And depending on how long I let this drag on, it might even wind up becoming a Throwback Thursday in some time zones.

Here's the Dajo Survivor, the OG version, my example of which is certainly old enough to vote and is one of the quintessential sort of early hipster backpacker's knives, or at least one of the first ones I became aware of. I bought this from Eastern Mountain Sports back in the day, which ought to clue you in right there. They had like six knives in the entire store, two of which were Leathermen and three of which were Swiss Army models, and the last one was this.

Dajo are, surprisingly, apparently still around, hawking a moderate selection of what appear to largely be white label OEM sorts of outdoor goods. You just know you're bound to be in for a good time when you score a blade made from a company one of whom's major top level product categories is apparently just "hats." Their deliberately semi-ironic wiggly sun logo is still the same, and is as ever pushing very hard for the quirky-friendly-environmental Sedona gift shop vibe. It's all aimed squarely at the sort of folks who are never seen wearing anything but one of their "life is good" tee shirts.

They also have a smattering of knives, of course. Some of which seem suspiciously reminiscent of articles we've looked at in the past. I can't prove any relationship between the two, but sure seems mighty coincidental.

How the hell I of all people wound up with the thing is handily explained by it being one of the many, many stepping stones on my years-long snipe hunt trying to find the perfect fixed blade camp knife. This was an odyssey that wound up with me fruitlessly chasing many unicorns until ultimately arriving at the inevitable and obvious conclusion, and we all know how that turned out. I'm sure we'll explore more of it in due course.

The Survivor, whose model designation is not marked on it anywhere, is one of those minimalist chic sort of things with a skeletonized handle and slotted blade, all vying to convince the type of person who walks around all day worrying about their weight budget that they could totally to afford to allocate some of it to this. Even so it's 107.8 grams or 3.8 ounces all by itself — not including the sheath, of which more in a moment — which is well within the ballpark of quite a number of folding knives. Except this, of course, doesn't fold.

It's folding knife sized, too, at 7-3/8" (187.3mm) long with a 3-5/8" (92.07mm) blade at 0.111" (2.81mm) thick, very nearly but not quite all of which is usable because it terminates in a tiny ricasso just forward of the handle. It hasn't got a choil. It could really use one, and would look a lot better with one, but it ain't there. And I'm not about to go grinding one into mine because it would obviously detract from the original collector's value. That, and I can't be bothered.

To make up for it, there's this notch in the spine which Dajo make a great deal of noise about being provided specifically for the purposes of striking your fire starting ferro rod with it.

What ferro rod? Well, I'm glad you asked.

You see, the Survivor is actually a kit^1^, and it's one of those things that seeks to sweeten you on its value proposition by including a bunch of extra trinkets. The original package included a ferro rod, a tiny whistle, and a couple of feet of paracord. It may surprise you to learn that I knew exactly where my Dajo's ferro rod was and I dutifully went and retrieved it for the purposes of this column. And it will likewise not at all surprise you that I haven't got the foggiest idea where the hell its whistle got off to.

That's not much of a loss. As I recall it didn't work very well, and out in the woods you're certain to already have any amount of dinky whistles about your person including the one on your backpack's chest strap, on your compass, on the back of your carbiner, built into your can opener, et cetera, et cetera. I'm furthermore convinced no one in all of human history has ever starved in the woods in any situation where their ability or lack thereof to make a pathetic "fweet" noise has made the slightest difference. Rather, the primary purpose of such articles seems to be to get the fathers of the world to threaten to turn this car right back around, mister and/or miss, if their progeny doesn't quit incessantly screeching the damn thing from the back seat.

I have a real whistle, a big plastic neon orange one strapped to my flotation vest that I use when I'm boating, with which it's highly advisable to stick your fingers in both ears before blowing it. It's probably audible from the moon. The one that came with this ain't it.

The ballistic nylon sheath of course contains two little dedicated pockets, one each for the ferro rod and the whistle. Since I haven't got the latter anymore I cast about for some other suitable survival article to put there, practically any of which you can think of would be more useful.

Ah, there we are. Some field rations will do.

The Survivor's sheath is actually rather ghastly. It's all Velcro panels and fold-overs, and while Dajo claim it can be worn either vertically or horizontally, you can only do the former if you really have an unrealistically thin belt. It really seems to be designed with horizontal scout carry in mind. Among its various shortcomings is the lack of a stiffening insert, instead just having a couple of panels of faux-leather stitched to the inside instead. That means that if you do scout carry it tends to develop a curvature when it's empty that makes reinserting the knife even more of a delicate affair than it already would be. That's because if you keep the knife even moderately sharp it'll be prone to start slicing through the throat of its own sheath, noodle quotient or not, since it's just bare fabric there. Retention is by way of a horrible Velcro strap that wraps around the handle and is forever in the way, as these things tend to go.

The Survivor's handle is highly skeletonized and is comprised of a pair of G-10 slabs riveted over the tang. Dajo claim that this makes it ideal for lashing to a stick with the included cord to produce a makeshift spear, which is an activity that no sane individual has ever done; If you're already holding a stout enough stick and a knife, the obvious and much less stupid answer is to just sharpen your stick into a point. You know, one which you won't care if you drive it full on into a rock because you've failed to account for water's refraction and therefore missed the fish you were aiming for by a full six inches.

The survivor comes from a time when nobody had heard of 7cr steel, really, and we thought all those letters and numbers in it must have made it exotic and therefore obviously good. Right? Little did we know until later that it's basically the Chinese equivalent to 440A, an alloy that was already not terribly exciting in 2006. It's a good fit for something like this, I suppose, being a reasonably tough and extremely corrosion resistant steel suitable for careless use and storage. You could probably jigger a way to keep a tiny sharpening stone in the Survivor's sheath somehow, and if you did it'd give you something to do every night in camp since its edge retention is thoroughly unexciting.

The knife's only other marking is the Dajo logo laser marked on the front.

The Inevitable Conclusion

Job number one for the Survivor is probably to press a Kydex sheath for it. Dajo seem to have come to this conclusion themselves, because that's exactly what they've done with the latest version of it. I'm sure that's very nice and all, but it lacks sufficient kitsch.

For its time this was probably a revelation as compared to what we were already used to with "survival" knives, which were those ubiquitous Rambo lookin' things with their hollow aluminum handles for storing your matches in but nothing resembling a tang. This Dajo, then, must have seemed like a revelation. It's new, it's elegant, it's minimal. Svelte, even. And it's all one piece so it probably won't snap right off at the handle. Although, now that we're on the topic you probably shouldn't try too much batoning with it what with that big slot cut in the blade.

But then, absolutely everything interesting there is to say about the Survivor is already immediately apparent as soon as you look at it. It looks interesting, yes. That's all it's got. You hope owning it will make you seem interesting, too, when people see you playing around with it around the campfire.

But it won't. You'll have manage that part by yourself.

So hey, did I ever tell you about that time I bought this knife...?

^1^ I stole this image from Knifecenter, by the way. Apparently they managed not to lose their whistle prior to photography.