Knife safety

Safe use of the Knife - a by no means comprehensive safety list for using a knife!

Before use, make sure the knife is fit for the purpose. Check for any damage and repair, if necessary, or just go out and buy a new one.

Alcohol and knives don’t mix! Ice and alcohol do, though.

Look after your knife – keep it clean and sharp. Just like yourself on a Saturday night.

A sharp knife is an efficient knife and a bit more useful than a blunt one.

Resheath the knife when not in use – don’t leave it lying around. Like a lot of things in life, it is safer when it’s wearing protection.

If you need to ‘safe’ your knife for a few moments then it can be stowed under the armpit, edge facing down. Take care when withdrawing the knife though. There are better ways to shave your ‘pits.

Never lend your knife to anyone. It can be a sure-fired recipe to see a grown man cry.

Before using your knife have your First Aid kit to hand as accidents do happen. Have a practice opening it one handed just to see how awkward it is.

Plan ahead. Work out where all the bits are going to go like the blade, cut bits of wood, fingers…

Make sure your ‘blood zone’ is clear of obstructions and other people. Using your sheathed knife describe an arc all around you with your arm fully extended. This is to ensure any ‘travel through’ from a slipped blade will not hit anything or anyone causing an unexpected trip to the nice doctors and nurses at the local A&E.

Always cut away from yourself. Avoid working between your legs as a slip could result in cutting the femoral artery which can really ruin your day. Also make sure no other bits of your body are in the path of the blade should it do something unexpected.

Passing a knife safely – hold the knife in a forehand grip, allow it to rotate between thumb and forefinger until the spine of the blade is resting on the web of skin between thumb and fingers, thus offering the handle to the lucky person who is going to look at your knife (see above) but not use it.

Stop using the knife if the light is really poor or it is dark – it’s pretty important to see what you are doing clearly.

Never attempt to catch a falling blade (unless you are a ninja) because if you have kept it sharp then your fingers may have extra ventilation.

Don’t throw your knife at anything or at/to anyone! Bad karma, dudes!

Stabbing your knife into the ground or into wood is a great way to damage the knife, yourself or someone else. All of which are considered bad form.

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Exmoor geocaching

What the heck is geocaching. Well obviously it is squirreling away geos :). It is a sport where people hide caches of stuff around the world and then post the coordinates up on a web page (www.geocaching.com) for other people to use GPS or other means to try and find the cache.

When a cache is found the person leaves a note in the box and perhaps adds something new and may take something away or may do nothing at all! Generally they will post comments back on the website about their find.

Anyway, I decided to go have a look for one that is only a couple of miles from here. I took my boy and that turned out to be a bit of mistake for this site. Since the site was in some woods, the GPS became unreliable for the last few metres and we had to search by the good old fashioned way. The area is quite steep and slippery in places and I was distracted looking for this cache and I assumed my boy wouldn't do anything silly. Well I was pretty wrong about that one. I turned round just in time to see him fall about 10 feet off a small cliff into stream bed eroded from solid rock. Luckily, he only had some minor cuts, bruises and grazes. Needless to say we gave up at that point.

I was near the vicinity again today and decided to have a quick look again and I found it really quickly. Just goes to show how distracted you can become when you have an impatient 10 year old trying to help you find it! Still he wants to give it another go sometime.

Knife show revisited

Well as promised I have got round to taking some pictures of the 2 knives that I bought at the Bristol Knife Show. They make an interesting contrast - some might say from the sublime to the ridiculous! See what you think.


The top one is a khukri and the bottom one is a Special Edition Mini North Star made by Bark River Knife and Tool Company.

Both are very nice pieces of equipment and both have come with razor sharp cutting edges. I decided to get the khukri partly out of curiosity and partly to use as a machete-type of tool for some heavy cutting where an axe is not particularly suitable. I have not had chance to use it in anger yet but that will be for another post later on. I already have a North Star so it was hard to resist this little sister. It has a black and green linen micarta handle with some nice mosaic pins. Lovely!

Bushcraft on Exmoor

Yesterday I ran a One Day Bushcraft taster course at my site in the Exmoor National Park. We had a great day and covered an awful lot of material. However, just as we were about to pack up and leave, we had some visitors!
The ponies were not at all concerned by our presence and did not get phased when we were moving around and taking photos. Exmoor ponies are not the tamest of horses so it was a great testament to my students that the ponies were happy to stay with us for almost an hour before moving on.

Bristol Knife Show

Well it's been quite a while since I last posted anything. I have been very busy with work recently doing all my other jobs (media and IT). However I did manage to go to the Bristol Knife show last week!

It was a nice little show - all contained in one room at the Aztec Hotel. There were plenty of sharp and shiny things on display and I nearly managed to get away without spending money but I failed miserably. I ended buying a couple of knives of which I will post pictures later.

Overall, I'm glad I had a look at the show but I did fee that it was a bit expensive for what it was. There were not a huge number of exhibitors there but it was a great atmosphere and it was fantastic to have such a show in this day and age of paranoid press hysteria about knives.

Chop, chop!

Well I have just recently taken posession of a lovely new and shiny axe. It is a custom jobbie made by a guy, using the screen name of Cegga. It is very well made, has a lovely balance and beautifully finished. All in all it is a lovely piece of kit.

This is a picture by itself showing how well it has been polished and finished. The next picture shows the Cegga axe next to my Gransfor Wildlife Hatchet - which is a more mass produced beastie and has a much rougher looking finish to it.

Sand

A couple of days ago I went for a walk on the beach. This was too good an opportunity to miss when it came to some easy tracking. As always there was lots of dog and human tracks but in amongst them were a few gems like this Crow.

I love it when it is as easy as this - just the lazy side of me talking! Tracking is often very challenging but that really is half the fun.