It's hard to believe that it's been five whole years since I started this website. In those days I had no idea what I was doing, and even less idea of what I wanted to accomplish. To be honest, these days I still have no idea where the idea is going to end up, but at least I have a direction now, and I'm enjoying the ride!
Looking back I can see the changes we made over the years, while my Ready, Aim, FIRE style of doing things has added new features and removed others- some of which, like our Classifieds section are still technically there, but really don't exist in any significant form. There have been various series that I felt had run their course, like the “Collection Highlights” and “SAK of The Month” articles, which were popular enough, but I felt seemed a bit too structured. Of course, they may find their way back here eventually, especially if I keep getting requests to reinstate them!
On top of all that, this site has spawned a few other successful sites of mine, including Multitool.org, EDCSource.com and SAKWiki.com, which all should appeal to the average SAK collector as well.
The bottom line is that no matter what the reason that made you join up, you are now part of the World's Largest Swiss Army Knife Collector's Group. At over 5,000 members worldwide, the Secret Order of the Swiss Army Knife now reaches people on every continent, and in just about every country. The popularity of this site has lead to interviews by the BBC and CBS, some bylines in trade magazines (for those members of VSAKCS, look for an article by yours truly in the latest newsletter!), and a number of other websites devoted to the collecting and/or use of Swiss Army Knives.
So, as I sit here in front of my computer, pecking out this article and reminiscing about the last five years, I have also decided to compile a list of some of my favorite articles in case you missed them, or simply in case you wanted to re-read some goodies from the past! Of course I could go on for a lot of pages to find the best, but these ones stick out in my head. Here, in no particular order, are five of my favorites:
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Collection Highlights- FINBATT UNDOF Champion. In addition to being a bit of a rarity (I have never seen another one of these) and a part of history, and a fine addition to the Military Knives segment of my collection, this was also my father's knife, and has been used as only a Combat Engineer can use a knife, and yet, it has withstood the test of time. While I have a lot of “favorite” knives, this one will be with me forever.
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SAKs in the Dishwasher. This article was kind of an homage to Mythbusters, as I'm a big fan. I seriously thought about doing this as a video, but decided against it, as I'm sure everyone has better things to do than watch my dishwasher run for twenty minutes! Who knows- I may decide to revisit it one of these days!
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SOSAK HITMan- Our good buddy wrote several great articles in his day, from the silly to the very real. I still hear from him, and count him as one of the best friends I've never met, but we haven't seen any new articles from him in a long time. If you are reading this Swiss Man, consider this a good old fashioned poke- I'm sure I'm not the only one that misses reading your thoughts!
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Proper SAK Husbandry. I wanted to put together a short and sweet introduction to basic SAK care. It didn't work. It ended up being an extremely long article, and I cut a lot out of it to make it only an abnormally long article! One of these days I'll look at it as a new mini series, each month looking at another aspect of SAK care. Until then, there's some good tips in there!
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Civil War. This article was written by another good friend whom we've heard to little from lately. In it, Paul looked ta the differences between the Victorinox Soldier and Wenger Standard Issue models, and came to more of less the same conclusion I did as well. Maybe if his conclusion wasn't the same as mine I'd feel a bit differently, but I have to count someone who agrees with me in the top five!
I invite everyone to post their favorite SOSAKOnline article in the response section below, so that others can read and enjoy them as well. After all, with literally hundreds of articles here, it could take a long time to read through them all!
In conclusion I want to thank everyone who has been a part of SOSAK here and in the SOSAK forum at Knifeforums.com over the past five years (and in the case of the SOSAK forum, even longer!) and helping to make it what it is today.
Thanks for the last five years, and here's to the next five!