The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Knives & Blades => Topic started by: Big Frank on November 03, 2023, 11:35:09 AM
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I bought a SOG Cash Card Folding Knife and a SOG Tellus FX Fixed Blade Knife, and a pile of other stuff, from Midway USA. The Red Cash Card was on sale for $14.99 instead of $34.95, and the Blaze Orange SOG Tellus FX was on sale for $24.99 instead of $59.95. I'd much rather have an Olive Drab or Wolf Gray knife instead of blaze orange, but for ~58% less than the other 2, I had to buy the blaze orange. The Cash Card has a 2.75" blade and you can clip it to your pocket or use it as a money and card clip.
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/102521607?pid=568704
The Tellus FX has a 4.2" CRYO 440C stainless steel blade, with a hardness of Rc. 58-60, and an overall length of 9". The handle scales are GRN, Glass Reinforced Nylon, and the weight is 6.7 oz. The sheath is Sage color nylon, the same as the olive drab model, and incorporates SOG’s Universal Mounting System, UMS. The wolf gray knife has a wolf gray sheath.
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/102442486?pid=242569
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I have other, bigger, hunting knives to carry in the woods, so decided to cut the blade down to 3" so I can carry it in Flint TWP and not be thrown in jail for doing so. I thought about cutting it back at about a 45 degree angle so it would still be kind of a clip blade, with the point terminating at the original bottom edge. Then I thought, this knife has a broad blade and full belly, so I can cut it straight off and make it into a cleaver style blade. There's enough of a taper left to make it easy to re-sheath.
I really didn't like the blaze orange handle, so I rubbed some USMC Black leather dye on it. I was hoping some would soak into the surface, or at least adhere to it. I ended up with a crappy, brownish rusty looking color that's easier on the eyes IMO. I'll see if any of it stays there long term, or if it all comes off on my hand.
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When I was filing the end of the blade after I cut it off, I had a little whoopsy. The knife was pointing straight up in the vise, and I pulled the tip of my left index finger against the edge of the blade on the backstroke. I cut it about 1/2" deep on an angle and immediately applied pressure. While maintaining pressure on it, I wrapped electrical tape around my finger, using it as a tourniquet and band-aid. 10 minutes later, when I was done filing on the knife I washed my hands. The tape was on for 15 minutes before I took it off, and I hadn't spilled a single drop of blood yet. But that was soon to change. I managed to get the bleeding slowed down enough to get a band-aid on, and another one over top of that, and another one over those two, trying to get them tight enough to stop the bleeding again. It didn't work, but it slowed way down.
So I went to the ER yesterday morning, and when I checked in I didn't have to sign anything. I was wondering if I would. With blood on both hands, I was kind of a walking bio-hazard, and they didn't want me touching anything I didn't have to. Because of where the cut was, the ER doctor said it would heal better, or faster, whatever, if it was glued together instead of stitched up. It took multiple tubes of glue to hold my finger together, but I can't remember if it was 3, or only 2.
Here's a picture of my ER doc. I didn't post any bikini pics but saw some online. She looks half my age and twice as good. ;) And she's twice as smart too. She wasn't the one sitting there bleeding on a surgical sponge. ;D She's a world traveler and a foodie with a big social media presence. She asked when my last tetanus shot was, and of course I didn't remember. I never do. So she said she'd give me another tetanus booster to get me caught up. But she never came back, and when a discharge nurse finally came to the room to give me my instructions and let me go, she said I wasn't getting any medication. When I told her I was waiting for a tetanus shot, she said, "That's news to me." She took off and when she came back, she said I had one 2 years ago. Now I'm wondering, what the hell did I do 2 years ago that I needed to get a tetanus shot for? I still can't figure it out. I think 2 years ago was around the time I totaled out my truck, but I didn't even go to the hospital.
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Found this:
https://www.mclaren.org/main/physician-directory/morrison-kayla-10791
Just a bit more info!
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And Board Certified in Emergency Medicine. Because I only deserve the best care.
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I forgot to mention something. There's a no weapons policy at the hospital, and you need to go through a metal detector when you use the emergency room entrance. You can walk right in the main entrance unguarded, but the ER has a metal detector and a guard. So I took everything out of my pockets except my hankie, and the metal detector went off when I walked through. I took my multi-tool out of the pouch and knife out of my pocket before I left home, and I didn't have a neck knife on. The security guard wanded me, and let me through. When I left, I told her I thought I knew what was setting off the big metal detector. I have Luxury Leather Laces from Lace Lab in my walking shoes. They have metal aglets on the ends, and since they can't be tied tight like normal laces, I had metal lace locks on them. I haven't made up my mind yet which looks better with the solid black shoes, silver or gold, so I have one of each and I'm asking people for their opinions. Sometime after I got home, I realized what actually set off the metal detector. It was the SOG SNARL knife clipped onto my belt, just a few inches to the left of my nylon belt buckle. I guess 2 ounces of steel was enough to set it off. ;D
https://www.lacelab.com/collections/luxury-leather-laces
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All my medical docs are ladies. GP, Cardio and Derm. What's really weird is I knew my GP when she was in going to high school.
A point of interest. The Tetanus shot is a preventative one, not curative.
From the Mayo Clinic: There's no cure for tetanus. A tetanus infection requires emergency and long-term supportive care while the disease runs its course.
So giving you the Tetanus vaccine if you already contracted the disease doesn't help, but it does guard against any of the buggers who are in the wound but haven't yet infected you. Of course if it's been a couple of days and you've cleaned the wound multiple times...eh. My mother use to wash wounds out with H2O2. And in those days we also used Mercurochrome and had pHisohex, an anti-bacteria scrub.
