When have you used your hook knife?

[SRI85 0]

Title says it all. Id like to hear some story's of when you have used your hook knife. hopefully i learn something from one of your storys.

[NWFlyer 2]

I used it once to cut some loose thread on the sleeve of my jumpsuit so it wouldn't continue unraveling.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[billvon 2,995]

Last use was a bigway last spring; used it to cut the O2 hose to length.

[Flyinrob 0]

once during a tandem i had a female with one long pony tail get her hair stuck in the three ring on the left side after opening the canopy...her head was pinned to the riser....used my hook knife to cut her hair. Good thing i didn't have to chop the main before i freed her from the riser!!!

[Anvilbrother 0]

I used one to cut a stuck seatbelt while doing training at work on using the jaws and cutters to cut cars apart.

Postes r made from an iPad or iPhone. Spelling and gramhair mistakes guaranteed move along,

[Jbag 0]

I was assisting a moyle and his blade got dull so I pulled my hook knife out and saved the day

IHYD

[JohnMitchell 16]

Yikes! For a sandek, you're a real meshugeneh.


This one time, at band camp, I used a hook knife to cut cross connectors when I broke steering lines and was planning to flare with my rear risers.

[angrypeppers 1]

Mine is also a bottle opener...

Burn the land and boil the sea,
You can't take the sky from me.

[Hellis 0]

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once during a tandem i had a female with one long pony tail get her hair stuck in the three ring on the left side after opening the canopy...her head was pinned to the riser....used my hook knife to cut her hair. Good thing i didn't have to chop the main before i freed her from the riser!!!

So? Is that a good reason why sudents should have somthing on their head?
A helmet or Fraphat?

[petejones45 0]

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o? Is that a good reason why sudents should have somthing on their head?
A helmet or Fraphat?

It could've been sticking out of the headware

Look out for the freefly team, Smelly Peppers. Once we get a couple years more experience we will be a force to be reckoned with in the near future! BLUES!

[ontour36 0]

Not quite on topic but,
As DZSO many years ago I watched a dude on an AFF Rating course with a line over cut two lines then land his main, was thinking WTF then rememered he'd been trying to sell a Hobbit main for a while and now had a 2nd rig.
When he got back to the shed I dumped his reserve much to his displeasure and sure enough there was a "reserve"that had 300+ jumps as a main.
He passed the next course a year later.

[chuckakers 425]

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Title says it all. Id like to hear some story's of when you have used your hook knife. hopefully i learn something from one of your storys.

1987 Nats in Muskogee. I was using an old "wings wars" style RW suit to video 4-way team L.O.S.T. (Lack of Support Team) from Ft. Hood. I had rigged up some swoop cords using Dacron 550 line. After opening, I stripped the swoop cords and reached up for my toggles. Oops - the left and right swoop cords tied themselves together from the wind. It was like wearing handcuffs under canopy.

I probably would have figured out a way to steer back to the DZ, but hacking it with my hook knife was easier and may have saved me from an embarrassing landing.

If you don't carry a hook knife while skydiving, start today. After all, if you don't have a hook knife when you need one, you may never need one again.

Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

[SRI85 0]

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Title says it all. Id like to hear some story's of when you have used your hook knife. hopefully i learn something from one of your storys.

1987 Nats in Muskogee. I was using an old "wings wars" style RW suit to video 4-way team L.O.S.T. (Lack of Support Team) from Ft. Hood. I had rigged up some swoop cords using Dacron 550 line. After opening, I stripped the swoop cords and reached up for my toggles. Oops - the left and right swoop cords tied themselves together from the wind. It was like wearing handcuffs under canopy.

I probably would have figured out a way to steer back to the DZ, but hacking it with my hook knife was easier and may have saved me from an embarrassing landing.

If you don't carry a hook knife while skydiving, start today. After all, if you don't have a hook knife when you need one, you may never need one again.

Can you elaborate on what swooping cord are? are they still used today?

[BCA 1]

It comes in very handy for defending yourself against "killer rabbits" on the DZ.

[indyz 1]

I had a brake line hitch around a rear riser block on a CRW jump (a combination of bad block design and sloppy excess brake line stowage). After 10,000 feet of messing around I cut the line and landed on rear risers. That same day I pulled my knife after a riser became caught on my helmet as a result of my lines going slack during a wrap. I was being choked by my own helmet and couldn't locate the buckle, so I decided to cut the chin strap. Fortunately it cleared as I pulled the knife out of the pouch. Then on the last jump the day, I got another jumpers bridle hung up on the handle of my chest-strap mounted hook knife. I managed to clear that one without doing any cutting. Good times.

