Yesterday I was unable to enter a building because I was carrying this knife. I don’t have a problem with that, I’m just not used to having to go through security when entering an office.
It surprises a lot of people that land-locked Switzerland has a navy and that there is a Swiss navy knife.
This knife has proved to be one of the most practical knives I’ve owned. Because of its nautical applications it has two tools most knives don’t. A marlinespike and a shackle spanner, both of which have been used much more often than you’d expect. Surprisingly, despite its age (I must have owned it for at least 15 years), it still has the tweezers and toothpick, both of which have seen a fair bit of use. The only part of this knife that I am disappointed with is the blade, it’s very thin, serrated, and doesn’t hold an edge for long.
Updates
2020: The fact that I still have this knife is surprising and down to the bright orange lanyard. In 2010, I lost it late in the evening in six feet of water in Table Rock Lake. The next day, I returned and snorkeled for it, and luckily, I found it almost immediately. That was because I took a couple of transits from where I lost it, which allowed me to locate where I dropped it, and even though the knife was buried in the silt, the orange lanyard was easy to spot floating just above the bottom.
2025: And it’s still going strong! By my reckoning, that makes it over thirty years old now. It has a new lanyard now, but despite trying other knives, this knife remains my ‘go to’ backpacking knife. It still has the tweezers and toothpick, and the serrations on the blade are no longer an issue, as repeated sharpening over the years has all but removed them.
I recently found the latest version of this knife, officially called the Victorinox Skipper, on the Victorinox website, the knife’s serrations no longer run the entire length of the blade, the marlin spike looks to be a tad shorter, and some very basic pliers have been added.
Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.