The Zieg
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2002
- Messages
- 4,282
Enjoying my new (to me--barely used at all when I received it, practically NIB) Victorinox Trekker, the German Army Version. Bought it on this forum from KP, a member who was quick to ship and great to deal with.
The liner lock moving left to right takes some getting used to, but if you're a leftie you'll appreciate this more than I can. The serrations at the front of the blade gave me pause at first, but then I remember having a fully serrated Victorinox Camper and it did just fine. Like the old Camper, the serrations are broad, gentle, and scalloped, not toothy and narrow. It goes through everything I've thrown at it so far, from baling twine to leather scraps to paracord. The bevel on the blade is only one sided-though, so the port side of the blade looks like a scandi grind all the way up while the starboard side has the secondary bevel. I don't know how this will affect sharpening, but since I'm not going though blocks of wood, I imagine it will be a while before I have to put it on a stone. It came out of the box ready to cut as far as I was concerned. Opening the blade one-handed reminds me of a Spyderco, though I cannot compare it much as I don't own any Spyderco knives (only handled a few). The blade comes out just fine without having to press into the thumbhole too deeply. Closing the blade one handed, even though the liner lock is reversed, is not too hard, though rather than using my index finger to bring the blade back into the body of the knife, I find myself closing it against my leg in traditional folding knife fashion.
The locking feature on the wide screwdriver/stripper/bottle opener blade is a nice add since with a wide bladed screwdriver you'd want to be able to put a bit more oomph into a screw and I've had them close on me before. I don't know that the saw is the best tool for me in what I do day to day (train horses and teach riding), but for my fishing and hunting and camping trips it may come in handy. Mostly I just carry a blade for cutting/splicing rope, opening hay bales, and the slicing the occasional bandage or tape. This knife gives me more options at only twice the weight of my No. 9 Opinel and with one-handed opening to boot. No mods needed as the lanyard ring is ready to go. Oh, and the skull bead on the lanyard is more than a little tongue-in-cheek: There's nothing menacing about this tool and my taste in skulls tends towards the día de los muertos and not the biker/pirate/Totenkopf varieties.
My first SAK was a Victorinox Woodsman. My parents gave it to me when I turned ten. I carried it everywhere and was a hit whenever someone needed a multitool (Leatherman had not invented his famous tool at that time). Sadly, when I was eighteen it fell from a loose pocket, thunked off the deck of the Photon, and went straight to the bottom of Ocracoke Harbor. I lugged my brother's old Camper model until I couldn't stand the weight anymore. Then I moved on to other knives. Things I miss on this Trekker from my old SAK-carrying days: Scissors (much of the time I draw a knife, I think how scissors would be a better tool), corkscrew (wine is ever-present at Double E Farm and while the Stelvin closure, AKA screw cap, is making inroads in good wine, I like not having to go farther than my pocket to open a bottle), tweezers (I don't always wear gloves and I frequently have something stuck in my skin. And those eyebrows aren't going to groom themselves!
). If I could make this knife a custom model with only the tools I want: Keep the main blade, awl, large screwdriver; exchange the Phillips for a corkscrew; exchange the saw for scissors, exchange the small screwdriver/can opener for a hoof pick (like the one on the old Victorinox Equestrian). I would do without the tweezers and toothpick as they would probably get lost in the rough-and-tumble of the barn and I don't need them getting into a flake of hay.
This Trekker/GAK will be a great knife for me. I'm never far from the real versions of those tools I mention and I look forward to having a strong blade I can open with one hand and still have access to a few extra tools just in case. So far, :thumbup:
Zieg
UPDATES BELOW:
10 July 2014
Not one but THREE manure forks needed the heads tightened onto the handles. Two demanded the Phillips head screwdriver and one demanded the smaller screwdriver on the can opener blade. So far, no bottles of wine have presented themselves. The knife sits nicely, flat in the right back pocket, lined up against my very old Nokia flip phone, exactly where I wear a knife with a pocket clip. Lanyard hangs out the top for easy access. Why am I suddenly thinking about the long-handled Goody combs girls used to have sticking out of their back pockets in the '70s?
