Brilliant red jasper caps off the grip of Bill Duff’s miniature dagger. (Caleb Royer image)
One of the better ways to celebrate Old Rock Day (you do celebrate, don’t you?) is with a custom knife sporting a handle of anything stony or fossilized.
What is Old Rock Day?
Celebrated on Jan. 7, Old Rock Day salutes rocks of all kinds. In some locales, children are encouraged to discover their first “pet rock,” and festivities may include painting and decorating the “faces” of rocks. Some gather attractive pebbles and stones to make original pieces of jewelry. Some build rock gardens, and some towns and villages hold competitions for the best-looking rock garden.
BLADE has You Covered on Old Rock Day
To avoid getting your Old Rock Day off to a rocky start, we recommend you check out some stone-cool knife handles made of rocks and fossilized materials. You may not get your rocks off, but, if you love knives like we do, you will most definitely rock on.
Jerry McClure outfits his Little Mama Folder with a handle of green nephrite jade. (Caleb Royer image)Mastodon ivory comprises the grip of a Tony Hughes bowie in a 9.5-inch blade of Turkish twist damascus. (Caleb Royer image)Bruce Bingenheimer’s BingaLor folders have handles of mammoth ivory. (Caleb Royer image)Sodalite stone caps off Bertie Rietveld’s Pinnacle dagger in nebula damascus. (SharpByCoop image)The Protégé by Johnny Stout boasts mammoth ivory scales and fileworked titanium liners. (Caleb Royer image)Ancient walrus ivory in a forged integral frame rocks the Slim Bad Fighter by David Lisch. (Caleb Royer image)Don Hanson opts for fossil ivory on his clip-point bowie with handsome hamon. (Caleb Royer image)
See More Beautiful Knife Photos
Knives 2018 features full-color photos of the world’s best custom knives. It’s THE book for knife collectors, knifemakers and anyone interested in functional art.
Australian knifemaker Leila Haddad is impressive for many reasons. She’s only 14, but she’s already turning out forged blades that fetch thousands of dollars. This profile from ABC in Australia is worth reading for those reasons, but one quote from the young knifemaker should be highlighted:
“I think there is still a future for knife making, because people are starting to realise again the importance of handmade things,” she said.
The Buck Model 119 Special. (Image via Buck Knives)
Buck Knives announced last month that it reached the 1.5 million mark for total knives produced at its Idaho facility. A Model 119 Special took home the title of the 1,500,000th knife. That’s no accident.
This milestone was achieved due to the increased USA production needs and sales on their 119 Special and 110 Automatic models.
Knife Restrictions Re-Introduced in Kansas
Introduced in the closing days of 2017, a proposal in Kansas is looking to renew some expired knife prohibitions. From Knife Rights:
HB 2442 is ostensibly a “bump stock” ban bill, but it sneakily also would reinstate “dagger, dirk, … dangerous knife, straight-edged razor, stiletto” as prohibited knives.
Nothing beats stepping inside a knifemaker’s shop and watching how the magic happens. Knifemaker Kyle Daily, of KH Daily Knives, generously shared this video showing how he treats 154CM stainless.
BLADE staff found this video on Twitter. Are you following us? You should be.
Gerber & Boy’s Life Team Up to Clean Filthy Pocketknives
Boy’s Life put together a great spread on cleaning pocketknives, with some assistance from Gerber. It’s basic, sure, but it’s full of great tips, such as using toothbrushes to clean serrations.
The dents create air pockets so food does not stick to the blade.
In his story, How To Make a Sushi Knife, in the August 2015 BLADE®, ABS master smith Wally Hayes explained how he achieved the texturing on the blade’s surface. The reason for the texturing is to create air pockets so food does not stick to the steel.
For blade material, he used 90-thousandths-inch-thick 15N20 carbon steel from New Jersey Steel Baron.
After cutting the blade to shape and heating it in his forge, the author used the hammer with a cross-hatched face to give each side of the blade a textured finish.
