Why are you here?

redwood22

redwood22

Joined
Jan 23, 2014
Messages
1,554
Hopefully that was vague and attention grabbing enough to force people to click in... We all know where we ended up (knife wise). Something along the way led us to cherish well designed well made knives of a certain type...but what? Where did the journey start? I know a lot of guys who hang out here are former military or other enforcement agency where a knife might be required to save your life. Others grew up hunting and over time have realized the value in a knife that doesn't have to be sharpened while processing game.

My story is a bit more pedestrian. My dad was an eagle scout and so was his dad (the furthest back that could be, generation wise). A love of the outdoors was the biggest thing they both passed on to me. My grandfather was always ill when I was a kid so I had no shared memories in the woods, but he always asked about scouts and my adventures. When my dad wasn't deployed he was always heavily involved in my scouting life and those memories are still my favorite from growing up....ok so we established redwood likes ...the woods... fast forward, I am now in my 30's and have the means to actually have those toys I wanted as a poor little boyscout. Back in the day the cool kids all had benchmades or spydercos so that is where I started. I was initially enamored by a BM knife, but it didn't come with micarta scales....so I kept looking...then I found survive knives on the forums, and looked into it...what the heck was 3V? why would I NOT want stainless steel?

I think we all know how the story ends, and frankly for me that's the part we all already know. We enjoy supporting small business, the designs work for us, etc etc...but what started you out...?

I figured with all the excitement with the new knives shipping it might be nice to take a step back and remember where it all started, and might be a fun way to encourage a lot of the new guys to share their stories too.
 
i used to watch my dad, sitting in his recliner indian style, sharpen his buck 110, which he carried every day but there were others, on a "spit" stone while we would talk about stuff. he would let me spit on his sharpening stone when necessary, this was the only time i could spit in the presence of my father without fear of the imminent "back hander". when he was done he would let check it out and one time i cut my thumb, still have the scar. i needed stitches and i was afraid of needles, my father promised me 10$ if i didnt cry. i didnt cry and i knew what i was going to buy with that 10$ too. my father surprised me with my own 110 soon after but i was only able to carry that knife when i was with my dad, usually when we were fishing, which was most every day he wasnt working.
ive always liked knives and the memories they induce of my father and me 20+ years later.
 
Started off in my mid teenage years. I purchased a cheap $30 dollar knife I though was so cool cause it had a ferro rod attached. I ended up throwing it away cause I forgot I had it in my pocket going into a sports stadium. As we know they don't allow weapons. I wasn't even thinking about it, just was so use to carrying it. After that I didn't do much with knives untile I joined the military. In basic training one of our drill sgt. Had a Spyderco he would always pull out and stab trees and stuff with. It always caught my eye and I thought it looked funky with the signature hole in it. I thought this guy was a bad ass cause he did multiple tours around the world and was ranger tabbed. Plus I was just a private new to the whole thing so everyone looked like a bad ass to me. Later I went on to become a paratrooper among other things and the knife collecting started then. Started with a gerber and haven't looked back since...but I will never buy a gerber again haha! Once you have a quality knife in hand it's hard to settle for the cheap stuff anymore.
 
See this thread for why I love knives...

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1348734-What-does-a-knife-mean-to-you

I got started because I read a book called Hatchet and a book called My Side of the mountain. Both about a kid that survives in the woods, one becase he lived through a plane crash and all he had was a hatchet and the other because he ran away. This was when I was in elementary school. Come to think of it... You just made me realize why I love tomahawks and hatchets as much as knives!!! I started cubscouts and earned my pocket knife and was hooked ever since. I so regret misplacing that knife! My dad and I fished since I could hold a rod and hunted since I was about ten. I always wanted a hunting knife like my dads. He let me look through the gander mountain catalog and I picked a camo handled Gerber LST with a black blade. I DO STILL have that knife. I also loved flashlights, pellet guns, slimgshots, bows and arrows and any camping gear I could get. In elementary school I had a full frame pack with a mess kit,tent, sleeping bag and all the other gear. I used to "hike" alllaround my hood. I always fantasized about hiking the apalachian trail. My parents encouraged my love of the out doors and out of everything they have done for me its what I appreciate the most. I was doomed to be a blade/gear junkie from the start... And its no coincidence that I picked such a gear heavy career.
 
