Imagine that you are in the jungle of Peru. It is 1997. You are tired. You are hungry. You are dirty. You are wet. You are a client of Randall’s Adventure & Training School of Survival. They are working with the Peruvian Air Force’s School of Jungle Survival to prepare you for situations you might face if you are ever stranded in the jungle.
During the ensuing decades, Randall’s Adventure & Training has continued to train outdoorsmen, law enforcement officers, military contractors, search and rescue personnel, and a host of others in survival skills. Along the way, they have designed a number of dandy knifes. Their early designs were manufactured in cooperation with the Ontario Knife Company and TOPS Knives. Later, Randall’s Adventure & Training established their own knife brand, ESEE. RAT knives have a reputation for highly-functional, no-frills designs at reasonable prices.
I recently ran across a folding RAT design with a blade made out of D2, which is one of my favorite knife steels. I ordered one of the knives online. A few days later the package arrived.
Overview
The ESEE BRKR2DT is a frame lock folding knife with a 3-inch full-grind, drop-point blade made of D2 steel. The frame lock half of the handle is made of stonewash-finished stainless steel. The other half of the handle is desert tan glass-reinforced nylon. The BRKR2DT is made in Taiwan and supplied to ESEE through Blue Ridge Knives of Marion, Virginia.
I found the knife to be sharp, durable, and easy to carry. With a price online around $35 at the time of the writing, it represents an excellent value for the money. I highly recommend it.
The BRKR2DT is one model utilizing the Zancudo Framelock design. Other models utilizing the design are available in a variety different handle colors, and with blades made of AUS-8 stainless rather than D2 tool steel.
First Impressions
The knife arrived wrapped in a plastic bag inside a 4.38 x 1.75 x 1.19 inch paperboard box. The box was printed with colorful graphics and a host of helpful information. It included the name and large logo of the designer (Randall’s Adventure and Training), the name of the design (Zancudo Framelock), the address of the distributor (BRK, 314 Lee Highway, Marion, VA 24354), and the model number (BRKR2DT), along with other helpful information.
The knife came out of the box shaving sharp (my frequent knife testing leaves my left forearm looking like a badly mowed lawn). The blade is laser etched with the Randall’s Adventure & Training logo on the one side and a Zancudo graphic on the other (“Zancudo” is a Spanish adjective meaning “long-legged” that can be used in Latin American to refer to mosquitos). The blade also has “BRK”, “Taiwan D2″ and “BRK-R2″ laser etched on the ricasso.
The knife has dual thumb studs which work well for ambidextrous one-handed opening. There is jimping near the thumb studs, which helps to maintain better control over the blade while closing the knife one-handed. The reversible pocket clip is sturdy, and there is a small lanyard hole toward the rear of the handle. I found the knife to be a nice size and weight, and liked the stonewashed finish. The BRKR2DT clipped nicely inside the left front pocket of my pants.
Testing
I carried the knife daily for most of a month. During the testing period I used it to pry open a jammed stopper in the main floor bathroom sink, to cut open packages, to peel old labels off a box before putting on new labels for an outgoing shipment, to cut chunks of chocolate off of the giant Hershey kiss that my wife, “Kari”, gave me in my Christmas stocking, to open my dog’s heartworm medicine, to cut open a bag of dog food, to scrape gunk from a clogged vacuum cleaner mechanism, to cut open a package of hatch green chili salami whips so that I could eat some to buffer the Ibuprofen that I was taking after wood cutting, to get hairs out of the crevasses of an electric clipper that I was cleaning, to cut some mold off of a chunk of cheese that my granddaughter was about to eat, and to cut the plastic seal around the lid of a bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. (As you can tell, I like chocolate. If a major societal disruptions occurs, one of my greatest sorrows will be the interruption in the chocolate supply). I also used the BRKR2DT to cut buttons off of an old work coat that was going in the trash so that I could sew some of the buttons onto the “new” work coat that was replacing it,
The knife worked well for all of these tasks and more.
Speaking of Buttons
As I mentioned above, I used the knife to cut buttons off of an old work coat so that I could sew them onto the “new” work coat.
For many years I found replacing buttons to be a frustrating task. I would sew buttons into place, only to have the thread fail again a year or two later. Finally, I consulted with one of my wife’s friends, who works in a fabric store. She explained that there are special threads for sewing on buttons that are stronger and more durable than standard sewing threads. So Kari and I went into the fabric store one day when Kari’s friend was working, and the friend helped me find a spool of Coats Dual Duty Plus Button and Craft thread. I have since sewn on dozens of buttons using this thread, and can’t remember a single instance of the thread subsequently failing. Some of the buttons that I cut off of the old coat had been sewn on with this button thread. Those buttons remained securely attached through years of wood cutting, wood splitting, wood stacking, and a host of other tasks. Other parts of the coat finally failed, but the buttons held fast. I highly recommend that every household keep at least one spool of this excellent thread on hand. I also use the thread for most other gear repairs that involves hand sewing. What my repairs lack in beauty, they make up for in durability.
Experiments in Opening Cans
I had an idea for a new way of opening cans with a knife. The idea was inspired by a pipe cutter. A pipe cutter works by consistently deepening a shallow cut around the outside circumference of the wall of a pipe in order to gradually incise its way through the wall of the pipe. I wondered if I could brace the blade of a knife in such a way as to consistently deepen a shallow cut around the outside circumference of a can in order to gradually incise through the side of the can.
In explore this possibility, I gathered a number of empty cans from our recycling bin, and took them to my workbench in the pole barn. I used a chunk of 4X4 to steady the BRKR2DT while I rotated a can against it. I initially tried rotating the can against the back of the blade tip in order to avoid dulling the front edge of the blade. I made little progress.
I next attempted to use the front edge of the blade. Progress was still virtually non-existent, consisting only of a series of shallow parallel scratches around the outside of the can.
I then tried a knife with a serrated edge. It was no more effective than the BRKR2DT.
Finally, in desperation, I tried a hacksaw. This did not result in significant progress either. I concluded that there was good reason why this method has not yet been adopted for opening cans in the field. It doesn’t work. If I could not open a can under ideal conditions at a workbench in a pole barn, there was no way that it would work while sitting on a stump in a rain storm: tired, hungry and shivering.
Next, I experimented with the traditional way of opening a can with a knife. I used the tip of the BRKR2DT to create a series of small punctures around the top inside edge of the can. When I had a series of punctures around the entire top inside edge of the can, I then used the knife to elongate the punctures until they merged into one continuous cut around the top of the can. I then removed the top. This process worked extremely well. The attempt to open the can using the front edge of the knife dulled the blade of the BRKR2DT significantly. It took quite a bit of effort to re-hone the blade toward it original sharpness.
Conclusions
The ESEE Zancudo is a simple but highly effective knife design. It is sharp, durable, easy to carry, attractive, and reasonably priced. It will serve the user as well as knives costing many times as much. If you need a good knife at a good price, this one would be a good choice.
Disclaimer
I did not receive any financial or other inducement to mention any vendor, product, or service in this article.