Celidor appreciation thread

[ElevenBlade]

Gray scales would be nice... 

random thought of the day

[kamakiri]

Gray scales would be nice... 

random thought of the day

There are some I know of...

Swatch 58mm
One of the Battle series 91mm (Nafels and Sempach?)
Printed gray with the leaves in the design on while cellidor background.

I’m sure there are more out there. And I’d like to see new ones that aren’t just printed.

[SgtTowser]

Celidors are the richest red this side of a Ferrari. I love red, so I love Celidor SAKS. But there is more to the Celidor appeal than my color fetish and management stubbornness.

John Ruskin, I think it was,  said things ought to look like what they are made of. He was referring to why Gothic cathedrals made of granite, though hard and grey, had a deeper beauty than their ornamentation and massiveness. He said Gothic cathedrals were deeply authentic because they looked exactly like what they were made of: granite cut from granite  and stacked well.  His was a profound insight despite his other vices. 

Celidor SAKS look like what they are made of: plastic, aluminum, and stainless steel layered. The plastic scale looks like what it is: plastic. It is not trying to look like something else. SAKs get into design inauthenticity, only when Vic makes the plastic try to look like what it isn’t. Vic tries hard to avoid that inauthenticity by its choice of imagery for the special editions. It avoids plastic wood and instead opts for imagery on plastic. Vic never tries to hide that the scale is plastic, no matter what is on it. We don’t think the scale with a bike tire is trying to look like rubber. It is a tire graphic on plastic. John Ruskin would know the material he was  looking at, if he knew plastic. Even so, the monochromatic Celidor SAKS are the most authentic scales. The pigment is literally in the resin. It is what it is—in the best not the worst sense of that now hackneyed phrase.

The Celidor SAK is iconic of the last 125 years or so, because its materials vocabulary embodies the three most characteristic materials of this era: Resinous plastic (vegetable oil-based, I reckon), aluminum and Stainless steel. Think about it. Knife snobs that think SAKs need M-390 either don’t get the SAK design vocabulary, or they don’t get practical function of these small machines for solving tool-problems. A knife is a tool for cutting. A SAK is a machine for solving tool problems.

These three materials—plastics, aluminum and stainless steel—that SAKs are made of defined and distinguished the 20th Century and early 21st Century from preceding centuries Perhaps more than any three other materials  in pervasive use than copper, until the rise of silicon. But copper wasn’t ever used at every scale of design the way plastic, aluminum and steel were/are. Copper was for wire and pans. Nobody built a copper skyscraper, or a copper tweezer, and everything in between. We fight wars with plastic, aluminum and steel to control the markets for plastic, aluminum and steel. We even developed silicon and digitalization to help us do it. And think about this: vegetable oil and rock oil are not so far apart. An old Mercedes 300TD diesel could burn either petroleum diesel or vegetable oil. Oil is oil in some respects so plastic is plastic.  So: when you hold a Celidor plastic, aluminum and stainless steel SAK in your hand, you are holding an object wholly of our time in your hand. Copper has been used for millennia. Not so Celidor.

Along these lines, SAKs can look very authentic and indicative of our time in G10 petro plastic for the same reason—perhaps even more so. Petro plastic is the jugular of our world despite the ascent of 1s and 0s and EMF.

Carbon fiber? Not so much yet. But maybe after the next war? Yes, if we survive it.

