Kamp King

[ringzero]

Anyone else remember these?

I probably went through half-a-dozen of these over the years.  Used for canoeing, caving, and anyplace else where getting wet, muddy, and sandy was inevitable. 

Worked great for those nasty, dirty jobs - like digging the spent carbide out of a carbide lamp - for which you wouldn't want to use your normal EDC knife.











Imperial supposedly produced an earlier version of this knife that was of decent quality, but I never had one.  By the time I began buying them, they were really cheaply made and cost less than 2 bucks at Central Hardware, IIRC.

The scales were really incredible.  Made of something like a thin, black vinyl layer stretched over textured metal beneath.  The simulated bone texture was actually provided by the metal substrate.  That black material, whatever it was, would eventually scrape off to reveal the shiny metal beneath.  (In the first pic, the black material has visibly shrunk, pulling away from the ends of the metal substrate of the "scale" underneath it.)

Seem to remember a rumor about Kamp Kings being stainless, but all of mine corroded in short order after being on canoeing and caving trips.

All in all, not a bad knife to spare the EDC knife or to use as a loaner knife.

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[hawkchucker]

Ahh yes the old colonial knife company in Prov. RI.

Those knives used to sell off of a cardboard display with the camper, Fish knife and the 3 blade stockman. I remember them being about 3 bucks and all over the place. How times have changed.

[Leatherman123]

I have a knife that is very similar to that.. It has brown scales and it is of decent quality. I will try to take a pic tomorrow!

[Grant Lamontagne]

We have a Colonial expert here on the site if we can get him to say something...   

Def

[Smitty44]

We called them the poor boys boy scout knife.

[David Bowen]

Not much of an expert Def, tried to get into them a while back. Even tried to do some dealings with the company. I use to own lots of them including a camp king type of knife, held one hell of an edge. I designed a site just to review thier new product line and was able to get a few reviews off the ground, for some reason steve the guy that runs the joint stop supporting me. Ohh well

http://members.aol.com/colonialknifefan/

Check out the link if you want

David

[Mike, Lord of the Spammers!]

Not much of an expert Def, tried to get into them a while back. Even tried to do some dealings with the company. I use to own lots of them including a camp king type of knife, held one hell of an edge. I designed a site just to review thier new product line and was able to get a few reviews off the ground, for some reason steve the guy that runs the joint stop supporting me. Ohh well

http://members.aol.com/colonialknifefan/

Check out the link if you want

David

There's some interesting reviews there mate

[hawkchucker]

Cool Site, but no mention of the Chute knife from what I gleened out of it. Shame to it is a great tool.

[ringzero]

We called them the poor boys boy scout knife.

Exactly right!  You could buy 4 or 5 of the Kamp Kings for the price of 1 Camillus BSA knife.

While obviously lacking something in the looks department, they generally got the job done.

Inexpensive, widely available, and actually were a fairly durable tool.

Great bang for the buck.

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