Rambo Knife, Where to Find One

Say what you want about Sylvester Stallone’s acting and movies – but his ability to create lasting characters and in the case of his Rambo Movies, an entire market around a type of outdoor knife is nothing less than genius. You would be hard pressed to find a man that couldn’t tell you what a Rambo Knife was and what it looked like.

Designed after a knife created in WW2 for British Pilots, the hollow handled knife contained basic necessities including matches, fish hooks, a needle and threat and in some cases basic first aid supplies and water purification tablets. The knife design became famous with the release and massive popularity of the motion picture First Blood, a the story of John Rambo ( Sylvester Stallone ) and his battle with local police in Hope, Washington ( actually filmed in the town of Hope in British Columbia, Canada ). The knife became almost as famous as the movie, and has spawned an entire market of both survival knives and officially licensed, exact versions of the knife used in the movies.
In the First Blood Movie series, several different versions of knives were used in the 4 movies. In the debut movie, First Blood, the Knife featured a 9 inch blade with serrated top edge of the blade. The handle was wrapped in a green twine and featured the now famous hollow handle to store survival necessities.

Rambo’s knife becomes significantly larger in the second installment of the series which features Rambo traveling back to Vietnam to rescue POW’s. The blade has grown a full inch and now tops out at 10 inches and is black instead of green.

In the third movie, set in Afghanistan, the knife no longer is a survival knife, and now is a large hunting style bowie knife.

The History of the Rambo Knife
When Stallone set out to make First Blood, he approached well known knife maker Jimmy Lile to design a custom knife for the main character to carry. They wanted an actual knife – not a prop – and the knife was designed from scratch based on Stallone’s specs. To give the knife a more aggressive look, serrated teeth were added to the top of the blade and was constructed of high carbon steel. Lile also designed the knife for the second movie but not the third installment where the Bowie knife was used.

Buying a Rambo Knife
The actual Rambo Knife is officially licensed by Master Cutlery and comes in 4 official variations depicting each knife used in the four separate movies and are available from Amazon here. The knives are available on a variety of websites including Amazon and other online retailers. Prices range $90 and up for an official model with free shipping.