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Quiet Professional
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Free Pineland
Posts: 24,822
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CSM, I suspect that most of the knives carried in theater fall into one of these categories, in this order.
1. Free
2. Cheap
3. Look cool
4. Big
If we limited the survey to edged items that worked, or to respondents who actually know much about blades, you would find that the types are more like this.
1. Practical
2. Good value
3. Handy
4. Quality
IMHO, the knives that I always had in the woods were a good heavy duty folder, a multi-tool, and some sort of chopping/fighting/survival knife.
The folders I liked were Al Mar, Chris Reeve, or Harsey.
For a multi-tool, I have used a bunch of them starting with the Victorinox Swiss Army knives, and it is hard to beat the Leatherman, especially the value of the Wave.
For longer, heavy working blades (which many units ban troops from carrying), I have used kukris, hatchets, machetes, Kabars, etc. which were a great value, but I have also used Harsey, Reeve, Brend, Al Mar, and the like when I could afford them.
It is hard to take a very valuable knife like some of these I named and abuse them busting open ammo crates, digging, chopping, cutting wire, pounding on things, using them as a sharpened pry bar, etc. Right now, if I had to take a large knife that my life depended on, it would be an S30V blade, something like the Yarborough or the Reaper, because I know that if I damage it accidentally, the manufacturers will make it right, regardless.
Probably the most common blades in theater are the bayonet, the issue survival knife, the Leatherman multi-tool, and whatever inexpensive folders the AAFES stocks, like the Spydercos.
HTH.
TR
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
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