“First, I cut the blade to shape, around 7 inches long,” he wrote. “The tang is about 4 inches. I take one of my old hammers and cut a cross hatch into the face using a side grinder with a cut-off wheel. Then I heat up the blade in my forge and hammer a textured finish into the steel. This takes about five heats and is lots of fun! I put dents into both sides of the blade and then make sure it is straight.”
The sushi knife the author completed for the story in the August 2015 BLADE® features a blade with the hand-hammered finish and a handle of ebony and walnut.
Follow the Rambo knives through the first four movies with these photos. If you want to step back in time even further, download the June 1983 issue of BLADE.
David Morrell, author of the novel First Blood, based the book’s title on an old dueling term.
“I thought of it as a kind of duel between the characters, and there’s a dueling term about drawing first blood,” he explained. “In some duels the person who drew first blood would be the victor, so there was a kind of irony here of who drew first blood and who was going to win in this harrowing conflict.”
Rambo is More Canadian than American
Though set in Kentucky in the novel First Blood, the movie’s locale was supposedly in the American Pacific Northwest. Actual filming was done in British Columbia. (image via imdb.com)
Born in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, Morrell today is an American citizen.
The setting he chose for the novel, First Blood, was a wilderness area in Kentucky called the Grand Canyon of the East. However, Carolco, the production company that made the First Blood movie, wanted to do the flick in British Columbia, partly for financial reasons.
Meanwhile, for the purposes of the film, the locale would be identified as the American Pacific Northwest.
“It’s ironic that a Canadian created one of the most recognizable American icons,” Morrell noted. “It’s doubly ironic that the movie adaptation of First Blood was filmed in Canada’s British Columbia, even though my novel is set in Kentucky.”
Uncle Sam Makes an Appearance
The First Blood character of Col. Sam Troutman, played by Richard Crenna in the movie, was inspired by an American icon. Can you guess which one? (image via imdb.com)
Morrell gave Col. Sam Troutman, played by Richard Crenna, the name Sam because he represents Uncle Sam. As Morrell noted, “I saw him as the system that had created Rambo.”
You Only Got Half the Story
The original cover for “First Blood.”
Originally, First Blood was about 600 pages long. Morrell didn’t like it and so went back and started reading it again. He found a chapter he didn’t like and deleted it. He read the book again and found it moved faster as a result of the deletion.
“I had digressions for one of the deputies, and the man who flew the helicopter and so many different viewpoints in it that I began cutting this chapter and that chapter and found that all I had to do was have the alternating sections between Rambo and the police chief,” he said. “So I probably lost about 300 pages doing this. It was like sculpting, knocking bits of granite off to create a statue. I had written and written so much that I learned that by cutting back I got an intensity that I hadn’t expected. So it was a big lesson for me.”
Rambo III was the first Rambo movie for which Gil Hibben made knives, taking over from Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Jimmy Lile, who made the knives for the first two Rambo films. When Stallone contacted Hibben about doing the knife for the third film, Hibben made a prototype hollow-handle survival knife with sawteeth on the spine.
However, Stallone decided he wanted something different and opted for another of Hibben’s designs, the now famous Rambo III bowie. However, the minefield scenes for the third movie already had been filmed with Stallone using the first design, the knife known as the Rescue Mission Knife.
On the 25th anniversary of Rambo III, Hibben teamed with award-winning knifemaker Vaughn Neeley to fashion a limited edition of 100 specially marked, mirror-polished and serial-numbered 25th anniversary Rescue Mission knives. Go here for more information.
Instead of the Rescue Mission Knife, Stallone opted for Gil Hibben’s Rambo III bowie (shown here) as the featured knife for the third film. Stallone had more input on the design of the bowie, including the long cutout in the blade. (Kris Kandler image)
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the February 2008 issue ofBLADE magazine, which you can download here.
Over a quarter century after John Rambo burst onto the big screen and changed cutlery history forever, it is near time for the character created by author David Morrell to cut a worldwide cinematic swath with his indomitable knife once again.
As BLADE® was going to press, the fourth installment of the Rambo movie series, Rambo (aka Rambo IV) a Lionsgate film, was due to be released at movie theaters on Jan. 25, 2008. Sylvester Stallone wrote the screenplay, directs and stars in the movie that finds Rambo living a secluded life working as a snake catcher in Thailand some 26 years after Rambo first appeared in First Blood.