13 July 2014
I said above I wasn't going to be cutting blocks of wood, but the other day I did find myself splitting a bit off a 2x6 that I had sawed a bit unevenly (below). The blade bit into the wood nicely, split a little off to make the piece fit into where it needed to go (VERY light rap with a scrap wood baton to get it started). The different bevel on one side has an interesting side effect, though. If you are right handed whittling away from your body, the blade bites deep. If you are a lefty, you must angle the blade more extremely because of the chisel-type grind. I'm a righty, so no problem, but I switched to my left and it felt much less aggressive. Today, Sweetheart took the knife away from me, needing to go after some pruning in the garden and to open some bags of mulch. I grumbled, but she washed it off when she was done, folded it away into her pocket and warned me I might not get it back. Says I may have to order another one for myself. Nice being married to a quality-knife-appreciating wife!
24 July 2014
The Trekker/GAK performed flawlessly during a weekend-long horsemanship clinic. It did its job against loads of baling twine and bags of grain (which usually have a quick-opening pull-string, but not always). One bale of hay was secured with baling wire (an increasingly rare sight) and without my SOG Paratool, I thought I was going to have to untwist the wire by hand. Then I remembered Barry Dawson's "Pocket Knife." It's a three- or four-inch fixed blade knife with a screwdriver pommel and a notch he calls a "wire breaker." That notch looks exactly like Victorinox's "wire stripper" (which I've never used as a wire stripper--it's always been too wide for the wire I need to strip--if I'm stripping real household copper electrical wire I always have a wire stripper and gauge handy). So I locked the wide screwdriver into place knowing it would not close on me, turned the knife spine downwards, worked the little tool under the wire against the bale of hay, and fitted the wire into the notch. Wire slips in and I begin to work the whole thing left and right, perpendicular to the length of wire. Baling wire is pretty soft stuff--it's not like fencing wire or chain-link. In about five wrenching turns the wire popped right at the notch and the bale was open. Use gloves for this trick, though, as you might have to jam the back of your hand against some pretty prickly hay and no matter how tough your hands are you'll be scratching an itchy hand for a couple of hours. That evening the same tool found its way to a bottle of Steel Toe milk stout from Durango's Ska Brewing Company and we all know how quickly a bottle cap submits to the SAK. Two days later I had my first emergency use of the knife. Trailering a horse back to his home stables about 25 miles away, the animal managed to bring a front leg high enough to hook into his hanging hay net. I use cotton, not nylon, hay nets, so he didn't sustain any injury and it must have happened so close to our destination that he had not even damaged the thing. But he was not happy to be stuck this way and he was not going to lift his leg for me to free him. One hand on his halter and another opening the Trekker/GAK and a quick slice on the top of the net and problem solved. Horse happy, client happy, me happy . . . hay net not so happy, but it was a clean cut and I can repair it.
27 July 2014
I lost my knife! Then I found it. OK, so here's what happened: Usually I can carry it vertically in my back pocket, lanyard hanging out the top, lined up against the outside seam of the pocket and wedged against my cell phone. But sometimes I have a pair of jeans with a huge back pocket and everything just falls to the bottom and makes life difficult, especially in the saddle. The Key and Carhartt work pants are the culprits. So I put the cell phone and pocketknife in the side leg pocket. No problems. Unless you sit down on the ground with your knees bent. Then you point the pocket open side down and little stuff like a SAK can fall out. Mine did. Now, I was able to retrace my steps the next morning and knew where it had to be and presto there it was, covered in the tinest ants I'd ever seen. Brushed them off and away I went for a day's work. But this told me I needed another method to secure the tool. Pocket clip! I found a solution with the Nite Ize company's "Hip Clip." Now I know that Swiss Bianco has a great clip solution for this version of the SAK, but I like having the lanyard available, not buried in the bottom of the pocket, and as his clip, while low profile and very secure and super cool looking, is a tip-down carry, it wasn't for me. Plus, I didn't like the idea of having to remove the scale on one side and reattach it. I'm handy, but I just didn't want the hassle this time 'round. So I went with the Nite Ize glue-on clip. Plus, it's a Boulder CO company, and that means keeping my money in-state, a small but legitimate sway in this dilemma. So far, the clip is working. Mostly, it just keeps the knife lined up in the pocket the way I would normally carry it, cell phone or huge pocket or no. It doesn't keep it from sliding off the pocket if I were to hang upside-down, but if that happens, I'll be in worse trouble than losing a knife. Pic below to illustrate the solution. And if I decide it's not working, the clip only set me back $6.00 (before shipping).
