Hmm... does that gentleman in Utah have the initials LS? Might have dealt with him myself. I have about 5 years of fencing in my background.

Kinves and blades are a pretty constant theme in Heinlein. Oscar Gordon in Glory Road springs to mind, with the Lady Vivamus, but I remember, offhand, references in The Star Beast and a lot in... was it "Orphans of the Sky"? The multi-generational starship book, where they had lost the knowledge that they were on a ship...

Still, "Tunnel" remains my favorite for all the "knife talk" as well.
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See here infant, on this tour you are the rabbit, trying to escape the fox. You aren't the fox. One time in a hundred a gun might save your life; the other 99 it will just tempt you into folly. No doubt Matson or I would, but we are salted; we know when not to use one. That test area is going to be crawling with trigger-happy young squirts. If one shoots you, it won't matter that you have a gun too, because you will be dead.

I know how good a gun feels. It makes you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, three meters tall and covered with hair. You're ready for anything and kind of hoping you'll find it. Which is exactly what's dangerous about it-- because you aren't anything of the sort. You are a feeble, hairless embryo, remarkably easy to kill. You could have an assault gun with two thousand meters precision range and isotope charges that could blow up a hill but you still wouldn't have eyes in the back of your head like a Janus bird or be able to see in the dark like the Thetis pygmies. Death can cuddle up on you from behind while you are drawing a bead on something in front.

Buddy, sometimes I send a girl out on an infiltration patrol, object" information--go out, find out, come back alive. How do you suppose I equip her?

In the first place I don't pick an eager young recruit; I send some unkillable old-timer. she peels down to her underwear, darkens her skin if it is not dark, and goes out bare-handed and bare-footed, without so much as a fly swatter. I have yet to lose a scout. Helpless and unprotected you do grow eyes in the back of your head and your nerve ends reach out and feel everything around you."