SAK and knife safety

[kBob]

SO Friday the kids were home early and we had Lupper. You know a meal halfway between Lunch and Supper. We watched an old episode of Psych while eating and one of the scenes was of the elder Spencer quizzing his adult son about whether he had his Swiss Army Knife. Dad had a bigger model of course.

Any how my kids laughed and I reminded them that I had bought them both SAKs and they fired back asking where was mine. They know I carry a clip on lock blade BX309 Coast and figured they had me until I pulled my Wegner out of my left pocket.

This prompted a teaching moment. I reminded them to not try to use a pocket knife as a substitute for the right tool when not absolutely necessary. I reminded them to always cut away from themselves.

Felt pretty good about it.

After Lupper I went outside with The Boy to put a new seat on his bike. Got him a new helmet as well. After finding that the bike needed metric wenches (guess he can only pedal it Kilometers and not miles) I got a pair and we did the seat nicely. Unfortunately the new helmet had all sorts of cr....stuff zip tied to it. As my snipers were across the pad around the corner through the office and in the shop (actually in the same drawer the wrenches came from) I decided it was absolutely necessary to use my SAK to remove those zip ties. Finding I could not get a good angle to perform the cutting I reach across the helmet so I could push the blade through.........and into my left index fingers first knuckle.

The good news is that The Boy got to watch me manfully taking the shots and seven stitches as though it was no problem. The Girl got to find out that if folks were going to bleed that much and all over the parking pad, back hall, wash room and kitchen, and curse loudly about "someone" failing to replace the empty paper towel roll in the rack that maybe she DID NOT want to be a nurse or doctor in a decade.

The doctor was amazed that I managed to make the stab PRECISSLY between the nerves and artery that supply Mr. Pointer and cut neither.

Fortunately there was no air in the joint and here it is Monday with no infection.

I feel like and idiot.

Just wanted none of you guys to feel the same.

Oh, and the SAK is fine though it needs cleaning for some reason.

-kBob

 

[CZ9shooter]

I have learned too, that a knife is NOT the right tool for zip ties.

Even if you do manage to get a good angle on it, it will almost always come with a dangerous jerk.

 

[hso]

Wrong tool used the wrong way (said the guy that stabbed himself TWICE cutting zip ties before learing better).

 

[22-rimfire]

I think we all have cut ourselves and sometimes done it under very stupid circumstances. Glad the SAK survivied.

Wire cutters work well on zip ties.

 

[JohnKSa]

I use my EDC to cut zip ties all the time, but I lever the knife through the tie (cutting edge away from the surface underneath) if the surface underneath it is hard enough that it won't be damaged. If the surface underneath the tie is too soft to lever against, get the knife under the tie with the cutting edge upward and pull it upward with a straight wrist and arm using shoulder motion. With shoulder motion providing the cutting force, if the knife comes free abruptly--as it is almost certain to do, the resulting blade motion is quite restricted and very unlikely to cut anything unintentionally.

Another option is to slide the blade under the zip tie so that its lying flat and then sort of twist the entire knife around so that the back edge of the blade levers against one side of the zip tie loop and the cutting edge is forced into the other side.

Where you get into trouble is if you try to cut the tie by using "stabbing/pushing" force--especially with a bent arm. Then when the knife cuts through the tie it can jump forward a good distance under the force of the arm as it straightens out. If there's something in the way that should remain uncut things will get ugly.

Another way to get into trouble is to pull with arm strength instead of shoulder strength. Then when the knife cuts through the tie, the arm bends abruptly and the knife can swing a significant distance before it's back under control.

 

[C0untZer0]

I purchased the Coast FX416 in 2010. I wanted to try it out so I used it to cut up some Italian sausage, instead of just dumping the pieces of sausage from the cutting board, I scooped them up with my hand and on the second pass I caught my right ring finger knuckle on the point of the FX416.

I really didn't expect such a bad cut.