Hollow handles sold a lot of knives back in the day, mostly to window-lickers and kids. (I know there was one on my Christmas list for a few years.) By and large they were cheap and made offshore — in the ’60s, that meant Japan, not China — and they weren’t very good knives.
There have been exceptions over the years, like the BuckMaster Model 184, which SEAL teams bought a lot of. Chris Reeve actually built a whole bunch of them, too, milled from a single block of steel (blade, totally tubular handle and all). The late bladesmith Newt Martin built his reputation on finely crafted survival knives with hollow handles.
Admit it, though — when you see a knife like the one in the ad below, you think “Rambo,” don’t you?
Truth is, these were around long before Jimmy Lile designed the one for the movie. In fact, you can buy such a knife at your local Harbor Freight for $8.99 (pictured, below).
And yes, it includes the requisite “survival kit” stuffed into the handle — compass, matches and striker, fishing line and a hook, and a sewing kit.
(I mean, nothing has the potential to sabotage your survival like losing a button.)
In thinking about why a big fixed-blade with a hollow handle has, to some people, such a cool factor, I attribute it to the same instinct that inspires buyers of go-anywhere SUVs — they’ll never use the (claimed) capabilities, but at least they know (or believe) that they have them.
The same folks count cupholders.
Though hollow-handled knives have fallen out of fad and fashion, we still see knifemakers to appeal to the same mindset. It usually manifests on the sheath — for example, an integrated loop to hold a ferrocerium rod for firemaking. Whether or not that’s the best place to carry a ferro rod is debatable, but I own several sheaths like that.
Even more common is a small pouch or compartment on the front of a sheath. Ostensibly, it’s a place to carry essentials or accessories. And again, I have a few of those.
Now just because it’s there doesn’t mean I have to fill it with something (or somethings). On one knife, however, I’ve found a way to put it to good use.
The Ontario RTAK-II, my designated beater-chopper on The Mountain, came with a Cordura sheath that features a small cargo pocket in the expected spot on the front. Given the big knife’s role in the woods, there’s a chance that it’ll start getting dull before the day’s work is done.
So it made sense to slip a small sharpening stone into the sheath’s pocket.
That well-loved Carborundum stone, by the way, belonged to my father. He stashed it in his post mortem kit to help keep his autopsy knife keen. (He was a veterinarian, not the county coroner.)
With still a little more room left in the pocket, I slipped a tiny fixed-blade knife in behind the stone. It’s an ESEE Candiru — handy and tough as hell, I consider it the perfect companion to the chopper.
That’s a long way from asking Santa and his surrogates for a garish Bowie with a saw-back and a (fundamentally useless) hollow handle. Everything I carry into the woods now has to have both a function and a purpose. Instead of filling every available pocket and weighing myself down with shit I don’t need, I’m making more calculated choices.
Experience is my master. My education continues.
Smudge got me up at 3:30am today. Instead of going back to sleep when we returned to the cabin, I slid into my morning routine — coffee for me, kibble for the Heeler.
It was raining. Hoping to get out to the east slope for some trigger therapy later, I checked the hourly forecast — there appeared to be a 90-minute dry window starting around 10am.
Perfect. I returned to bed shortly before 6am and slept another hour. When I woke up, I looked at the weather again.
Well, shit. If I went shooting this morning, I was gonna get wet.
Sounded like fun to me. That’s what I did.
See, that’s the thing about living in times defined by comfort. We react reflexively to the prospect of heat or cold, wet or dry, too far to walk or too close to bother with. We stop before we start.
I don’t live that way anymore. I haven’t for years, ever since I discovered that riding my motorcycle in the rain was an absolute blast.
With the wet conditions — steady showers by the time I arrived at Daybreak — I took care to keep my handguns as dry as I could. I loaded magazines in the cab of the Ranger.
(Later, I’d sit down at the kitchen table to dry, clean and lube both of the guns I shot today.)
I started out running some 124gr ball through my Glock 19 on the short range. It’s the pistol I’ve been carrying the longest, and this morning I was sharper with it than usual. (Dry-fire practice pays off.) I was feeling so froggy that I moved over to the rifle lane and took a handful of longer shots. Money.
Next, I put 50 rounds through an old favorite of mine — a vintage Hi-Standard Sentinel. Chambered in .22 with a two-and-a-half-inch barrel, it’s the quintessential “kit gun.”
Just like me, this particular revolver was made in 1957. A joy to shoot.
I’m glad I didn’t let a little rain stop me today.
. . .
The latest single from Aaron F. Lewis dropped this morning. Listen…
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable