What I think is so cool is when we think about our first knives is it takes us back to kind
of this place in time, and more so than just the knives themselves, are the stories that
surround it. The other thing that I started thinking about when I was thinking about my
first knife is the realization that there’s a lot of different firsts in your life, and
the knives go along with that.
The first knife, I know was bought at K-Mart
in Olathe, Kansas in the late 70s, ‘77 or ‘78, for a family trip to Rocky Mountain
National Park. It was a clam pack; it was a Barlow. It was your typical saw cut, you
know, delrin wood or bone-looking plastic handle over a cheap chrome. Those pieces over
the years came off, and by the time I was done I literally just had the three brass
pieces of metal with the two rusted carbon steel blades between them that barely opened
and closed. And I’m sure it got lost or taken or what have you. For the time it was
a great for probably, my dad probably paid ten or fifteen dollars for it new.
My first pocket knife, my father brought home. My dad was in the Marine Corps, he brought
me home the U. S. Army, or U. S. Military Demolition Knife. It was a five-bladed, steel
handled knife. As a young kid out in the woods of Alexandria, Virginia, we’d run out and
put that knife through its paces. Between me and my two brothers, we probably lost about
a dozen of them. My dad would just bring ‘em home from work.
The first knife I bought on my own was a Western Cutlery fixed blade. Now, they’re no longer
in business, or the name is now owned by somebody else. This is an approximation of what it
was. This is a fixed blade with plastic stag-type handle, just an inexpensive knife. When I
went to college, I used to take a few weeks every summer to ride freight trains around
the West. So I bought it, and whenever I was in a trailer or a box car, I think it was
a truck trailer, and I was throwing it against the wood wall. Well, that tip bent almost
all the way over, it was one of those throws. And I did manage to straighten it out with
some rocks or something at the time; straighten it out roughly. But, that was my first knife.
So, my first knife was a knife that I got from my grandpa, who, I never actually met
the guy because he died, probably when I was six years old. We went out to Pennsylvania
for a cousin’s wedding, and that’s where my grandfather had lived and left all his
stuff, so since I was the only grandson, I essentially inherited all of his fishing gear.
So the first knife I ever got was found in one of the fishing tackle boxes and it was
the textbook definition of a grandpa’s knife. It was an old, I want to say it was a slipjoint,
clip point blade, with probably fake stag handles with some kind of print on the blade,
I don’t really remember much about it, but I remember specifically that was the thing
in the tackle box that I messed with the most. Of course I probably got in trouble for carving
things into furniture or something as a kid, and my mom probably took it away from me.
It probably sits in her garage today, but that was technically the first knife that
was ever given to me, so I remember that one pretty vividly.
I couldn’t really tell you who made the first knife I owned. When I was that age,
about eight, seven or eight years old, everything was a Swiss Army Knife, whether it had the
logo on it or not. It had stainless steel scales, five layers of tools, I used about
half of them. A couple years later, I actually got a real Victorinox Swiss Army Knife, red
handles and everything. It had half as many tools, but twice as many blades, so it was
that much cooler. Not really every day, it was something I always had on the camping
trips for boy scouts or what have you. I probably still have that knife, it’s probably rattling
around in a ten by ten storage unit right now, because for a long time I didn’t carry
anything every day. I’d use a pair of keys if I needed to open something, like an animal.
My very, very first knife that I got, I earned from selling popcorn as a cub scout. Got enough
points, cashed them in, and I got this little multitool, it wasn’t quite a Swiss Army
knockoff, but it was the same style, and it was wide and flat, had these white covers
on it. I still have it somewhere, I wasn’t able to find it when I was looking for it,
though. The covers have popped off of it now, there’s glue running out of it, the spring
for the scissors popped off, and I don’t think there’s ever been a good edge on that
knife. For what I actually consider the start of David C. Andersen’s knife adventure was
the first knife my dad got me when I was in Boy Scouts. That knife was a Camillus Boy
Scout Whittling Knife, almost identical to a Stockman pattern. You got your main clip
point blade, and they changed up the secondary blades a little bit from the Stockman. You’ve
got a coping blade here and a pen blade on the other side. I just love this knife, man,
and I did all kinds of stuff with it: whittling neckerchief slides, cutting string, cutting
rope. I don’t think I ever really cut myself bad on this knife but, it’s possible. Interesting
story with this is this actually isn’t my first knife that my dad gave me that time.
