This is neither a review or I guess really one of my usual Weird Knife screeds, but inspired by the post from the other day by @CharlesMangione… Here is a much worse implementation of a similar idea. These are a little strange but not necessarily that unusual because I still see them knocking around on the tables at flea markets all the time.

Everybody and their grandmother had one of these stupid things in the '90’s and I’m no exception. They were marketed hard at the survivalist crowd which I guess was a lucrative market during the Clinton years, what with the popularity of the whole Michigan Militia thing, and so on and so forth.

Anyway, I’ve frequently seen these billed as “the knife that’s its own sheath!”

But, like, isn’t how every folding knife is? Duh?

Anyhow, the mechanism is a “pantographic” design, and these things work via a simple cantilever arrangement that retracts the blade into the handle. You lift this latch…

…And then you can kind of squirt the blade out the front like so.

(Note that this is basically impossible to do quickly, or one handed.)

Nicer ones of these have a track that the blade runs along so it doesn’t knock against the crossguard on the way out. This isn’t one of those, so in addition to being its own sheath this is also the miracle knife that dulls itself every time you use it.

Other highlights include this sawback cut into the spine of the blade, also presumably for “survival” purposes, which was the style at the time. But it’s not actually sharp, so you ain’t sawing jack shit with it even if you tried. I suppose you could use it as a fish scaler if you really wanted to, at the risk of getting stinky fish guts all over your knife.

Despite the prominent “stainless” marking on the blade, you’ll note that mine has accumulated its fair share of rust stains over the years just from sitting around. So that’s probably bogus, as was the notion that knives like these were ever issued to paratroopers, because they weren’t. Strangely, the patent number engraved on there is not bogus, and actually cross-references to the patent for the original design. Why anyone is still bothering to stamp it on there decades later is beyond me, though, because the patent is pre-WW2 and is long since expired. (Except possibly to attempt to trick rubes into believing that this is a genuine period military issue item, which is extra rich because these were never military issue items to begin with.)