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.

Rough Ryder Bluegill Barlow

     

Courtesy SMKW

     For the past six months, I’ve been looking for the perfect workplace Barlow. It’s replacing a no name Barlow I bought when I was ten. The knives were competing with nostalgia and that’s a tough benchmark. 

     I bought ten knives, from Rough Ryder, Case, Bear & Sons, and Rosecraft. Almost all of them were good, some great, but none of them were quite right. Then came the Bluegill, I ordered it before they even had a picture of it up, so my expectations were vague. On initial inspection, I was thrilled, this was my perfect work Barlow. 

     Was it the best Barlow I had purchased, objectively speaking? No, that honor would go to the Rosecraft and the Rough Ryder Reserve. Did it look the most like the one I had as a kid? No, that would be of the sawcut bone variety, which I haven’t gotten yet. But it was a perfect Rough Ryder Barlow, great pull, nail nicks facing opposite directions (a must on Rough Ryder Barlows), and great looking green, thick, jigged bone handle slabs (I don’t know what to call that kind of jigging but I think of it as “rustic”), and two, not one, but two blades. I use the pen blade a lot at work. The construction was solid. 

The theme didn’t hurt. Back in the day, we kids would sneak up to a local pond, teeming with bluegill, and see if we could catch any. We caught quite a few, before the owners found us there and kicked us out. It usually took them a week or two. The pond was overstocked and we didn’t know how to filet, so eating those little fish was more like picking crabs, but we had fun. 

     Practically speaking I haven’t used the knife much, it’s brand new. But I did use it to cut up a ham steak. It was a thick steak made by Frick’s. I cut it into 8 strips and made 8 cubes from each, it was smooth sailing, all slicing, no sawing. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the clip point blade cut off the rind, sticking very close with the loss of very little meat. My dogs were a little disappointed. Performance-wise, it cut better than my paring knives (Victorinox, Opinel), but not quite as good as my D2 RR Reserve Barlow, which goes through meat like a lightsaber. 

     The knife’s specs (RR2632) are classic Barlow, 3 3/8” long, 440 Stainless steel blades, etc. If I could only have one knife, well, it would be of the Swiss Army variety, but if I could only own two knives, my second choice would be a Barlow, a Bluegill Barlow.