29 July 2014
Put up some shelves for Sweetheart's collection of Gourmet magazines. The cardboard boxes left behind needed breaking down so they can go in the recycling bin. I have always known how tough cutting corrugated cardboard boxes is on a blade, and I usually use my Mora 911 Quicksnap for the job since it's so easy to resharpen. But I had the GAK in the back pocket, sitting pretty due to its new pocket clip, so I considered it to have volunteered for the job. At first, the boxes went down like warm butter to the straight edge at the forte of the blade. No problems with the chisel grind. Most of the work was done with simple push cuts. Then the unserrated section started to dull about halfway through the job. No big surprise there to me, as the Mora gets the same way. Just like with the Mora, I begin to use draw cuts to make use of the entire edge. When I draw the blade through the cardboard, the serrations blow through the boxes like a chainsaw, but instead of wood chips, no shredding at all. Then, once they begin to dull at the very last bit of cutting, only the finest of cardboard flakes. The last box ends up with 1/4" pieces of cardboard shredded on the floor. The dulling had begun in earnest by then, but I was not surprised. I have never known what steel the SAK uses, but I am very familiar with them as cutting tools and I knew what to expect. The geometry of the blade, the grind, and the serrations all worked well for what I was doing and I was satisfied. The next step, the real test in my book, would be resharpening. Using a miniature ceramic crock stick affair, I was able to restore the fine edge section of the blade, get into the serrations, and put the knife back into fighting trim in about a half hour. I tried to use a plain Arkansas stone but I found it doing damage to the points of the serrations, so I put that away. The single crock stick got into the 18 serrations nicely and the knife is almost like new. Punk Rock Niece was over for dinner and was a little frustrated with our 1960s vintage Gerber steak knives (which have no serrations--Sweetheart loves them but I like the serrations on our Chicago Cutlery steakers better). I handed over the now-cleaned-and-sharpened GAK and she smiled her way through the Colorado grass-fed just fine. So, don't like serrations on your Trekker/GAK? Well, you can get the knife without them now (though that knife only goes under the Trekker moniker), but if you have one that's serrated, give it a try over time. Cut with it, sharpen it carefully once in a while, use it like the tool it is, and know that it will hold up to whatever you're cutting, even a medium-rare steak.
The liner lock moving left to right takes some getting used to, but if you're a leftie you'll appreciate this more than I can. The serrations at the front of the blade gave me pause at first, but then I remember having a fully serrated Victorinox Camper and it did just fine. Like the old Camper, the serrations are broad, gentle, and scalloped, not toothy and narrow. It goes through everything I've thrown at it so far, from baling twine to leather scraps to paracord. The bevel on the blade is only one sided-though, so the port side of the blade looks like a scandi grind all the way up while the starboard side has the secondary bevel. I don't know how this will affect sharpening, but since I'm not going though blocks of wood, I imagine it will be a while before I have to put it on a stone. It came out of the box ready to cut as far as I was concerned. Opening the blade one-handed reminds me of a Spyderco, though I cannot compare it much as I don't own any Spyderco knives (only handled a few). The blade comes out just fine without having to press into the thumbhole too deeply. Closing the blade one handed, even though the liner lock is reversed, is not too hard, though rather than using my index finger to bring the blade back into the body of the knife, I find myself closing it against my leg in traditional folding knife fashion.
The locking feature on the wide screwdriver/stripper/bottle opener blade is a nice add since with a wide bladed screwdriver you'd want to be able to put a bit more oomph into a screw and I've had them close on me before. I don't know that the saw is the best tool for me in what I do day to day (train horses and teach riding), but for my fishing and hunting and camping trips it may come in handy. Mostly I just carry a blade for cutting/splicing rope, opening hay bales, and the slicing the occasional bandage or tape. This knife gives me more options at only twice the weight of my No. 9 Opinel and with one-handed opening to boot. No mods needed as the lanyard ring is ready to go. Oh, and the skull bead on the lanyard is more than a little tongue-in-cheek: There's nothing menacing about this tool and my taste in skulls tends towards the día de los muertos and not the biker/pirate/Totenkopf varieties.
