who review knives have a tough job, there isn’t a whole lot to a knife. But they need to provide useful information and also to fill up the page/video. A two sentence review won’t cut it. Thus, they often cover critiques of a product’s more trivial aspects. One of these trivialities in traditional knife reviews is known as “walk and talk.” It’s an evaluation of the pull and noises made by a knife when being opened and closed. The triviality of the “talk” seems to have grown into a serious consideration of a knife’s overall desirability. I do like a snappy knife, even the ever-levelheaded Jon Gadget recently referred to the walk and talk in a Kansept Bevy as “strangely satisfying.” My Rosecraft Appalachian Jack is a personal favorite and has a great sound, though I use my virtually silent Rough Ryder Working Man Stockman more often at work because it has a pocket clip. Function trumps sound.

Sometimes sound matters. I remember, years ago, a friend was reading a gun magazine and laughing. I asked what was so funny, and he said an advertisement for Ninja Suits with Velcro pockets. “Can you imagine,” he chuckled, “a ninja spending hours stealthily stalking his target only to pierce the silence opening his 80 decibel Velcro pocket?”

It is useful to go back to the basics. A knife is a thin slab of metal with a sharpened edge used for cutting. The first knives were fixed blades and made no noise at all. Today, fixed blade knives are often considered the bestest and toughest knives available, but they still make no noise, nor are they hard to pull from the sheath. Why would anyone want a knife that’s hard to deploy?

 But the traditional folder is often rated superior if it is not only noisy, but difficult to open. This aspect is not as trivial in that I won’t buy a knife with a hard pull, to quote Colonel Stonehill, “…the world as it is, is vexing enough.” And yet many rate a hard pull as a virtue. The fellow on Baxter’s Blades, a man with common sense, usually, has come to the conclusion that all knives should have hard pulls and the reason they don’t is because of old men and their delicate fingernails. I would like to see some proof of this, maybe a study from the Institute of Old Guys or something, I know my own nails have toughened with age. Nevertheless, I will not take a knife with a hard pull to work. It’s not that opening it once is so bad but opening it many times throughout the day can get irritating. The problem is compounded by the fact that many knife reviewers are nice guys who don’t want to consign a knife or its maker to the infernal regions, so sometimes they gloss over a knife’s drawbacks. They mean well, but you have to read between the lines, such as when a reviewer says a knife is “a little hard to open,” BEWARE.

The Rough Ryder Working Man's Stockman isn't much on walk and talk but is a superior work knife.

I Sharpened My Knife - and Lived!

 

    I hadn’t sharpened a knife in 35 years, until recently. I had good reasons, my best childhood friend was a knife lover and when he heard I was sharpening my knives on the back of our electric can opener, he told me to just bring my dull blades to him. On top of that, my girlfriend worked in several delis over the years and could handle a steel like a champion fencer. 

    But my friend died and my girlfriend got busy, so it was up to me. I was hesitant because I can’t tell a 20 degree angle from any other angle and thought I’d mess things up. (I was gonna say I can’t tell an Angle from a Jute, but thought I’d spare y’all the groan.) First, I started looking at pull-through sharpeners, I had a rolling one when I was a kid, it looked like a Duncan Butterfly yoyo with a stone on the axle and I’d just roll the knife back and forth and be done. But they don’t seem to make those anymore, and anyway, I wanted to do it right. I looked around and almost settled for a pull-through model, but I stuck to my convictions and found the Work Sharp Pocket Knife Sharpener and for $15, it seemed a safe bet. Not only was it inexpensive and well-reviewed, it has little ramps that showed me the angle. 

     I started out on some paring knives and, miracle of miracles, they got sharper, a lot sharper! Since then, I have used them on my pocketknives and even a pair of scissors, all to good effect. Am I a champion sharpener now? No way. I still use the angle guides and am still not completely comfortable with the process, but that will come with time. 

    My only warning to people buying the Pocket Knife Sharpener, is that it acted like a gateway drug, prompting me to buy the Work Sharp Guided Field Sharpener. I didn’t need it, the pocket model was fine, but I had to have it. Caveat Emptor.