So what about the aluminum scales of the Alox models? For one thing using them  leaves out oil—one of the big three—and so reduces the emblematic value of all three as an iconic material vocabulary. But Aluminum (or hiduminium as it used to be called in England to avoid the Mellon aluminum monopoly) still is one of the big three for sure. And aluminum looks absolutely authentic and of this time as used in the frames of the layers in a SAK. Those frames are the real look of refined, cast/stamped, machined Aluminum. But Victorinox has struggled to use aluminum in the scales authentically IMHO. Why? Alox scales are textured and anodized to give it a look and a feel that could be almost any metal given a texture and a color. It could be tin, or super thin steel, or what have you and thin steel ounce for ounce is stronger and so can be made  even lighter and as strong as aluminum, or much stronger at the same weight. But Alox gives good function at low cost, because of ease of casting and machining (always the real reasons for using aluminum, not lightness) and relative softness makes it cheap and easy to give it any kind of texture they like (the machine  tools last way longer with aluminum, etc, and casting dimples is cheaper than stamping them in steel). But at the end of the day, waffled, dimpled surfaces really don’t look like authentic aluminum, as the simple SAK frames do, and the rainbow anodizing, though eye catching, just looks like a  candy coated, streamlined SAK, or a battery anodizing, not like aluminum. Only the silver grey SAKS look authentic but the texturing undermines it, the same as alligator texturing undermines the authentic look of a Pacific Northwest plate boat. Form should follow form, but the form added for that function does not always translate to authenticity of appearance in a materials vocabulary.

Bone Scales for a SAK? Puhlease! Bone  is a wonderful material for traditional pattern knife scales from the 19th Century, but it is not emblematic of our dominant materials of war and peace the last century and a quarter, so it takes away from the machine era icon ism of the SAK. THE SAK is a last holdout of 20th Century Modernism that can be dolled up with Roy Lichtenstein scales  and achieve post modernism. Bone just doesn’t work on a SAK IMHO.

Wood scales?  Real wood maybe, if used as in Danish Modern wood trim on steel Intended to humanize the interface with the steel—if the wood looks like the wood it is. But even that diminishes the iconism of plastic, aluminum and steel.

Celidor is almost an anachronistic material, despite its excellent functional/cost characteristics these days, but it still is a kind of plastic in a plastic age that only wishes it could be pure silicon.

Modders are pushing the scales to G10 and Titanium. G10 can hunt as rock oil in a rock oil world, but here again they want to texture it. And g10s only real advantage of strength isn’t necessary in a sack with a frame, unless you get your jollies throwing your SAK at curbs.

Titanium? It’s got the cool factor, until it becomes ubiquitous as one of the big three. Despite being potentially cheaper than steel at comparable economies of scale (which will never happen), titanium seems a cool cul de sac  to be superseded by graphene (or some equivalent) for 3D printing once CHINA-centric manufacturing wipes out all legacy  manufacturing around the world, and in turn gets replaced by distributed, guerilla 3D manufacturing. Then knives, all or part,  will have to look like graphene (or equivalent) to be authentic.

Or maybe authenticity of objects will die with hyper reality, where everything is fake and so the fake look is the authentic look.

I believe authenticity will survive one way or another, even though it may have to retreat to walled communities in a Neo feudal corporate future, if we aren’t careful.

But for now, the SAK with Celidor scales still speaks more authentically to me than all the other approaches to knives (and multi tools and Alox) in our rising tide of Baroque hyper realism and CNC change for change sake.

Caveat: if I really used my SAK in a harsh environment daily, and I could not afford $10-20 backup scales, then I would buy and use Alox exclusively and forego my love of red Celidor and SAK iconism and Ubiquity function of Celidor SAKs. But I can afford the backup scales and I have never needed them, so I don’t have to limit myself to ALOX.

Regardless, the Celidor SAK reminds that the real object persists amidst the fakery, whether or not the business model can. And while DHS and DIA may or may not shortly spring aliens from outer space on us, the moon and stars are still gonna be authentic.

And at the bottom of my pocket, there will still be a Celidor SAK waiting to solve tool problems in a color I love.

[Smashie]

What he said, I think

[Reinier]

There are some I know of...

Swatch 58mm
One of the Battle series 91mm (Nafels and Sempach?)
Printed gray with the leaves in the design on while cellidor background.

I’m sure there are more out there. And I’d like to see new ones that aren’t just printed.

I've got one 74mm SAK with grey scales. There's a company logo on the back I think.



Top row.

[Reinier]

Is it grey or gray?

[Sawl Goodman]

Is it grey or gray?

Eether eyether.

It's one of those areas. I believe "gray" is predominantly US spelling.

[Reinier]

So it's a grey area, basically

[Sawl Goodman]

Or a gray one.

[Reinier]

Let's use graey from now on.

