I got more knives today.

[Big Frank]

The Big Brown Truck of Happiness dropped off a box today. It's 4 Schrade knives.

1. The Journeyman utility knife is a 4" long prybar and bottle opener with an OD Green G10 and steel handle. Plus, it's a manual OTF knife that takes No. 11 X-Acto knife blades, which I already bought 100 of. It only weighs 1.5 ounce, according to the website, which says the handle is aluminum, not steel. I've been wanting this one ever since I saw it uses the X-Acto knife blades I already have. It even came with 3 extra individually packaged blades. When the blade is open, you press the small button to remove the old blade, and a new blade clicks into place.

2. The Isolate Caper Fixed Blade is a 3" full-tang hollow-ground drop-point AUS-10 steel blade with non-slip TPR handles. It comes with an injection-molded sheath that has a built-in sharpener. The blade is only 1/8" thick, and it weighs 2.8 ounces. The whole rubber handle looks like it could be pulled off if you wanted a super-thin knife to conceal. If you want to stab something, a fixed blade knife is good for the job, and there aren't many with 3" blades I can legally carry around here. When I'm up north, sometimes I carry a knife with a blade over 8" long, but I can't get away with that around here.

Both of those knives are part of Schrade's Delta Class or Delta Series of el cheapo's made in China.

3. The Uproar double-action OTF knife has a satin-finished 3" flat-ground single edge bayonet-style D2 steel blade. The handles are black aluminum and it weighs 3.3 ounces, and the blade is 1/10" thick. The lock-up feels solid and it has minimal side to side play. It's part of the Beta Series, Assembled in Columbia, Missouri. Made with foreign and domestic parts. Being a single-edge knife, it's not automatically considered a concealed weapon by the state. And the 3" length is barely legal in the township next door. I don't know what restrictions the city has.

4. The ALKEMYST Balisong is a member of the Schrade ALPHA CLASS, PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA. It has a 4" flat-ground Modified Clip Point D2 Steel Blade, Spring Latch Lock, and Stainless Steel Handles. It's 9 5/8" long overall and weighs 4.3 ounces, with a 1/8" thick blade.

https://www.schrade.com/shop/knives/delta/journeyman-utility-knife/1159325.html#start=1

https://www.schrade.com/shop/knives/delta/isolate-caper-fixed-blade/1159295.html#start=1

https://www.schrade.com/shop/knives/beta/uproar-da-otf/1135967.html#start=1

https://www.schrade.com/shop/knives/alpha/alkemyst-balisong/1182276.html#start=1



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cp3YJALqQo

[alfsauve]

BTB. The Blade Show is next weekend 6/6 in Marietta (Well maybe technically Smyrna) GA.  Haven’t decided if I’m going.  Also Atlanta Radio Club hamfest plus local Steel Challenge match, all same weekend. 

[Big Frank]

Didn't Marietta once pass a local ordnance REQUIRING people to own a handgun? Not that I think it was enforceable, but good thinking.

[alfsauve]

Same  county but the city was Kennesaw.  There was a conscientious objector exception so it was unenforceable.  Also no standing for anyone to sue.  However a marked drop in crime occurred shortly there afterwards.

Similar thing in Orlando after a year of highly publicized concealed carry classes for women.

[Big Frank]

Ah, yes, Kennesaw. As soon as I saw the name I recognized it. It's the former home of Brigade Quartermasters, who I used to buy a lot of stuff from. They began selling military related outdoor products in Georgia in 1976. Under the direction of two brothers, Brigade Quartermasters, Ltd. became a leader in the niche market of hard-to-find specialty outdoor and military camping and hunting products. In early 2010 the assets of Brigade Quartermaster, Ltd. were purchased by Ira Green, Inc., a leading supplier to the United States military exchange system.

If I'm not mistaken, the brothers who ran BQM for all those years were the sons of Mitchell Livingston WerBell III, a U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative, mercenary, paramilitary trainer, firearms engineer, arms dealer, and SIONICS (an acronym for Studies in the Operational Negation of Insurgents and Counter-Subversion) was an American firearm suppressor company.  In the 1970s and 1980s, Cobray was a counter terrorist training center in addition to being an arms maker under the leadership of Mitch WerBell. Military Armament Corporation (MAC) was an American manufacturer of small arms, co-founded by Gordon Ingram, an engineer and gun designer, and Mitchell WerBell.

I'm wearing a Brigade watch band in this picture from when I stationed in Germany. It had a Velcro flap you could keep your watch covered with, so it wouldn't be seen or scratched up. And you could fasten the flap open when you wanted to. I used their nylon wallets for years and years, from back then into the 2000s if I'm not mistaken. I probably had one in my right rear pocket at that exact moment. Here's a MAC-10 with a SIONICS suppressor attached.

https://brigadeqm.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_WerBell_III

[Sponsor]

[alfsauve]

Wow great memory.  I’d forgotten about Mitch.  I too bought from BQM and went to the store several times.  It was on US 41 just off the end of the Cobb County Airport.  Got me wondering about what happened to Mitch’s old property. 

[Big Frank]

Partial memory - good at looking stuff up.   I can't remember the boys' names but can swear they're his kids. I couldn't remember if his name was Werbell or Wer Bell, but it didn't take long to figure out when I added OSS to the search. 

[Big Frank]

The X-Acto blade in the Journeyman tool can be inserted facing left or right. So you can have it set up for right-handed or wrong-handed use. If you want a regular knife blade instead of a needle sharp point, you could buy #10 blades instead of #11. They're similar to scalpel blades, which, by the way, will fit a #1 (skinny) X-Acto knife. If there's a better tool for digging out slivers than a #1 X-Acto knife with a #11 blade, I haven't seen it. The nurses at work would try using hypodermic needles to dig slivers out, but a #11 blade works better. The same blade in this tool isn't going to give you scalpel like dexterity, but should still work okay. I'm going to file the tip of my prybar flat to make a better screwdriver blade out of it.

[Big Frank]

The tip of the Journeyman utility knife pry bar is hollow ground on both sides, as all good flat tip screwdrivers should be. And now that I've filed it, stoned it, then filed it some more, it should be a very good flat tip screwdriver. It barely fits #6 sheet metal, wood, and machine screws, fits #8 screws really well, and still isn't too loose to use on #10 screws. So it fits all 9 kinds of screws, whatever length they may be, which is the majority of slotted screws. The width will be a limiting factor in some situations, but I don't want to make it any narrower. That would ruin its use as a pry bar.

I always have a pry bar as part of my EDC when I'm wearing jeans, but not necessarily when I'm wearing shorts. I wore shorts to the doctor's office today and when I stopped to get weighed, the nurse asked if I wanted to take my keys out of my pocket. I said no because I was traveling light. I only had my wallet and a knife on me. I didn't tell her it was the first time carrying my Uproar OTF automatic.   I was thinking about possibly bluing the blade but probably won't. I don't think it would turn out well.