That Knife Just Won’t Do

Many, many…many years ago while attending dive school in New Jersey the topic of dive knives came up. Scuba knives, folding knives, survival knives even mini knives (one of the divers there actually had one strapped to his harness) were discussed and debated as to which one was the best while one was working underwater. Most of us just had scuba knives with the sheath taped or tied to our harness. I personally had a large bright yellow and very used scuba knife zip tied to my harness. There wasn’t a lot of grumbling by the instructors but some did express their opinion that we all might want to be using Big Chief knives. “A big what?”, I remember thinking as one of the instructors spoke passionately about how these knives were cheap as dirt and if you lost one it was no big deal. He went on to say that if you did, you just grabbed another one out of the box (you bought them by the box apparently) sharpened it on an old rock and went back down working away. Losing one of these was a few bucks and losing one those ‘cupcake’ knives, as he put it, is a lot of beer money down the drain. “Yeah sure”, most of us responded and went about our business just wanting to get through dive school and on to a dive job. Which I did, only to have to hear it again in a more colorful fashion.

I got my first dive job two weeks after graduating from dive school, I was one of the lucky ones. The job was at a nuclear plant in the Chicago-land area and I was with two other veteran divers. I was learning the ropes as they say and I followed these two around like a lost dog trying to learn and listen as I went. There was plenty to listen to as I soon found out. While rummaging through my dive gear before one of the dives, one of the divers noticed my bright yellow dive knife.

“Get yourself a big chief son, trust me”

 

“What the hell is that?” I remember him saying as I turned around to see a diver in a bluish wetsuit covered in tool dip. One knee was covered in red tool dip where the hole was beginning to show. The other knee was bright blue as if to suggest that he had run out of red tool dip and that he really didn’t care about color matching. He was wearing what appeared to be old black rain boots duct taped to his legs and had a dip of tobacco in his mouth. And on his harness I could see the faint dull glimmer of what looked to be the most worn out knife ever made by mankind. I asked him what the hell he was talking about and I soon learned I was about to get the same lecture from dive school about my knife, except worse.

I asked him what he was talking about and he made a horrid face while staring at my knife. “Im talking about that ridiculous knife,” he said.

“Of course he is,” I thought to myself. I asked him what he meant by that and he told me the best knives for diving were cheap folding knives called BIG CHIEFS! He went on to state in a most matter of fact way that my big silly scuba knife was the worst type of knife to have. I reluctantly asked him why.

He began to spread the gospel of the Big Chief, as I referred to it. He told me you could buy a box of these things for way cheaper than any of those stupid ‘scoobie dooer’ knives and if you lost one of the bottom then who gives a shit, just grab another one out of the box. If a Big Chief gets dull, no big deal he exclaimed. Go find yourself some pavement or a rock for that matter and scrape it until it’s sharp. He said you could grind it down to a nub and then just toss it. You got a box of those suckers as he reminded me. This went on for about twenty minutes but it didn’t end there. He began preaching about tool dip, rubber boots, duct tape and everything else to protect you and your gear while underwater. “This shit is expensive, so protect it,” he would say. He finally stopped and told me to just get myself a Big Chief and to trust him.

By the time I was a few years into my diving career, it would seem that his words had taken hold somewhere with me. My wetsuit was a speckled mess of tool dip and duct tape. As for that Big Chief knife, he was right, a lot of divers used them and praised them. As for me, I never got one. I liked my large diving knife and never lost it and even if I had I would not have cared. I got it for free anyway.

 

-Scott Kilgore is a former commercial diver and author of the ebook Under Dark Waters https://amzn.to/2rwEDKY