Talking of Sgian Dhu's

[davedove]

I very seldom wear one, mainly because I don't really need a small knife sticking out of my sock. I will wear one when dressing up in "full rig."

I do hate to think of destroying a blade though. If I'm in the situation where I want the look without the blade, I will wear a dummy.

[Robin]

I bypassed the Dutch weapons law by ordering a sgian dubh without fish scalers...knives with them count as sharpened 2 sided...illegal to cary.



Now it's just a "knife"...not a weapon.

I beated the system

[Derek]

My Sgian Dhu was just a cheap production model that I have had for 27 yrs. .. the sheath has seen better days by now, so in the event I did'nt mind doing it. I did ask the garage man exactly what P1M mentioned .. to leave 1/2" of the blade so I could glue it back into the sheath, but he could'nt have heard me or did'nt understand what I was getting at and he cut it right down to the handle. Unfortuntaely I wasn't there when he did it as they were busy at the time.
Iechyd Da
Derek

[Streetcar]

I know I’ve said this before, but the subject keeps coming up.
If you ask the police about a sgian, they will tell you what the applicable law is. HOWEVER police (at least in the U.S.) have a fair amount of discretion.
In my jurisdiction, a fixed bladed knife of any length is unlawful. But if you are kilted with a sgian sticking out of the top of your hose, I would not expect an officer to give you any grief about it.
Granted, if you’re drunk, harassing people, hanging out in a drug area, or otherwise being a public nuisance, then I would expect the officer to view your sgian as a weapon – and take appropriate action.

Now I realize that some jurisdictions – and even some individual officers – are more Draconian than others. Even so, I cannot believe that keeping a sgian in your own home, or only wearing it to formal functions would run you afoul of the authorities.

Derek, I’m truly sorry your blade was neutered, but I’m glad you found a way to salvage part of it in a way you can feel more comfortable about.
Personally, I’m with David – I will be happy to help find a home for wayward sgian dubhs.

[John M.]

It's just so sad to see works of art destroyed for no logical reason.

As another of the weapons collectors on the board I'd be willing to rescue any bladed weapons/tools that are in jeopardy of being destroyed.

Just PM me for an address to ship them to. I'd tag them as to who they belong to & keep them properly oiled & maintained. Then in the event that the situation changes & your allowed to posses them again I'd gladly ship them back for a happy reunion.

I just can't stand hearing of this happening any more. It makes me sick to my stomach.

John

[An t-Ileach]

This whole subject is becoming quite thorny in the UK - probably because there're no guide lines coming out of the Home Office. Local constabularies are seemingly having to make it up as they go along. This is a pity, because there are large areas of the country where the current 'problem' with knife crime doesn't exist, and the knife crime hoo-hah came out of one of the Home Office's initiatives (largely driven by urban sink areas such as parts of London, Birmingham, Glasgow, etc., and a couple of well-publicised (in the tabloids) cases in schools). So it really behoves the HO to say just what it is they are doing and what they hope to achieve.

The Metropolitan Police division that takes care of the Houses of Parliament and the one that oversees Royal Security, however, clearly do not consider the sgian dhubh to be a weapon and thus falling within the ban. This is nice, but not helpful if other constabularies consider that it is, in fact, a weapon.

This leaves the local coppers and the local sgian dhubh wearing kilt-wearer exposed at the (pardon the pun) sharp end to play it off the cuff. So, defensively, many will have taken the Derek-P1M solution. Others will simply leave the sgian at home - however, as I understand it, having the things at home is still considered prima facie an offence. This is yet another area the HO needs to clarify, because we'd be entering a legal minefield (or honey pot) with kitchen knives being proscribed by a ban intended to stop young thugs who are conditioned by Gangsta Rap (see various articles by black journalist and community worker Shaun Bailey) into thinking it's "cool" to own a "shank".

By the way, if a kilt in Wales is a cilt, is a sgian dhubh a cyllell du?

[Nick]

I may very well be moving to the UK in a year or so (hopefully) for school, and who knows what after that. The one thing that I'm sad about is that I'm probably going to have to give up many of the things I enjoy. I want to make knives and swords, and work with swords, but it looks like it's going to be near impossible. I know there are talented bladesmiths in the UK, but I don't know how the laws apply to them. I also know there are practitioners of European swordsmanship in England (most natably Schola Gladitoria), and I don't know how they deal with the laws either. It'd be worth finding out.

[Caradoc]

I bypassed the Dutch weapons law by ordering a sgian dubh without fish scalers...knives with them count as sharpened 2 sided...illegal to cary.

You mean the jimping, or filework, on the back of the blade that keeps your thumb from slipping if you're actually using the knife?

Those little fileworked cuts are absolutely useless for "fish scaling." They're very handy for keeping your thumb where it needs to be for point control.

I can't believe anyone actually thinks that those should be counted as "sharpening." That's just insane.