Caveat: I know this post is centered on a story about a knife, but it really is more about the quality of people on this site so I wanted to share it on PowWow instead of just with the knife forum. If it needs to be moved there, I understand.
I was 17 when I first started getting interested in hunting. Gene Craven was an semi-retired service writer at the car dealership where I was working. Gene was an avid hunter and when I expressed some interest in hunting he took it as a challenge to show me the ropes. He answered all my newbie questions with patience and took me out hunting multiple times. After I killed my first deer, he gave me an old knife. I knew it had a history behind it, but didn't really realize the full depth until my late twenties. I did some research then and learned it is a WWII service issue knife. I stopped carrying it into the woods after I figured out what history was behind it and its been in a storage box for the last decade. I only wish that I had fully appreciated the gift of the knife when it had originally been given to me instead of twenty years later...
A couple posts about restoring knives on the knife forum here at Trad Gang inspired me to dig it back out and take a look again on some of the historic knife websites. I was able to determine based on the butt cap and tang stamp it is an army aircorp survival knife built early 1940's by Camillus. It had obviously had some wear and tear. The sheath was not the original and was just falling apart to the point where at some point someone had stitched the sheath back together with copper wire.
So back in February I posted on the knife forum a question about restoring the knife. I got some great feedback and launched into taking the knife apart. Someone had used the butt cap as a hammer and the tang was riveted in place and it proved too difficult for me to tackle without doing more damage to the knife. A couple days after posting about the knife I received a PM from Samuel Koger (Koger here on tradgang). He offered to take a look at the knife and try to help me out. I didn't know Sam from Adam, but he offered some references and my intuition told me to go for it so I did.
I got the knife back in early March and Sam went above and beyond. He completely redid the leather handle, & resharpened and polished the blade to a mirror finish. I opened the package to find this:
Sam, I can't thank you enough for taking this piece of history and restoring it for me so that I can eventually pass on to my nephews or my own kids if I am so blessed someday.
I knew when I saw the knife that it needed a sheath that would finish the package off with honor. Nobody does leatherwork like Robin Severe (Roughcountry here on tradgang), so I contacted him to see if he had any time to make a sheath for the knife. Sure enough, Robin said he could squeeze it in between some saddle work and some lion hunting for the State of Montana.
Well, I got a package in the mail yesterday, and the pictures speak for themselves:
Robin, you completed the package beautifully. Thanks for your amazing craftsmanship.
Folks we have some wonderful people here on the site, and I just wanted to thank these two guys for being so generous with their time and talents. Thanks again Sam and Robin, you are both exemplary people.
Topic: Trad Gang Generosity (Read 434 times)
