Shtuff.

You know, gear. Toys. Bruno posted pictures of old rounds and it got me thinkin' of all the crap I have around here, so here's some candid shots of some of my crap.

First though, Mushy posted some hunting memories recently where he talked about using his Air Force survival knife. Well, here's mine.



When I took a class in Camping and Canoeing in 1980 at a local community college, I was told I needed a knife for the trips. So I went to a great army surplus store there in Ft. Worth, Omaha Surplus, and got myself a knife. My whole early life had been lived in the Air Force, so lets say there were ties that drove me in this direction. I got myself a K-Bar too, but for some reason this little knife always fit better in my hand. It was also cool to have a knife that no one else on the trips would have.

Over a long space of time, through many canoe trips, the leather got wet again and again. As I've told people, if you haven't gotten wet, you haven't had the full canoeing experience. Between turning over now and then and falling down while crossing mossy rocks in the rapids, or just paddling for hours in the rain, this knife got wet again and again. When it did I started to notice the handle getting loose. Turns out the leather spacers in the handle shrank on me, loosening the guard and making the knife a mess. So I had to do something to tighten it all up again. Being unable to get the pommel off, I decided to take a nail and wrapped it around the tang just below the blade, pressing the guard down on the leather spacers, tightening the whole thing up.



That worked great, till the leather shrank some more. I eventually had to wrap another nail around the tang. Makes me wonder why anyone would use these leather spacers as a handle material, but there you go. The handle eventually got stained by dirt and grime, and took on this nice dark color. As you can see, I ground the blade down to a simple V shape by many hours of rubbing it on a large wet stone, and then I blued the blade. It's very sharp, both on the long main blade and the short one above the main blade. The only thing I didn't do is grind the saw blade down so that it would really be useful.

I eventually personalized the sheath as well, as you can see above. A few bone hair pipe beads, brass and Czech glass beads on a deer hide strap, and trimming the sides of the sheath where you attach it to your belt. It's safe to say no one else has one like this.

In the end, I guess I decided that this was really a piece of crap as a knife. If it weren't for all my modifications, I wouldn't be seen with the thing on my belt. Of course, after personalizing it, I love it to death. I don't carry it on hiking or canoeing trips any more. I've graduated to more practical pocket knives and skinners that I made myself. But this thing will always have a warm place in my heart. There are many great memories in every stain or cut on that sheath, and every dent in the blade.



Now, for jollies, how many of these can you identify? Aw, come on, most of it's easy. A mix of old and new, foreign and domestic, from the Civil War to the 21st Century. See what you can do.

I'll have more shtuff later. God knows, the house is full of it.