Wednesday, July 06, 2011

The Spyderco Warrior: Expensive, but worth it


When I first started to write this article, I had planned to credit Michael Echanis as being the man who originally designed the knife. I believed that for the past 30 years. I only found out when I read the booklet that came with the knife that’s a long-standing legend. The actual designer of the knife is Randy Wanner who was a friend and I also believe a colleague of Echanis

If you saw the movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats”, which was about the U.S. Military’s “psychic” warrior program, you may remember the character Ben Echmeyer. He was to one who had such the ability to control his mind and suspend a pail of water from a spike that was driven through his scrotum without pain.

If you read the book on which the movie was loosely based, you would know that Echmayer was based on unarmed combat expert, Michael Echanis. Echanis was an Army Ranger who became a master in Hwa Rang Do, a Korean martial art. Echanis trained U.S. Military personnel and also, elite soldiers for Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza , the president of Nicaragua during the late 70’s. Somoza and Nicaragua were sold out by the Jimmy Carter administration and the country fell to the Communists. Echanis met his Maker several years prior when he died in a mysterious plane crash.

In the book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, the author, Jon Ronson was told by a military person that Echanis was one of the few, if not the only person who could actually kill a goat by staring at it.

And, by the way it wasn’t a pail of water suspended by a spike through his scrotum as Echmeyer did in the movie, (Leading one of the observers to ask, “What practical military application does this have?”) Echanis was able to suspend a pail of water suspended from a spoke that was driven through the skin of his neck, which admittedly has little practical military application either.

In Hwa Rang Do, the reverse grip is heavily used in their knife-fighting techniques. The Warrior knife was designed specifically for reverse grip knife-fighting.

The Spyderco Warrior at $300+ is hands down, my most expensive knife. (With great disappointment, I’ve since discovered the Warrior can be found for a cheaper price online.) While I used to buy Benchmade folders which ranged from about $150-200+, I now buy Spydercos and other knives that cost less than a hundred dollars.

The problem with purchasing expensive knives for defensive purposes is they can generally only be used once. Either it will be held as evidence by police while your defensive encounter is investigated, or if you don’t plan on taking a chance with the justice system where you live and trusting your fate to an OJ Simpson, or Casey Duggard jury, you’ll be dumping your expensive knife in some hard-to-locate-place.

The Spyderco Warrior, for me anyway was a must-have knife. If I’m end up visiting someplace where I can’t take a gun, but knives are allowed, The Warrior will be it, along with a folder or two

The Warrior’s blade is made of H1 steel which means it is EXTREMELY rust resistant at worst and completely rust-proof at best. The blade is a bit over 5” long and has black FRN (Don’t bother asking me what FRN stands for.) handles. NONE of my fixed blade knives feel as good in my hand and only my Gerber Applegate folder feels as good. The Warrior feels so good in fact, that I plan on buying one or more DVDs that teach reverse-grip fighting.

My one criticism about the Warrior is its pitiful sheath. The Warrior comes with a nylon sheath with a plastic insert. I could live with that if the knife fit securely in the sheath and didn’t wobble around in it if the strap isn’t secured.

For a knife that costs over $300, you’d expect a much better sheath that that. However, I found a place online, http://www.redhillsheaths.com/id7.html that will make a Kydex sheath for the Warrior at less than $100.

My summary: EXCELLENT knife, crappy, CRAPPY sheath.

Robot
831-869-9932

1 Comments:

Blogger khusbhu said...

Switchblade Knife is one of these knives that feature blade that comes out of the handle on pressing the button. It is also known as automatic switch blades knives  that appears like a regular folder that could be rotated around a hinge.

00:48  

Post a Comment

<< Home