Rambo Knives: A Brief History
An isolated shot of the “J.R.,” the knife designed by Gil Hibben for the fourth Rambo film.
For Rambo III (1987), Stallone called on Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame knifemaker Gil Hibben to create the knife.
A Series of False Starts
For Rambo, Stallone once again called Hibben to help create a new knife for the movie. Stallone had a basic idea of what he needed and the knife was written into the script as an integral part of the movie. Hibben made at least five prototype versions of the piece before finally arriving at the design that will be used in the film.
In October 2006, Hibben began designing the knife. At first, the blade exhibited characteristics of the Rambo III model.
Hibben designs the knife in his shop in LaGrange, Kentucky. (photo by the author)
“My first one had a slot in the blade [as in the Rambo III knife] but in a machete or old Chinese sword design,” Hibben recalled. He also made a modified version in which he removed the top lug of the guard.
Stallone reportedly liked the blade design but said it was “too perfect.” He wanted something much more crude looking, as if it had been pounded out quickly from the limited resources Rambo has at his disposal in the movie.
It was back to the drawing board for Hibben.
“The blade size was originally 10 inches and Sly faxed me some pictures of some of the knives he’d seen from the cutting competitions,” the Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer explained. “He liked that style, so I made one up. It evolved from a 10-inch blade to a 12-inch one. It evolved from several sizes and shapes until I got what he liked.”
To make it authentic, Hibben forged the next few prototypes from pieces of a truck leaf spring. Since there was agreement on the basic blade design, next came the question of the handle and finish of the knife.
Hibben thought about what materials might be available to the character in the movie. He considered leather, wood, paracord, tape and even seat-belt webbing for use on the handle. The second prototype had a wooden grip wrapped in green paracord and an enclosed sheath. Hibben also made a third prototype with a leather-wrapped handle.
Again, the studio said it needed something more crude looking.
There’s Crude, and then There’s CRUDE
Sylvester Stallone, seen here playing John Rambo in the fourth movie in the franchise, holds Hibben’s final version. (photo by Karen Ballard from Rambo®, a Lionsgate film)
Prototype number four was a very simple design with a cord-wrapped handle. Hibben made one with green cord and one with black cord. It was close to being right, but the finish was still too slick to have been quickly forged as it is in the script.
Finally, Hibben decided that, considering John Rambo’s skills and experience and the materials that the title character would have available, the knife would have a cord-wrapped handle, perhaps covered with tape for additional grip. The blade would be marked with depressions from the hammer blows from being forged quickly without time or resources to put a fine finish on the blade.
“So I took it out of the heat treat and beat the heck out of it,” Hibben recalled. “I really made it look like Sly made it.”
Following the Rambo knife tradition, it would be a large, heavy blade with a thick spine. Assuming that Rambo would not have time or materials to make a new sheath but would still have the sheath from his previous knife, he opts to cut the end of the old Rambo IIIsheath to accommodate the larger blade and broader tip of the new knife. This is the knife and sheath in Rambo.
Rambo IV Knife Specs
The final version, the “J.R.,” appeared on the cover of the February 2008 issue of BLADE. Click to download the issue.
The 12-inch blade is forged from a 3-inch piece of quarter-inch-thick D2 tool steel. As you might imagine, such a knife is somewhat heavy—2 pounds worth—so Hibben made some lightweight aluminum versions for Stallone to use when need be for safety’s sake during filming.
Since the movie was shot in the corrosion-inducing environs of the jungle, Hibben said he put Renaissance Wax on the non-stainless D2 to protect the blade from rust.
“There was a lot of rain there,” he noted. “Luckily they got out before the monsoons hit.”
The cord-wrapped handle is covered with black tape for additional grip. Eighteen inches overall, the knife comes in the modified Rambo III sheath.
Collector Pricing Reference
At press time (in 2008), Hibben was offering a handmade version of the knife in all the original materials—though with nicer sheaths—for $1,250. It is called the “J.R.” There will be 100 in all, with 25 of them already having been sold.
