I heard we were doing homemades.

Hi, I’m dual_sport_dork. You may know me from such projects as, A Bullshit Plastic Knife, and This Other Bullshit Plastic Knife.

Now that I think back on it, it turns out I’ve been at this rather a long time.

I no longer own this… object… so I had to dig the pictures out of my digital reliquary. The reason this looks like it was photographed with a potato is because it was. (Actually, it was my wizened and venerable Cannon PowerShot A40.) I had to check the file date — I made this in December of 2002. This son of a bitch is old enough to vote.

I’m pretty sure the impetus for this was in response to people on the internet back then moaning about my locality’s recently passed knee-jerk ban on nonmetallic knives. So this is a fully functional, for acceptably small values of “functional,” frame locking folder made out of Plexiglass and nylon screws. The edges of it look mildly burned because I hogged most of it out by hand with a Dremel. I planned nothing and measured nothing; I just threw this together by the seat of my pants and it more-or-less worked.

It opened, closed, and locked. It also sported something approaching an edge. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to sharpen a chunk of 0.100" Plexiglass, but the long and short of it is that it would keep an edge on it just about suitable for use as a letter opener. Hey, it was the principle of the thing.

I’m tickled pink to rediscover that even back then I apparently had a penchant for taking pictures of stuff on a white sheet of paper. It seems old habits die hard.