Also the Mayo say boosters only needed once every 10 years. No harm in more often though.
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I thought tetanus shots were every 10 years too, but the doctor asked if I had one in the last 5 years. I had a headache and my ears were ringing, but I think I know what I heard.
After about 45 hours I finally washed my hands and took the bandages off. They had some kind of anti-bacterial stuff in them. My finger doesn't look so good, but maybe it will be better tomorrow. If not, I'll go to the doctor. A piece of skin must have been glued to the bandage, because the back of my finger has a divot that was never there before. It hurt to unwrap it. The cut went from next to the crease at the joint all the way to the fingernail. If I didn't have a fingernail, I think the whole thing would have come off. Then I wouldn't know whether to leave it on the basement floor or take it to the ER with me. I have a little bit of leather dye on my hand, but not on that nasty looking finger. The pictures get progressively worse.
Don't click on a pic or you may get sick.
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Yuk. I'm glad you'll recover though. Always good to know when to seek medical attention.
Just had my wife's best friend's husband sit in his easy chair, suffer two heart attacks, with all the appropriate symptoms and failed to call 911. She called, but not until his head flopped back and his eyes rolled over. Funeral on Tuesday.
Be careful out there.
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Dang Alf. You are a party killer. Back on the diet after I take an aspirin.
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Diets are for quitters, Rastus. If the bleeding won't stop, it's time for help. Or if you can't breathe, are having a heart attack or a stroke. And don't sit there and smoke a cigarette and drink another beer before you call 911, like a deceased friend of mine did.
One good thing about living where I do is that the hospital is only a 3 minute drive away. 1.1 miles and a 25 minutes walk according to Google Maps. I've walked home from the ER before and don't think it took me that long, but the lack of sidewalks part of the way slowed me down. I was with one of my uncles in the U.P. when he had a heart attack. The hospital there was 10 times farther from his house than this hospital is from me, and the ambulance had to come from the hospital to get him, so that was a half hour round trip. He was DOA, but then again, he was likely dead before I got across the room to the phone.
My finger still looks like crap. It's blackish and bloody looking, but not dead, and the white spots are gone. I think there was too much moisture in the bandage and the skin was starting to break down.
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You need to air that thing out every day for a little while.
I am 1/2 an hour from a paved highway. Another 1/2 an hour to get to a podunk hospital.
My oldest son cut the heck out of his finger and hand before...was scared like all get out I was going to tear him up (he was right) for playing with his knife. He super glued it back together....it worked.
My youngest son likes really sharp knives...he got a high quality knife sharpening kit for his graduation gift. So when he said be careful he meant it. If for instance, if you were to let the knife fall on your thumb mindlessly and feel nothing you know you are about to become a sprinkler. Ask me how I know. And yes, the super glue worked for me too.
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Yeah, I keep it bandaged most of the time, with breathable band-aids, and let it air out a little without them.
Super glue never works for me when I'm bleeding, even just a little bit. But it's still useful to glue together loose edges, and as an artificial scab to cover a wound and keep crap out while it heals. Unlike super glue, the stuff they use in hospitals isn't just sterile, it has antibiotics in it. One time some brain surgeons got sued because they were going down to the hardware store and buying Krazy Glue to stick people's brains back together. That's NOT the place you want to introduce non-sterile foreign substances!
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The surgical glue was supposed to start falling off my finger in about 5 days, and it did so nothing was holding the wound closed. The good news is, I finally got a good look at it and I didn't cut myself half as bad as I thought. I was looking at dark lines in the glue before, thinking that's where the cut was, but it was closer to my fingertip and only 1/4" deep. I got a toothpick and dug the glue out around the edges until I got to fresh meat, which, as you can guess, didn't feel good at all. Then when it quit bleeding, I squirted super glue in and around it, working it in with a toothpick. Then I held a piece of waxed paper over and squeezed it all together, until it made a nice flat, smooth surface where the flap was sticking out. I had to redo it after I cut the dead edges off the flap, but it looks okay now, like it will start to heal right. But after it was sticking out for 5 days, it may not. Like Sarge said when I emailed him the pics the other day, "That's going to leave a mark." :)
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It's a shame we don't heal like when we were 20 something.
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You got that right. I used to hit the ground and bounce back. I don't come up running anymore. Sometimes I can't even crawl right away. I tripped stepping over my trailer hitch while I was up north this summer. I pulled my arms up so my wrists or elbows didn't hit, closed my eyes and turned my head and ducked while I slammed into the ground. Surprisingly, I managed not to get hurt very much because I swan dived into the ground with my hands up by my head. I didn't have a lot of time to react when the toe of my shoe hooked on the trailer hitch, but it was enough. I think it was my cardiologist who asked if I've fallen in the last 6 months, a year, or whatever. I told him about it, and that didn't count as me losing my balance because I'm a senile old git. ;) ;D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(slang)
I peeled off multiple layers of super glue and used nail clippers to cut the "sharp" edge off the skin flap tonight. A crescent 1/8" wide is just raw. After I wash it some more, I'll put a layer of glue on to scab it over. If it doesn't get caught on my blankets or anything, I probably won't [put a band-aid on it. I probably will before I work on anything dirty, like my guns.
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How can you tell your finger is happy? When it smiles at you! ;D If it has a big, gaping, toothless grin every time you lock eyes with it, it must be happy, right? ;D
Well... no, actually. It's kind of an angry looking red finger, but the picture was so dark I had to do some editing to make the face show up better.