No. 351 - KA-BAR

I have been corresponding on e-mail with a friend from high school recently about knives. He seemed to know a lot about them and I had an interest in learning about them for general use, hunting, fishing, and the collapse of civilization as we know it. You know, the usual stuff.

Today he wrote: The KA-BAR knives that were U.S. issue in WWII up to the late 80's are made out of 1095 steel and have a powder coat finish to prevent corrosion.

I went to the KA-BAR website to learn a bit about the company and came across this entry on how KA-BAR Got Its Name:

Soon after its introduction in the mid-1920's, the KA-BAR trademark became widely known and respected. There have been many versions of how the KA-BAR name came to be, but all evidence points to a letter received from a fur trapper. This particular fur trapper's testimonial turned out to be the most significant ever received by the company.

He wrote, in very rough English, that his gun had jammed and that he had therefore relied on his knife to kill a wounded bear that was attacking him. In thanking the company for their quality product the trapper described using his knife to kill the bear. All that was legible of his scrawled writing was "k a bar". The company was so honored by this testimonial that they adopted this phrase and used it as their trademark, KA-BAR.