[Zlew 0]

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I used it once to cut some loose thread on the sleeve of my jumpsuit so it wouldn't continue unraveling.

+1

[lowpull 0]

Years ago, I used it to cut a broken rubber band when I packed, at least I think I remember packing once...

[Hvance 0]

The vein of the responses reflect what I've heard, that in most all cases a hook knife won't be able to solve the problem quickly enough. How to find the right line fast, etc...

No reason not to have one though. Rather carry it on every jump and never use it, than need it once and not have it.

I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

[SwampGod 0]

In 2002 I was first on the scene of an accident. The woman was unconscious and being choked by the strings on her hat (no helmet....). I used HER hook knife to cut the hat and goggles off her head, which allowed her to breathe easier without causing perhaps further unknown injury.

Not my use, but used in front of me-- in the middle of a CRW 16-way..... actually, maybe a 25-way, one jumper in the formation to my left got the top skin of another jumper's canopy wrapped around his foot, and the tension was too great to allow his foot to release. He used his hook knife to cut a small slit in the top skin of the lower jumper's main. The cut released the foot, and the lower jumper flew to a safe distance then cut away.

Those instances were enough to keep me jumping with at least one knife at all times. Later in the same year, I helped evaluate the video from a CRW wrap that resulted in a fatality. I cannot say for certain, but given the dynamics of the wrap, the 2 places I keep hook knives during CRW would have been completely inaccessible. I decided i needed at least one more knife located on a different quadrant of my body, especially while doing CRW.

-eli

[JohnDeere 0]

Never used one but have had 2 used on me before.... Speaking of he still owes me 2 pairs of shoe strings.... Damn you Crocket! You old crazy bastard!

Nothing opens like a Deere!

You ignorant fool! Checks are for workers!

[elightle 8]

Me too but it was at the POPS WR attempts a year ago.

[rehmwa 2]

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I used it once to cut some loose thread on the sleeve of my jumpsuit so it wouldn't continue unraveling.

I clean up the frayed end of a packing ribbon once. We used it also to cut one of those huge out of control eyebrow hairs that crop up every couple weeks.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Scrumpot 1]

I've used mine for an in-air situation 1 time in 15 years. It was an AFF Instructional jump, where as one of the instructors where this particular jump took place - we carry (FRS) student radios with us, in our jumpsuits during the jump. I had chosen to have mine hang around my neck (again tucked-in under my jumpsuit), attached via a shoestring lanyard.

Well, apparently, sometime during the course of this jump (that got just a little "wild" ) the lanyard found a way to work its way out a bit from under my collar, and was "catching" in the relative wind. Upon deployment - the lanyard actually got snagged in one of my 3-rings, and was cutting across my neck! At 1st, I thought I had a line across my neck, or a riser somehow or some sort of other "normal" malfunction. Try as I might, with all the tension on it, (and it slowly choking me out) - I could not manually get it free / clear, so I cut it free with my hook knife.

My Lesson learned? Now, rather than carrying my radio via a lanyard around my neck to have it with me - instead, I simply zip it inside my inside jumpsuit pocket where it can do no (similar) harm.

coitus non circum - Moab Stone

[okalb 104]

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Title says it all. Id like to hear some story's of when you have used your hook knife. hopefully i learn something from one of your storys.

A few years ago I used mine to slice up the topskin of my brand new parachute (5 jumps). OK, I didn't do it, it did it all by itself when it unsnapped from my harness and went into the nose of the canopy during deployment

Time flies like an arrow....fruit flies like a banana

[Zymurdoo 0]

On a 4 way CRW jump I ended up passing though the front center lines and exited out through the side of my teammate's canopy. He chopped and his canopy way trailing behind me with one line around my chest. The trailing canopy kept spinning up getting tighter and tighter as well as "licking" the tail of my main.

I thought "what if I need to chop, can I?" and realized that my reserve was being held tightly closed by the line around my chest. Thinking back to my early CRW training, I remembered Kevin Vetter and Paul Joseph saying that a hook knife was recommended but that you will probably never have to use it (other than for uses posted above).

As I pulled out my hook knife and prepared to cut the line around my chest, I shouted out "Sorry Kevin!". One quick slice and his main was no longer an issue.


EDITED - for crappy speeling, and badly written grammers.

Blue Skies, Soft Docks and Happy Landings!
CWR #23
(It's called CRW, add an e if you like, but I ain't calling it CFS. FU FAI!)