This is the Space-Bar Knife from legendary American knife making company Ka-Bar. It was developed and offered for sale in 2020 as the company’s pun-heavy offering for the then-new United States Space Force.
Ka-Bar is best known for their WWII-era fighting knife initially used by the U.S. Marines. The company now makes knives for all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces – and so when the USSF came along it was only a matter of time before they developed a knife for it.
The handle is molded blue Kraton G, this is a synthetic rubber that provides a secure, non-slip grip in wet or dry conditions. The knife also ships with a gray hard plastic MOLLE-compatible belt sheath.
History Speedrun: The USSF Space-Bar Knife
The earliest origins of Ka-Bar Knives dates back to 1898, when its predecessor, the Tidioute Cutlery Company, began producing and selling cutlery in Pennsylvania. Ka-Bar is best known for the fighting/utility knife it supplied to the United States Marine Corps during World War II – an iconic fixed blade that went on to become one of the most recognized knives in the world.
The Ka-Bar name itself comes from a testimonial letter the company received in the early 1920s. A hunter wrote in rough, smudged handwriting that his gun had jammed while he was being attacked by a bear, and that he had used his knife to kill the animal in self-defence.
All that was legible in his letter were his scrawled letters “k a bar,” and the company adopted the phrase as its trademark. Over the decades that followed, Ka-Bar made branch-specific variants of the fighting/utility knife for the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard. When the United States Space Force was established on December the 20th, 2019, Ka-Bar saw an opportunity – and couldn’t resist a good pun.
The result was the USSF Space Bar, model 1313SF, released in December of 2020. It’s important to note that the Space Bar is not an official collaboration with the U.S. Space Force. The words “US Space Force” don’t appear anywhere on the knife or its packaging – only the abbreviation “USSF” is used, stamped on the blade alongside the Ka-Bar name in a retro NASA-inspired font.
The knife was developed as both a genuine user-grade tool and a tongue-in-cheek tribute to America’s newest military branch, completing Ka-Bar’s set of branch-branded fighting knives.
Underneath its bright color scheme, the Space Bar is fundamentally the same proven fighting/utility knife that the company has been manufacturing since the early 1940s. The 7-inch clip point blade is made from 1095 Cro-Van carbon steel, heat treated to a Rockwell hardness of 56-58.
The blade is 0.165 inches thick, it uses a flat grind with a 20º edge angle, and it’s finished in a non-reflective gray powder coating. The overall length is 11.75 inches and the knife weighs 10.4 ounces.
This is the Space-Bar Knife from legendary American knife making company Ka-Bar. It was developed and offered for sale in 2020 as the company’s pun-heavy offering for the then-new United States Space Force.
The handle is molded blue Kraton G, this is a synthetic rubber that provides a secure, non-slip grip in wet or dry conditions. The knife also ships with a gray hard plastic MOLLE-compatible belt sheath.
The USSF Space-Bar Knife is now available to buy direct from the official Ka-Bar Amazon store here with an MSRP of just under $100 USD at the time of writing.
Images courtesy of Ka-Bar
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
