Cheap Punk Knives

My son was forced to read "The Outsiders" a book from around 1970 about growing up poor and dealing with the rich kids in an area with horses and rodeos which play no part in the story.

I did not see it as art or desirable literature and comment to his teacher that for me it just stured up some stuff I would just as soon leave behind.

Anyhow it reminded me of yet another box tucked away and here are a couple of knives folks I knew carried during that very time and social setting. The black one is Japanese and the "rainbow knife" (sorry about the condition, decades of storage have not been kind) is actually an Imperial and made in the USA I think in the late 1950's.

Both are junk as knives but I am sure "empowered" their original owners with confidence where it likely should not have been.

-kBob

The rainbow Imperial was sprung but even before it got put away the spring snapped off. It certainly did spring open and sort of lock whe nit was younger.

Todd,

I have seen slip joints with the same scales and blade design at a lot of shows and a few switch blades like it , mostly broken as well.

In Florida in days past (pre concealed carry liscence) a sprungknife was allowed IF a doctor wrote a note explaining why the other hand did not work. Other wise it was a forbidden weapon. While recovering from a serious injury to my left hand I carried such a "prescription" and the black knife was a gift from a friend meant to help me out.

It always made me think of the movie "Dirty Hairy" and duct tape. Owww!

-kBob

I am pretty sure that prior to Florida adopting the shall issue CWL and state preepmption laws that spring loaded knives were specifically forbidden for carry.

Unfortunately I just checked and it appears my wife finally got rid of her ancient statute books.

What ever the statue actually said I was certainly taught that switchblades were reason for arrest in my Florida Law for Policemen class in the late 1970's. Some Florida LEOs at that time even argued that a lockblade like the Buck Ranger and such were by dint of the lock not "common folding pocket knives."

Most of my crowd carried "common folding knives, which was taken to mean slip joints, but some would place a bit of match stick under the tip where it was folded to keep the tip of blade barely exposed. The idea was that on drawing one snagged the tip on the edge of the trouser pocket and so opened the blade. In my last year of highschool I knew folks that would take the pull tab from a soda or beer can and wrap the tongue of it around the tip end of a blade and use this to start a blade open.

It suddenly occurs to me that the younger members have no idea what I am talking about. The early pull tab cans had pull tabs that came completely off in normal use. Folks made decorative chains from them and such but mainly just tossed them on the ground. Many of us folded them over and stuck them in the can so as to not leave them laying about.

-kBob