That knife is actually sitting in the bottom of a latrine at the Broad Creek Memorial Scout
Reservation in northern Maryland. Clumbsy fingers, it fell down and I didn’t have
it anymore and I was so upset. So upset that my dad was like “All right, I’ll get you
another one.” So this still is the lineage of that knife. And this knife has grown with
me as I’ve advanced, you can see kind of the marks. Before I knew how to sharpen well,
I used to run a carbide sharpener down these blades, and you can see all the jagged edges.
And then this blade here is when I actually convexed that main blade and now I love that
style of blade. You can see I took a lot of metal off of there. But I love maintaining
a blade with an edge like that. If I had to get rid of every knife in my collection but
one, this may not do everything I’d want most of my EDCs to do, but I’d never part
with it. The first knife I ever bought was a Buck 112,
and I did that when the Dukes of Hazzard were big. Saved up my allowance and I wanted to
get a Buck 110, but I didn’t have enough money to get the 110. So my brothers bought
the 110, I ended up getting the Buck 112. After the 112, I got a 110, and carried the
Buck 110 probably through the early ‘90s. I did carry a Police model, Spyderco Police
model for years after I graduated from the 110. I thought the clip and the hole changed
the knife world. The next thing I got was on a later trip to
Colorado, got my first survival knife. What’s funny is now I look at cheap it is, and that
the blade… it’s a wonder it really survived. The sheath, which obviously never came within
a mile of a cow. The best thing on it, the thing I’m probably most glad about keeping
it: these split rings. You can’t find a decent quality split ring any more. These
are… I’m gonna probably take it off and put it on my car keys. But, you know, every
kit wanted one of these, and it wasn’t Rambo, it was something before that. You know, the
survival kit, and the compass… Boy, we just thought we were cool.
The first knife I ever bought myself was actually a Swiss Army SD classic. That classic red
Swiss Army Knife. I bought it because, at the time, I was watching MacGuyver with my
dad a lot. I remember my dad had a lot of Leathermans growing up. I think that was an
early birthday gift that I got once back in the day, so I remember multitools were very
big because my dad liked to tinker with things, and so that’s one of the things me and him
bonded over. The first custom knife I got, I thought was
a Chris Reeve Sebenza. But after being into knives for a while, some Pat Crawford stuff
was probably my first custom knife. In film school, we realized it was very useful
to have a pair of pliers and a screwdriver and a knife on you all the time just for the
odd things you need to do. So I got one, it was a department store brand pliers-based
multi tool. I used the hell out of it. I could never keep a real edge on the blade because
the belly was always contacting with the inside of the handle, so it wore out a flat spot
I could never get rid of. I think the other big first knife in my life
is the first knife I ever made, and I actually had a custom sheath made for it here, but
I made this blade in a knife making class that I took with L.T. Wright of LT Wright
Handcrafted Knives. We heat treated these on the spot with an oxyacetylene torch, did
everything right there over the course of a weekend and walked out with a great usable
knife that I took on a number of different camping trips. Works fantastic still to this
day. Before this I’d done some modifying of some Old Hickorys and some other just rudimentary
stuff with, like, a dremel tool, but this was a real transformative moment, when I completed
this knife. The Knife I carry now is a Strider SMF. I’m
good friends with the Strider guys, and I feel it’s a good four inch blade. I feel
it’s a good blade length to carry. It can be used for everyday chores or if you need
it in a self defense situation. I have about five or six and I get new knives
every now and then and put them into rotation, and then I put them in a bucket and other
people can carry them from the KnifeCenter. The knife I carry today is a Kershaw. This
is a 7007CF, China knife but it’s a great knife to carry. It carries easily, it’s
got a great walk and talk, and I’ve just been carrying it a couple of weeks but I like
it a lot. I’ve been carrying a Leatherman Skeletool
for close to eight years now. This is on its second blade now; I found a place that’ll
do a Damascus blade for that. It’s been very useful, I’ve probably bent the frame,
but it still functions like any other Leatherman. I actually have worked with L.T. on a side
project of my own called Nordsmith Knives, where I put out some of my own designs, and