My first SAK was a Victorinox Woodsman. My parents gave it to me when I turned ten. I carried it everywhere and was a hit whenever someone needed a multitool (Leatherman had not invented his famous tool at that time). Sadly, when I was eighteen it fell from a loose pocket, thunked off the deck of the Photon, and went straight to the bottom of Ocracoke Harbor. I lugged my brother's old Camper model until I couldn't stand the weight anymore. Then I moved on to other knives. Things I miss on this Trekker from my old SAK-carrying days: Scissors (much of the time I draw a knife, I think how scissors would be a better tool), corkscrew (wine is ever-present at Double E Farm and while the Stelvin closure, AKA screw cap, is making inroads in good wine, I like not having to go farther than my pocket to open a bottle), tweezers (I don't always wear gloves and I frequently have something stuck in my skin. And those eyebrows aren't going to groom themselves!
). If I could make this knife a custom model with only the tools I want: Keep the main blade, awl, large screwdriver; exchange the Phillips for a corkscrew; exchange the saw for scissors, exchange the small screwdriver/can opener for a hoof pick (like the one on the old Victorinox Equestrian). I would do without the tweezers and toothpick as they would probably get lost in the rough-and-tumble of the barn and I don't need them getting into a flake of hay.This Trekker/GAK will be a great knife for me. I'm never far from the real versions of those tools I mention and I look forward to having a strong blade I can open with one hand and still have access to a few extra tools just in case. So far, :thumbup:
Zieg
UPDATES BELOW:
10 July 2014
Not one but THREE manure forks needed the heads tightened onto the handles. Two demanded the Phillips head screwdriver and one demanded the smaller screwdriver on the can opener blade. So far, no bottles of wine have presented themselves. The knife sits nicely, flat in the right back pocket, lined up against my very old Nokia flip phone, exactly where I wear a knife with a pocket clip. Lanyard hangs out the top for easy access. Why am I suddenly thinking about the long-handled Goody combs girls used to have sticking out of their back pockets in the '70s?
13 July 2014
I said above I wasn't going to be cutting blocks of wood, but the other day I did find myself splitting a bit off a 2x6 that I had sawed a bit unevenly (below). The blade bit into the wood nicely, split a little off to make the piece fit into where it needed to go (VERY light rap with a scrap wood baton to get it started). The different bevel on one side has an interesting side effect, though. If you are right handed whittling away from your body, the blade bites deep. If you are a lefty, you must angle the blade more extremely because of the chisel-type grind. I'm a righty, so no problem, but I switched to my left and it felt much less aggressive. Today, Sweetheart took the knife away from me, needing to go after some pruning in the garden and to open some bags of mulch. I grumbled, but she washed it off when she was done, folded it away into her pocket and warned me I might not get it back. Says I may have to order another one for myself. Nice being married to a quality-knife-appreciating wife!
24 July 2014
The Trekker/GAK performed flawlessly during a weekend-long horsemanship clinic. It did its job against loads of baling twine and bags of grain (which usually have a quick-opening pull-string, but not always). One bale of hay was secured with baling wire (an increasingly rare sight) and without my SOG Paratool, I thought I was going to have to untwist the wire by hand. Then I remembered Barry Dawson's "Pocket Knife." It's a three- or four-inch fixed blade knife with a screwdriver pommel and a notch he calls a "wire breaker." That notch looks exactly like Victorinox's "wire stripper" (which I've never used as a wire stripper--it's always been too wide for the wire I need to strip--if I'm stripping real household copper electrical wire I always have a wire stripper and gauge handy). So I locked the wide screwdriver into place knowing it would not close on me, turned the knife spine downwards, worked the little tool under the wire against the bale of hay, and fitted the wire into the notch. Wire slips in and I begin to work the whole thing left and right, perpendicular to the length of wire. Baling wire is pretty soft stuff--it's not like fencing wire or chain-link. In about five wrenching turns the wire popped right at the notch and the bale was open. Use gloves for this trick, though, as you might have to jam the back of your hand against some pretty prickly hay and no matter how tough your hands are you'll be scratching an itchy hand for a couple of hours. That evening the same tool found its way to a bottle of Steel Toe milk stout from Durango's Ska Brewing Company and we all know how quickly a bottle cap submits to the SAK. Two days later I had my first emergency use of the knife. Trailering a horse back to his home stables about 25 miles away, the animal managed to bring a front leg high enough to hook into his hanging hay net. I use cotton, not nylon, hay nets, so he didn't sustain any injury and it must have happened so close to our destination that he had not even damaged the thing. But he was not happy to be stuck this way and he was not going to lift his leg for me to free him. One hand on his halter and another opening the Trekker/GAK and a quick slice on the top of the net and problem solved. Horse happy, client happy, me happy . . . hay net not so happy, but it was a clean cut and I can repair it.