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i read hatchet too! and tons of other books about survival as a kid-early teens. i was just explaining to my wife the other day how much those books i had read influenced me today. she didnt get it.

for my 13 bday my parents bought me a bunch of camping gear and i spent all summer sleeping in the woods behind my parents house, spent many summer nights camping in those woods in my teenage years.
 
This old Camillus was given to me by my Grandpa when I was 5-6 years old and it's been down hill ever since. He was a stubborn old Swede that didn't care if my parents were ok with it or not. That crusty old Colonial Barlow is what he carried as long as I can remember.
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Somebody told me there would be appetizers and an open bar......... even though that was a lie I decided to stick around :D

Really though, I have no business owning good knives. My job most definitely does not need them and I'm not a hunter or backpacker. The outdoors part of my life is way, way beyond lame, but I do have a love of the outdoors that grew from cub scouts and time spent in the woods of northern Michigan as a kid up until early adulthood. I also just really like knives. It's a borderline collector-like fascination, but I do enjoy using them. There have been some really neat threads like this that have popped up before and I'm always hesitant to post because of my lack of experience. This place has given me a lot of inspiration to get back into the wild and also helps me live through a lot of others' adventures :thumbup:
 
I am really glad people got where i was going with this. couple of things as well

Silver: Everyone has business owning good knives. It wasn't that long ago that i bought this beast:


And I think its fair to say we all take some level of inspiration from the shared experiences here (more on this later)

Standard, I approve mightily of your grandpas choice of a knife gift ( i may have stolen this one out of my dad's flight suit as a kid...what a turd i was...


Riz, one of my favorite books growing up was my side of the mountain, but never read Hatchet, might have to give it a try!

One of the reasons i wanted to start this was to kinda celebrate how we all got here in different (and sometimes similar) ways. I would love to claim a ton of wilderness survival experience, but i have rarely put myself in true survival situations. I also have 0 hunting experience, but following along in a lot of the threads posted here by others has gotten me rather excited to pursue those sorts of adventures as well. Maybe its too simple to say "heck we both like the same knives, maybe i'd like hunting" but maybe it isn't either...

bleh...getting too existential

Thanks for sharing so far guys and I hope to see others thoughts as well!
 
Silver Needle said:
Somebody told me there would be appetizers and an open bar......... even though that was a lie I decided to stick around :D

Really though, I have no business owning good knives. My job most definitely does not need them and I'm not a hunter or backpacker. The outdoors part of my life is way, way beyond lame, but I do have a love of the outdoors that grew from cub scouts and time spent in the woods of northern Michigan as a kid up until early adulthood. I also just really like knives. It's a borderline collector-like fascination, but I do enjoy using them. There have been some really neat threads like this that have popped up before and I'm always hesitant to post because of my lack of experience. This place has given me a lot of inspiration to get back into the wild and also helps me live through a lot of others' adventures :thumbup:
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I'm in the same boat as a lot of people on here. I have no hunting experience and I don't think I have it in me to take a life unless it was absolutely necessary. I've always had a weird connection with animals plus food is readily available here.
Getting outside and using these things is a pain because life and work get in the way a lot. Responsibility sucks!
 
Standard78 said:
I'm in the same boat as a lot of people on here. I have no hunting experience and I don't think I have it in me to take a life unless it was absolutely necessary. I've always had a weird connection with animals plus food is readily available here.
Getting outside and using these things is a pain because life and work get in the way a lot. Responsibility sucks!
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Responsibility does suck! I think the last straw for a lot of us might just be: once you try a nice knife, it's hard to go back and progessivly easier to go forward.
 
redwood22 said:
Standard, I approve mightily of your grandpas choice of a knife gift ( i may have stolen this one out of my dad's flight suit as a kid...what a turd i was...
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Haha awesome!! Did he ever have any of those Camillus Paratrooper automatic safety knives? They had bright orange handles and a paracord cutting hook as a second tool. I tried to swipe the one my dad has but he bitched me out because it's an auto.
 
