This is (for now), the last of my Gerber Armorhide series knives. It is an Al Mar designed model A325. Yet another 'bird and trout' (as described in the catalogs). If you're interested in the details, I'll put my longer than usually pretty long write up below. Why? Because i'm a knife nerd. Feel free to ignore.
This particular knife represents the smallest of what became a newly designed series of fixed, sporting knives from Gerber. They were all designed by Al Mar and they followed an alpha-numeric code (e.g. A325, A400, A450 and A475). These were all in Armorhide, but with modern, slick blade and handle designs. I particularly like the fact that they now included lanyard holes and their scabbards (sheaths) were very robust and in some cases entirely different than the traditional scabbard design. In short, I really like these models. To make it more interesting, there was also a "Custom" series, similar in design, but utilizing (for a brief time), green nylon handles, Stag, Walnut and even Dupont Hypalon (squishy rubbery handles). All of these are collectible and sought after today. The custom series used an alpha-numeric code starting with "C". These were all sold along side Gerber's traditional fixed sporting and military knives. In short, Gerber had a whole lot of fixed blade knives in their catalog during the seventies and eighties. It could be speculated that this may have over extended them and led to their sale to Fiskars in 86.
Al Mar was a really interesting guy. Born to Chinese immigrants - US Army Special Forces - Viet Nam - A Master's degree in industrial design - Chief designer for Gerber from 67 through 79 and finally started his own company, Al Mar knives until his untimely death. His influence was vast and the Gerber knives of his design as well as the Al Mar knives prior to his passing are in constant demand.
On a personal level, this knife has a bit of meaning to me. I was with my dad when he bought it from L&M supplies in Naknek Alaska. We were running short on knives for the processing line on the ship. Typically, these were chrome bladed, plastic handled knives from Sweden. They had a spoon on one end to clean the 'blood line' as we called it. L&M was a hardware store. They didn't have what we needed, but my dad spent some big bucks to buy this model. During its first shift on the processing line it mysteriously disappeared. The foreman said it met its fate at the grinder at the end of the gutting trough. Did we believe it? Nope. Fast forward many, many years and I am cleaning out my dad's estate. He wasn't much of a knife guy, but he had a few. I found the box and sheath above in a cabinet with an old Remington fixed blade as well as a Western. I kept the box and unused sheath and in a year or so, I found a pristine, unused knife to go with it. Because I'm a knife nerd. .........
