Break-Away Necklace

I guess it’s important to have some kind of a break-away if you wear something around your neck. Even though I’m not ashamed to state that I’m a bit of a safety ninny, I have worn a neck knife for years on just a piece of 2mm cord. I guess on some level I have a problem with weak points. But I do realize that it is probably a good idea. I’ve looked at some of the little plastic break-away hardware, and wasn’t so impressed with it. It came undone too easily for my liking.

Was in a dollar store recently and saw this. For a dollar, I figured I’d give it a try.

Will all dollar stores have this? I have no idea. Are these super popular and available everywhere? I have no idea. Are they available in longer than 18" lengths? I have no idea.

Don’t know if there is a proper name for this kind of closure. I call it Ball and Loop.

Now, 18" makes it a choker on me. A choker with a break-away to avoid choking, but a choker nonetheless. I guess these are marketed towards 8 year old girls, not burly adults who carry knives around their necks. Thought of getting a second one to lengthen it, but that would then add two weak points.

So far so good. Mind you, three days of wearing it isn’t that much of a test. Although I have worn it while I slept, and if all that tossing and turning I do hasn’t ripped it loose, that’s a hopeful sign. I can see this being problematic if you carried a knife that required you to really yank on the handle to get it out of the sheath. But what I carry has been fine so far.

Outdoor Edge Wedge

Outdoor Edge is a Colorado based company that has carved out a niche for itself catering virtually exclusively to hunters. 

I got one of these great little knives, the Wedge about a dozen years ago. Very reasonable price at a House of Knives, and it has proven to be a terrific tool.

Made from 6M stainless steel (likely no one’s idea of an uber steel, but it has proven to be easy to sharpen and keep sharp, and has held up fine all these years), the blade is 6cm (2.375") long. The overall length is about 13cm (5").

Both the sheath and the teardrop shaped handle are made from Delrin.

While the sheath/scabbard isn’t the best thing ever, it certainly has proven to be perfectly serviceable. It’s always held the knife in place when I’ve had it hanging around my neck, and really, that is the most important thing. Pushing the little button that says, you guessed it, “push” releases the knife. Placing the knife in the open part of the sheath, and sliding it forward pushes the button back and once past, snaps back into place to secure the knife.

On the back there was a clip for mounting it on a belt or a pocket, but I knew I would always carry this around my neck, so I sawed and filed it off.

I do wish it came with a Kydex sheath, but if I feel that strongly about it, I can get off my butt and make one myself.

The jimping on the top of the handle provides a bit more control when gripping.

The blade is very thin, flat ground and razor sharp. I used it once to husk a few buckets of black walnuts, and even the brutal surface of the walnuts, couldn’t damage the blade. There was a lot of twisting involved to pry apart the husks, and the blade must have gotten into the rough, uneven surface on the shells of the walnuts as I twisted, but it survived that test just fine.

I’ve used this innumerable times for food prep, and I really like it for this purpose. Husking, peeling, chopping, scraping, processing meat and fish, etc., it handled all those sorts of tasks with ease. It handles many other little tasks around camp very nicely as well.

While there are a multitude of options as far as carrying it  goes, I’ve always chosen to carry it suspended around my neck.

Altogether, a terrific little knife for the money. While certainly not the be all and end all knife, it makes for an excellent secondary knife, or it can really shine in instances when a big knife isn’t the best tool for the task. 

An amusing post script to this is that while up in Kincardine about a decade ago, a dozen of us were playing frisbee in a friends backyard. Two frisbees were in play, and we kept playing right until about the last rays of light faded. All the jumping and running had worked the knife loose from inside my shirt. As I jumped up to grab one frisbee, another whizzed past me in the opposite direction. My knife floated up in the air as I jumped up and the frisbee hit it with full force, splitting the scabbard, causing the knife to go flying through the air. Added whole new meaning to the term “Ultimate Frisbee”. Time out was called, flashlights came out, and the knife was found in the unmown grass. After seeing that sharp, silver object go boomeranging through the air, we decided that maybe it was time for the frisbeeing to come to an end. The scabbard was kaput, so I just went out and bought a whole other knife. The other one resides in my kitchen in the knife block now.