I peace-tie my knife and didn't even know it

I found out what I had been doing for years with my knife was called a "peace-tie."

Spring is coming so I was looking at some bushcraft sites. I plan to do some motorcycle camping when it gets warm and I was gathering up my camping gear.

I got this knife when I was in the Navy in the mid-'70's - a USN Mark 2 made in Camillus, NY (the fighting knife which morphed into the USMC Ka-Bar). It's my camping knife.

For the longest time I didn't have a snap for the handle strap and I didn't like the way the sheath would flop around while hanging from my belt. So I added a boot lace to the sheath - I could tie it down to my leg and when I took my knife off, I would loop the boot lace around the knife guard then tie a couple half-hitches to hold it down so the knife wouldn't slide out of the sheath.

(After I tie the half-hitches, I make another turn around the handle and tuck the ends under.)

Eventually I put a snap on the sheath and replaced the boot lace with some paracord but I still tie down the knife guard out of habit. And it's a tidy way to tie off the paracord when I'm storing the knife.

So what's a peace-tie?

I was wondering if there's some cool knot used by the wild-west gunfighters to tie their holsters down so I started googling and I ran across this thread on How to Peace Tie Weapons at the RenaissanceFestival.com Forums - they'll tie a sword to it's sheath so it can't be pulled while they walk around in period garb.

And that's what I had been doing for years and I didn't know it had a name. Well, I don't actually "peace-tie" my knife but isn't it interesting the stuff you find out on your way to learning something else?

But I never did found out if there was some special way the gunfighters tied off their holsters.

(It was 16 years ago I was on a bike trip down to Florida and met some transplanted Michigan bikers and their wives who came back up every year for the renaissance festivals here and demonstrate jousting and sword fights and other such things. It might make a fun, motorcycle camping weekend for me this summer.)