today I carry one of my designs. It’s called the Skipjack. It’s a fixed blade, but it
is a pocket knife. It’s just a simple little blade shape, kind of inspired a little bit
by kitchen knife designs; a lot of my stuff is. It’s a small, usable knife; just what
you need. And especially with the green jigged bone on this particular one, which was the
first run, it takes my mind right back to the old Camillus Whittler. I’ve always loved
that jigged look, and having that still to this day, carrying something like that every
day just makes me feel great. Day in, day out, this would have been in my
20s, was the hawkbill. This was the 21 model that wasn’t called the Harpy, it was the
Merlin. Wore it down, I was working in a warehouse, it was a great tool, because you could cut
into it without cutting through it, and it also, at the end of the day, was a great beer
bottle opener. If I’m gonna be honest, my everyday knife
carry is the ZT 0055. I like the looks of it, and it’s a better heavy use knife than
my Leatherman. Doesn’t have a screwdriver or a bottle opener, so I still gotta carry
that. That first grandpa knife was actually one
of the reasons I bought a Buck 110 when I started working here, because it reminded
me of the knife that I had in that tackle box. It’s been actually the knife I use
most out of anything. I use it as kind of a backup knife in my back pocket, and I do
actually carry this every day. Even over more of my modern folders, this does end up being
my everyday carry. When you think of what a pocket knife is, this is the thing that
I saw that… that’s basically what I see in my head when I think of what a pocket knife
is. We’ve had a couple of government shutdowns
the past few years, a lot of partisan politics. One of the first ones in this decade, this
was when they were shutting down the national parks, so the World War II memorial was closed
along with the other memorials in D.C. I was contracted freelance to go and cover a press
conference for the American Legion, so I go down there, set up, I’m right next to all
the news crews, and there’s all these veterans, guys in wheelchairs. They landed in Normandy,
or what have you, and they weren’t able to see the memorial to their accomplishments.
Soon as the press conference was over, everyone was trying to break in there. They had this
kind of tough wire keeping these things together, I think they knew people were gonna get through,
so, people were trying to get through and I said, I got a pair of pliers here, and they
were able to get in there. Made me feel pretty good. I’m not credited in the article, but
I still know what I did and I feel all right about it.
My grandfather was actually there that day when the Veterans first broke in to that memorial.
He flew in on an Honor Flight to go see it, that’s the whole reason they were there,
and no one would let them in. I might have been the guy to let him in.
You might have been there with my grandfather that day, and we didn’t even know each other.
Like I said, man, it’s those knife stories that really connect us, and that’s proof
right there. It’s nostalgia, which is memory tinged with
depression, I guess, or with sadness, because it’s an age that’s gone. Being that age
and being allowed to have a knife, and being allowed to just go play. And your mother would
think nothing if you headed off with a knife that big at probably age 10 or so, going off
to play in the woods. I think the thing I feel most when I think
back to that first knife that was in the tackle box, was, kind of, lost time, mostly. It was
one of those things where I inherited from a man I never knew, or actually met. I knew
this knife probably had a lot of stories. Probably several wars, it might have been
through some really interesting hunting or fishing trips, and it kind of was one of those
things where it was a relic in time that I never got to experience.
And that’s neither good nor bad, it’s just times are different. I wear a bicycle
helmet now. Certainly didn’t do that when I was ten or twelve. It helped create in me
the love of this animal that has been the last thirty years of my life. It has been
my career, and it has been responsible for everything else in my life; where I’ve lived
and the adventures I’ve been on. Knives have, in their way, helped shape my life.
We all remember that feeling we got when we got that first knife, but more than that we
remember all the trouble we got into with them. When it comes down to it, too, it’s
not so much the knives themselves. The knives are really cool, but it’s really those stories
behind the knives, and stories about the personal connections we make that really tie all of
us knife people together.