Camper/Scout knife can openers

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Mumbleypeg
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Re: Camper/Scout knife can openers

Post by Mumbleypeg »

Thanks to all who contributed to the thread. A fine treatise on the varied styles of can openers deployed by various knife makers!

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ken98k
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Re: Camper/Scout knife can openers

Post by ken98k »

tongueriver wrote:An excellent treatise on the 'scout' type canopeners. Thank you, Jim! ::tu:: Somewhere in the past threads there was some info on dating these types but I don't remember now. I have used the hawkbill type found on modern scout knives; it is ok but not great. I have found that the old military thingies are really good, but one has to put them into some kind of slippie in the pocket or it will cut one's pants and one's legs.
P-38001.jpg
I've been carrying the same p38 daily since 1978. For first couple years it hung around my neck with my dog tags, after that it's been on my key ring.
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tongueriver
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Re: Camper/Scout knife can openers

Post by tongueriver »

OLDE CUTLER wrote:Thanks for all your comments on the can opener types and the excellent additional pictures. I too learned something from this, the one that I was referring to as "a potato digger" style is actually called a French opener. Makes sense as my Veritable Sauzede French knife has this type. I referred to it as a "potato digger" type because growing up on the farm as a kid, we had one farm field that came right up to the buildings, so we planted a huge garden behind the garage. We had an old single row potato planter that my dad would pull behind the tractor while my older brother would sit on the seat of the planter with the bucket of seed potatoes. My mom had cut the seed potatoes so that each piece had an "eye" which was the seed. As my dad pulled the planter, my brother would look straight down as a wheel in the middle turned and drop the seed potatoes for the wheel to take down and plant in the furrow. Later in the summer my brother and I would take the "potato digger", which was a long handled shovel like tool out to dig up some of the potatoes. It had a working end that looked much like the can openers, but was of very heavy construction to be used as a lever. My brother would push it into the ground beside the potato row and pull sideways to lever them up and I would shake off the dirt and put them into a pail. I was probably 6 or 7 years old then (so in other words this was about 60 years ago).
My gosh- You just described a couple days in my life. Do you remember the smell of that fresh-turned earth? My brothers and I would squabble about who got the baked potato skins. I have just experimented with roasting turnips. I did not like them in 1955 but I have given them another try. Good.
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Re: Camper/Scout knife can openers

Post by eveled »

Great thread guys. Nice to see them all together. Only thing I'd add is in my experience the SAK one works best going backwards around the can otherwise the screwdriver gets caught under the lid, and the hawk bill works best going forward.

This is my solution for the p38 bite.
IMG_20171202_110302488.jpg
I gave up on the p38's and put the opener from a broken demo knife on my key ring. I actually works really well.

p38 story. I had a buddy who had one on his key ring, one night he told me that he got up to pee, in his skivvies and a mortar landed on his hooch, and destroyed everything he owned. So all he had was his skivvies and his p38 with his dog tags.

He said he kept the p38 as a good luck charm from then on.

Fast forward to a camping trip with both our families and one morning I wake up to a pounding noise outside. His wife was trying to open a can with his p38 by smashing it with a rock!
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