Swiss Army Knives. The Almost Forgotten Survival Tool, by Me.…

I almost for­got about them.  I did.  I had a cou­ple of them as a kid, that sad­ly were mis­placed.  I’m talk­ing about the Swiss Army Knife.  With mul­ti-tools being so pop­u­lar for var­i­ous rea­sons I lit­er­al­ly have not giv­en the Swiss Army Knife a look in sev­er­al years.  I have two or three mul­ti-tools.  I used one of them yes­ter­day.  Great appli­ca­tion if you do not have a pair of pli­ers handy.  That is the real val­ue add, if you ask me over the Swiss Army Knife.  The mul­ti-tool has a pair pof pli­ers that you can use for var­i­ous tasks from crimp­ing to tak­ing a hot con­tain­er off the fire.  How­ev­er, with the TSA announc­ing this week that at the end of April fold­ing knives with blads less than 1/2″ wide and less than 2.36″ in length will be allowed on planes.  The caveat is that the blad can­not lock back, and it can­not have a “mold­ed” han­dle.  I had to take anoth­er look at the Swiss Army Knife again.

I nor­mal­ly will pack a mul­ti­tool in my lug­gage, along with my EDC.  I prob­a­bly still will. That won’t change.  But hav­ing a pock­et knife as EDC and being allowed to have it in the air­port or on the plane, makes me feel a lit­tle eas­i­er.  Not for self defense, mind you, but I can’t count the times I thought I might need a small blade in a pinch for some task.  Whether it is the small screw­driv­er, the scis­sors, or the small blade to trim some­thing…

I recent­ly went to Amazon.com and looked over the Swiss Army Knives.  I looked specif­i­cal­ly at:

• Swiss Army Explor­er
• Swiss Army Hunts­man II
• Swiss Army Hik­er
• Swiss Army Tin­ker

I even­tu­al­ly set­tled on the Swiss Army Hunts­man II, but in hind­sight, I am think­ing I should have pur­chased the Swiss Army Explor­er.  I say this because it has the mag­ni­fy­ing lens, which “may” be able to be used to make fire, as well as the addi­tion­al phillips head screw­driv­er.  I do like the  Swiss Army Hunts­man II, how­ev­er.  It is lighter than any of my full time mul­ti-tools, and I bare­ly feel it in my front pock­et.

I will also prob­a­bly end up buy­ing a small­er mul­ti­tool with a small­er blade to keep in my pock­et for busi­ness trav­el, or just buy­ing the Swiss Army Tin­ker with the pli­ers and being hap­py with that…

We will see…