What GORDI has been up to lately... Wooden Pens!

[gordi]

Those look great, and appear to be just the ticket - I might have to order one for myself! My old ferro rod has gone missing.

Another handle design you might consider is the Ek knife handle. It looks wonky and awkward as hell, but I've never owned a knife with a more secure grip, and I've had two Ek knives.

In WWII, John Ek started making knives for commando units. They were each hand made, and most had a double-edged dagger-like blade, but with NO finger guard.  That concerned the War department, as they felt that a fighting knife without a finger guard was a tragedy waiting to happen.

So John set up a demonstration for some of the War Department honchos. He took a guardless Ek knife, which was always his preference as he felt that finger guards were just something else to snag on the draw, and he greased his hand with lard right there in front of the honchos, grasped the knife, and proceeded to drive it so far into the oak floor boards with a single stroke that no one present could pull it back out of the floor... and his hand never slipped on the handle at all. The honchos were convinced, and approved the design for commandos. You could not get an original Ek knife without paperwork from DoD stating that you were in a Special Unit, such as Rangers or SOS.

The secret to the Ek knife handle was it's simple, but unconventional, design. There are 8 deep scallops along the handle,  4 on each side's handle scale, and it's a very secure grip. This is what it looks like:





My own personal Ek knife is the one on the far right end of that last image, made by K-Bar after they bought the Ek Commando Knife Company which was originally in Richmond, Virginia. The other one that I used to carry was very like the 4th knife from the left, which combines the scallops with transverse engraved notches.

Those scallops look wonky, but they provide the securest grip of any knife I've ever owned.

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ooooh, I like that! Cool as a cool thing!
G