[MacGyver]

I've said it before and i'll say it again: The main problem with the current cellidor scales is being hollow, as opposed to the older solid ones. Much more resistant for normal use, if you don't use alcohol or any chemicals that is...

I just hate the cheap hollow feel of the current cellidor scales. I cringe every time i tap on my cellidor SAK's and get that cheap hollow sound.
When i have the time, i'm even thinking on taking out the scales on some of my favorite cellidor users and fill them up with epoxy to see if the feel and resistance improves...

[Storm]

Sgt T- beautifully and passionately written essay to celidor there chap

[ElevenBlade]

Celidors are the richest red this side of a Ferrari. I love red, so I love Celidor SAKS. But there is more to the Celidor appeal than my color fetish and management stubbornness.

John Ruskin, I think it was,  said things ought to look like what they are made of. He was referring to why Gothic cathedrals made of granite, though hard and grey, had a deeper beauty than their ornamentation and massiveness. He said Gothic cathedrals were deeply authentic because they looked exactly like what they were made of: granite cut from granite  and stacked well.  His was a profound insight despite his other vices. 

[...]

Regardless, the Celidor SAK reminds that the real object persists amidst the fakery, whether or not the business model can. And while DHS and DIA may or may not shortly spring aliens from outer space on us, the moon and stars are still gonna be authentic.

And at the bottom of my pocket, there will still be a Celidor SAK waiting to solve tool problems in a color I love.

This post here... all of it... just might be the most interesting, informative, and compelling post on the internet.   


I'm a sucker for tradition and authenticity, and personal symbolism. 

Alox scales look great, But after owning a few, none of them can rival the 1961 Soldier scales. It has to do with authenticity over selling out to consumer requests.  It's true that nobody is in a business to sell what they make with a "take-it-or-leave-it" attitude, so there's nothing inherently wrong with producing new Alox models like the Farmer X due to popular demand...  It harkens back to the question of "When is a SAK not a SAK?"

There's nothing cheap about Cellidor scales.  When they wear out we have the option of replacing them with shiny new ones... or we can keep using them.  At least we have that option to.  On a smart red or black Alox SAK, some people call that "patina", I call it "faded or worn out" Quite honestly, I never bought a Alox SAK in color because I think they're absolutely stunning when brand new, and not so much when used for a few years. 

In the era of scales made of plastic, designed to look like bone or wood, it's nice to have Cellidor scales that look like Cellidor. 

[Frailer]

Sgt T- beautifully and passionately written essay to celidor there chap

Agreed! Well said!!

[SgtTowser]

MacGyver,

I agree: hollow sucks.

Hollow disrespects the plastic.

Hollow is like putting a logo on the side that reads “We are cheapening it. We don’t care about the feel.”

During the Great Depression, American knife makers like Hammer Brand converted to “shell knives” to keep the doors open. They went to stamped, hollow  bolsters and hollow plastic scales. I have a Hammer fisherman’s knife of this kind. They kept a good blade. It cuts well. They managed to make it look great, but it feels like a hollow imitation of itself.

Economics are brutal on authenticity of manufactured artifacts sometimes.

Victorinox, and Swiss watch and knife making, deserve praise for hanging in against the onslaught of Anglo-American private central bank financed peonage and prison slave labor products from China. They are cutting corners down market and moving up market to survive. I’m guessing they bought Wenger to protect patents, make Evo a price leader, and keep an Anglo-American financed Chinese competitor from buying Wenger and using Chinese slave labor parts shipped for assembly only in Switzerland with a made in Switzerland label. (Note: Many if not most made in USA brands are either assembling Chinese slave labor parts—car companies—or using America’s massive prison slave labor force of arrested pot smokers and plea bargain inmates to make UN-free enterprise goods.) But that cost Vic money and time it could not use for restoring solidity to hollowed scales and for making new tools. Vic is selling graphics increasingly, because graphics cost less to design than new tools do to develop. FRN framing and microfilm thick carbon fiber on the outer layer loom.

Basically we are watching Vic experience what American car companies experience in the 4th qtr 20th Century. 

What concerns me about Victorinox is they have done this during not the worst of times.

