WJFH
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 5:05 pm
The Wire Jack From Hell (WJFH) is a murderous little chunk of steel that never should have been allowed to escape the infernal pit that birthed it. It’s a prototype wire jack that was created in the sample room at Imperial and its design makes it likely from sometime between 1926 when G Schrade first patented the design and 1971 when OSHA was formed and started counting lost fingers in factories across America.
Where the Schrade wire jack is lean and efficient, the WJFH is heavy, hard to manipulate, and slams shut like a bear trap. The heavy frame makes opening the blade a chore – particularly if you were blessed with fat fingers. You have to pinch the frame with your thumb on one side and pointer & middle fingers on the other. As the blade opens that heavy spring starts to open up, gathering some unsuspecting finger meat as it’s widening. Then the blade finds the half stop which causes a violent, skin ripping contraction of the spring. After you recover from that you need to do it one more time to open the blade all the way. It’s even more harrowing when you go to close the blade because there’s so little real estate to hang onto, inevitably you find yourself with a finger in the path of the blade which closes with the urgency of a guillotine. The blade is moderately dull at the moment and will never meet a sharpening stone as long as I own it.
The knife is engineered beautifully with the moving parts exactly centered with barely enough room for a hair in the gaps. It’s just way too heavy and short to be safe. At 2-7/8” it weighs 2.2 oz compared to the small G Schrade wire jack which is 1.5 oz at 3.25”.
Where the Schrade wire jack is lean and efficient, the WJFH is heavy, hard to manipulate, and slams shut like a bear trap. The heavy frame makes opening the blade a chore – particularly if you were blessed with fat fingers. You have to pinch the frame with your thumb on one side and pointer & middle fingers on the other. As the blade opens that heavy spring starts to open up, gathering some unsuspecting finger meat as it’s widening. Then the blade finds the half stop which causes a violent, skin ripping contraction of the spring. After you recover from that you need to do it one more time to open the blade all the way. It’s even more harrowing when you go to close the blade because there’s so little real estate to hang onto, inevitably you find yourself with a finger in the path of the blade which closes with the urgency of a guillotine. The blade is moderately dull at the moment and will never meet a sharpening stone as long as I own it.
The knife is engineered beautifully with the moving parts exactly centered with barely enough room for a hair in the gaps. It’s just way too heavy and short to be safe. At 2-7/8” it weighs 2.2 oz compared to the small G Schrade wire jack which is 1.5 oz at 3.25”.
