Can you believe another week is almost over? I sure cannot. It seems like I was just writing about a range trip that I thought was going to happen but hasn’t yet. It’s that time of week again to talk about tacticool! I thought that I would write about an old friend, my Gerber 400 lock blade pocket knife.

Before I get started with that, I wanted to talk about the company Gerber and what it has to do with todays knife landscape. According to Wikipedia, the company was started in 1939 in Portland, Oregon. Unrelated to Gerber, Leatherman also began in Portland, Oregon in 1983. Between the two of them they have created a knife mecca spawning CRKT, Benchmade and the US headquarters of KAI/Kershaw knives as well.

This one was the one that stuck with me. Believe it or not, by the time I was fourteen this was my fourth pocketknife (and the first one I didn’t lose). My first knife was a really cheap knife that one of the scales (sides) fell off. The blade was poor metal and the blades didn’t lock causing several cuts. That one I think was ultimately thrown away. My second was a Boy Scout branded Schrade knife that was much more durable but it was lost within a few months after a beach trip. My third knife was a swiss army knife. model ‘Camper’. That one also got lost at the beach which is when I bought the Gerber.

This knife has been my constant companion ever since. It has been to Mexico, Canada, Europe and Asia. It skinned my first deer. It has helped me eat lunch when I needed to eat around bad spots in fruit or forgot the steak knife or butter knife. There have been times when it was the only knife for dinner, or the picnic cheese plate. It has opened countless packages, cut hose, twine and rope, scraped rust off, cleaned fish, popped balloons for clean-up, splinter scalpel and used as a second rate screwdriver to name a few functions.

I have other knives, but I like this one. It is light and slim with no clip to get in the way. I am not in love with knife clips. I am not convinced that they even make you knife more accessible. They certainly scrape things up when you rub the clip against furniture, the wall or your upholstery. Even though clips are ubiquitous, they are the first give away that you are armed.

Another reason I like this knife is that it was inexpensive. I paid less than $20 in the late 1980s for this knife. Because of that, it hasn’t gotten babied. I have other much more expensive knives that largely stay home to keep them protected – it sounds silly when you write about it. I have cut steel wire and opened paint cans with this blade. Don’t get me wrong, I am not intentionally abusing it, it just happens to be the only tool I have at the time.

The mirror finish, or chrome plating or whatever makes the blade shiny was gouged on the first sharpening. Largely because I didn’t hold the knife properly and didn’t know what I was doing when I attempted to sharpen the knife. Those marks are still there, I don’t think about them often but when I do it takes me right back to being at summer camp. Part and parcel with that is how much life has changed since then and how much more skilled I am than when I was a young teenager.

One of the things that really impressed me when I first got this knife was how well the blade and lock mechanism fit together. I thought that was precision craftsmanship. It still may be because when I look at the fit of most knives today, those parts are almost always rounded to prevent extra fitting needed.

I will also point out that over the years, the parts have worn. Everything still locks up tight, but just from this picture you can see some of the gap that has developed from over thirty years of daily carry in the scales. So, it is not quite as impressive as it used to be but it is always something I thought was special about it.

I am always on the lookout for the replacement of this knife. In my head I am thinking that I should carry and upgrade. I am thinking about the Buck 722 right now even though I think that one is about the same category. But I always come back to – why? I have at times carried two knives under the ‘two is one and one is none’ idea, but I get tired of my pants falling down with all the weight.

“Beware the man with one gun, he probably knows how to use it”. I think you could substitute knife in that spot. If you run into me, I will likely have this knife on my person. It was my first piece of EDC gear and it is my most consistently carried piece of gear. I have had it longer than any key on my key chain or wallet or item in my wallet.