Sadly, no. It looks awesome though! an assist would be nice, I almost ripped my thumbnail out trying to get to the bottle opener
 
redwood22 said:
Sadly, no. It looks awesome though! an assist would be nice, I almost ripped my thumbnail out trying to get to the bottle opener
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The spring on them is so ridiculous that it almost throws the knife out of your hand!
I have the same issue with my US Camillus. That thing is a nightmare to open still.
 
I grew up with a pocket knife with me at all times, mostly for farm chores but I used it for hunting and fishing as well. Back then a carry knife was as normal as keys or a wallet.
I usually carried a buck 110 but my favorite was/is a Normark big swede in sandvik steel that was built very rugged and could be taken apart with a penny. Reading Call of the Wild and Mother Earth News or Foxfire books was a big influence on me and of coarse watching Rambo in the theatre pushed me and my friends to the bigger fixed blades. I was in the military so the survival/military grade work knife became my favorite style. After a lot of trial and error, I found GSO's to be the best all round product for fit and finish, materials and value for a quality product. I still have that big swede and I bought that in 1978.
 
This is a great Thread! It's always nice to be able to associate a username with something other then a signature or color. It's gives a little background info on the people we may well one day call friends. Good post!

As for me, my journey began when I was about 9 or 10 years old. My parents, having needed a long overdue vacation, decided to go on a cruise somewhere in the Western Caribbean. For reasons I am still not quite sure of today, they decided a good gift for their 9/10 year old son was an 18 inch Latin style machete. Well, needless to say, I was thrilled. I didn't realize it at the time but it was an Imacasa with a very thin stock that was tapered even thinner towards the tip. A fantastic blade that I'm sure they didn't even realize the worth of when purchased it. My uncle had a cabin upstate in the Catskill mountains. He commissioned me to clear some trees from his property the next time I was there. When the opportunity finally presented itself, I literally chopped until my blisters bled, and I was in love. I loved every second of it. I loved The thwack the blade made when you made a good solid hit, and even the twang sound of a glancing blow. I still own that machete today, 23 years later.

Fast forward another 2 years. My father was an old school Italian from the Redhook section of Brooklyn back when Italians actually used to live there. He owned a butcher shop in the neighborhood for about 35 years before he and his partner retired. I used to go to work with him on Saturdays after the school week because I wanted to learn how to butcher various cuts of meat, earn spending money for hanging out, and mostly because (You guessed it!) I wanted to play with the knives! I spent countless hours running those blades across the old Freidrich Dick sharpening steels we had and I learned as much about technique as I did the value of a good sharp knife.

As the years passed by I amassed a decent collection of knives of my own. Mostly they were fixed blades but the occasional folder found its way in also. When I was in my mid twenties I started getting much more serious about blade design and steel type. My idea of what a "cool" knife was had evolved from being about aesthetics to being more about function and versatility. That's when I began researching blade steels, the importance of heat treat protocols, and edge geometry. After learning a good amount about that stuff I became obsessed with a small group of manufacturers and smiths who I believed to be the industries best. I have all types of blades now, from kukuris made in nepal to dive knives to custom chef knives. When I discovered Survive! I felt like I had finally found a company that made knives that fit closest to what my idea of a perfect knife should be. From their design, to the steel, to the heat treat, they were everything I wanted in a knife. That notion was solidified even further after I received my first Survive! knife, a GSO 4.1. The closest thing to perfect I have seen thus far.

Ultimately I would love to create my own knife. I have all these ideas in my head for what I want to do. I already know the steel I would use, the thickness, the edge geometry, and curvature of the belly. When I have the means one day, I will do it. Hopefully, I will still be around to share it with you guys when I'm done.
 
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