TheIr trials are just starting.

I worry they may be forced far up market, unless their ownership has also bought some startups in China under another name to get into the low margin game.

Until the Age of Neo Slave Economics with instaprint back window Fed notes is stopped (if it ever were), hollow Cellidor may just be the start. Particle board frame layers with plastic tools could be next.

 

[pfrsantos]

I've said it before and i'll say it again: The main problem with the current cellidor scales is being hollow, as opposed to the older solid ones. Much more resistant for normal use, if you don't use alcohol or any chemicals that is...

I just hate the cheap hollow feel of the current cellidor scales. I cringe every time i tap on my cellidor SAK's and get that cheap hollow sound.
When i have the time, i'm even thinking on taking out the scales on some of my favorite cellidor users and fill them up with epoxy to see if the feel and resistance improves...

Well, you can turn that into an advantage. Check out our own MeZillch YouTube channel. Lots of great ideas there.

https://www.youtube.com/user/MeZillch/videos?pbjreload=101

 

[kamakiri]

Let's use graey from now on.

I think you mean grae. C’mon.

[jph_777]

Regarding Gray vs. Grey:  If you are in Switzerland (after all, we are talking about Swiss Army Knives...) it would be Grau (German), Gris/Grise (French, depending on whether your knife is masculine or feminine), or Grigio (Italian).  I too would like to see some Gray Cellidor Plus Scales to play with.  I love Cellidor scales, and the ease of switching them.  I like the way they handle (no pun intended), and I like them even better if they are plus scales, as it adds more accessories without changing the size of the knife.  I like and have found it useful to have the toothpick, tweezers, ballpoint pen, and stainless straight pin with me. Cellidor scales are a good and inexpensive way to personalize one's knife. 

[Sawl Goodman]

I've said it before and i'll say it again: The main problem with the current cellidor scales is being hollow, as opposed to the older solid ones. Much more resistant for normal use, if you don't use alcohol or any chemicals that is...

I just hate the cheap hollow feel of the current cellidor scales. I cringe every time i tap on my cellidor SAK's and get that cheap hollow sound.
When i have the time, i'm even thinking on taking out the scales on some of my favorite cellidor users and fill them up with epoxy to see if the feel and resistance improves...

Agree completely.

I too have considered filling hollow cellidor scales and even have the epoxy for the job. I'm just put off by the mess of working with it.

[ElevenBlade]

What's everyone's favorite translucent scale color?

I'm thinking blue. 

The red and silver look nice but almost seem like riffs on the other versions of the same color.

Blue seems to stand out on it's own.

[Echotech]

What's everyone's favorite translucent scale color?

I'm thinking blue. 

The red and silver look nice but almost seem like riffs on the other versions of the same color.

Blue seems to stand out on it's own.

Good question ElevenBlade, I really like all of them and find the deep ruby very appealing, the sapphire is really classy and the turquoise on this classic really nice too…hmmm I’m split but ruby red seems most fitting and still retains the classic SAK flavour





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[Myron]

Even tho there's an Alox SAK in my pocket every day, I still carry an Explorer or Yeoman with me in my EDC  bag of stuff, and sometimes for an evening out a Compact is just right. 

[ElevenBlade]

Even tho there's an Alox SAK in my pocket every day, I still carry an Explorer or Yeoman with me in my EDC  bag of stuff, and sometimes for an evening out a Compact is just right.

  sometimes Alox crosses that line from elegance to ruggedness.  Sometimes it's nice to have a more lightweight tool for a backup or for eventualities.

[Rich S]

Red Tinker always with me. If it isn't red, it isn't  a SAK.   
Rich

[ElevenBlade]

I pulled out the Compact to cut off the tags on a new pair of pants.  It's strangely satisfying to extract the tools on a Cellidor scaled tool.  After using Alox tools for many months... even a Bantam.  Also, the chunky screwdriver on the Trekker, that I used a couple of days ago...

It's just so much more.... friendly... to use.  I notice how I have come to expect the tool to slip if I don't grab hold of it just right, yet pull my nail when I do.   
It's nice to catch up with an old friend.