27 July 2014
I lost my knife! Then I found it. OK, so here's what happened: Usually I can carry it vertically in my back pocket, lanyard hanging out the top, lined up against the outside seam of the pocket and wedged against my cell phone. But sometimes I have a pair of jeans with a huge back pocket and everything just falls to the bottom and makes life difficult, especially in the saddle. The Key and Carhartt work pants are the culprits. So I put the cell phone and pocketknife in the side leg pocket. No problems. Unless you sit down on the ground with your knees bent. Then you point the pocket open side down and little stuff like a SAK can fall out. Mine did. Now, I was able to retrace my steps the next morning and knew where it had to be and presto there it was, covered in the tinest ants I'd ever seen. Brushed them off and away I went for a day's work. But this told me I needed another method to secure the tool. Pocket clip! I found a solution with the Nite Ize company's "Hip Clip." Now I know that Swiss Bianco has a great clip solution for this version of the SAK, but I like having the lanyard available, not buried in the bottom of the pocket, and as his clip, while low profile and very secure and super cool looking, is a tip-down carry, it wasn't for me. Plus, I didn't like the idea of having to remove the scale on one side and reattach it. I'm handy, but I just didn't want the hassle this time 'round. So I went with the Nite Ize glue-on clip. Plus, it's a Boulder CO company, and that means keeping my money in-state, a small but legitimate sway in this dilemma. So far, the clip is working. Mostly, it just keeps the knife lined up in the pocket the way I would normally carry it, cell phone or huge pocket or no. It doesn't keep it from sliding off the pocket if I were to hang upside-down, but if that happens, I'll be in worse trouble than losing a knife. Pic below to illustrate the solution. And if I decide it's not working, the clip only set me back $6.00 (before shipping).
29 July 2014
Put up some shelves for Sweetheart's collection of Gourmet magazines. The cardboard boxes left behind needed breaking down so they can go in the recycling bin. I have always known how tough cutting corrugated cardboard boxes is on a blade, and I usually use my Mora 911 Quicksnap for the job since it's so easy to resharpen. But I had the GAK in the back pocket, sitting pretty due to its new pocket clip, so I considered it to have volunteered for the job. At first, the boxes went down like warm butter to the straight edge at the forte of the blade. No problems with the chisel grind. Most of the work was done with simple push cuts. Then the unserrated section started to dull about halfway through the job. No big surprise there to me, as the Mora gets the same way. Just like with the Mora, I begin to use draw cuts to make use of the entire edge. When I draw the blade through the cardboard, the serrations blow through the boxes like a chainsaw, but instead of wood chips, no shredding at all. Then, once they begin to dull at the very last bit of cutting, only the finest of cardboard flakes. The last box ends up with 1/4" pieces of cardboard shredded on the floor. The dulling had begun in earnest by then, but I was not surprised. I have never known what steel the SAK uses, but I am very familiar with them as cutting tools and I knew what to expect. The geometry of the blade, the grind, and the serrations all worked well for what I was doing and I was satisfied. The next step, the real test in my book, would be resharpening. Using a miniature ceramic crock stick affair, I was able to restore the fine edge section of the blade, get into the serrations, and put the knife back into fighting trim in about a half hour. I tried to use a plain Arkansas stone but I found it doing damage to the points of the serrations, so I put that away. The single crock stick got into the 18 serrations nicely and the knife is almost like new. Punk Rock Niece was over for dinner and was a little frustrated with our 1960s vintage Gerber steak knives (which have no serrations--Sweetheart loves them but I like the serrations on our Chicago Cutlery steakers better). I handed over the now-cleaned-and-sharpened GAK and she smiled her way through the Colorado grass-fed just fine. So, don't like serrations on your Trekker/GAK? Well, you can get the knife without them now (though that knife only goes under the Trekker moniker), but if you have one that's serrated, give it a try over time. Cut with it, sharpen it carefully once in a while, use it like the tool it is, and know that it will hold up to whatever you're cutting, even a medium-rare steak.
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