Long time coming this one. A few of us 'oldies' were immediately taken by the romance of wild living and surviving in the woods after watching First Blood way back in 1982 and I always wanted one of those Jimmy Lile survival knives. From then on, I immersed myself in Survival Weoponry and Techniques magazine every month and coveted my Lofy Wiseman books while drooling over such sharp things as the Buckmaster, Randall, Lile, Wilky survival and less well made tat like the Aitor Explorer and Marco Polo knives.
Back in the early nineties I managed to get a Lile Sly II. Not a 100% accurate representation of the movie knife. But as close as possible without spending many thousands of $$$$ as Jimmy only made 13 of those originals, and Sly had 6 which got used in the film. A further 87 were made available to punters, but lacked 100% accuracy and only had 12 saw teeth as opposed to the 14 the screen accurate ones had. He made a thousand or so SLY II's before passing away in May 1991.
SLY II...
Stupidly, I sold the Lile a few years back. But it wasn't screen accurate, which I really wanted. I used to be a huge screen used prop collector as my father has worked as an armourer on many films including all of the Bonds from Dr No, and many other big productions like Star Wars, the Mission Impossibles and the Nolan Batman films to name a few. I've had some amazing props from those films including Daniel Craigs Walther and silencer, which I still have. The original Rambo knife was always the one that got away, and even a decent copy was impossible to get.
JIMMY LILE FB ORIGINAL #8 of 13...
United Cutlery made replicas of the Rambo knives in the mid 90's which were OK, and more recently Master Cutlery are making them, but they are far from accurate, and are made for display purposes only from very poor steel.
MASTER CUTLERY'S VERSION...
Recently, a few custom makers (Ray Matton, Farid and Britt Gudowski) started to make reasonably accurate copies of those 13 original movie knives at a cost much lower than any Lile. Unlike the United Cutlery and Master Cutlery versions, they were made from good steels like the originals (D2 and 01). And they were made to be used too, with the original methods of construction exactly the same as Liles. Not so long back Britt Gudowski of BlackStarr knives, updated his version to be more accurate to the screen used blades, and also made it in CPM154. I was offered one and couldn't pass it over, even though I tried.
To complete the package, I commissioned a US sheath maker to make me a screen accurate sheath, complete and left handed like the original. Not even Jimmy Lile's knives came with a screen accurate sheath with that arkansas stone pouch on the front - all the screen used ones were custom made for Sly by Jim Buffalo and not Lile. So I had to get one of those and it completes the screen accrate look along with the added thongs and lanyards. It really is a daft knife, and I'll never use it for serious outdoors use. But it is a great keepsake of a film prop I longed for as a blossoming teenager. As it was also that film and that knife that led me down the path to find bushcraft, which is such a major part of my life and job, it is an excellent momento too.
